Good afternoon or good morning or good evening.

I'm Nicole Jelineas and I'm Leena Zagari.

And welcome to the second episode of the Bigger Apple Podcast.

Today we will be discussing child care in New York City and the cost of child care in New York City

and some of the logistical challenges that go along with institutionalizing

child care and talk about some of the mayoral candidates' plans on this rent.

Oh, I cannot wait to talk about this, Nicole. It's been my life for the last 22 years.

So just to give everyone some background on child care, New York City has about 475,000

children under five years old, or at least it did as of the 2020 census, which I'm sure has changed

since then. But between 2010 and 2020, New York actually lost a lot of children under five years old.

We've lost close to 50,000 younger children.

So obviously, they're just getting older, but we are not replacing people as they age out.

So that's an indication that people starting young families or people who recently started

young families are not finding the city to be a hospitable place to have and raise children.

So we're here to talk about why. And before I start asking Leanna some questions, because she's

the real expert in this area. I'll just throw out some numbers.

New York City has a universal pre-kindergarten program for four-year-olds. This has existed since

the early years of the de Blasio administration 12 years ago, I guess. This was what Mayor de Blasio ran and won on. And as he told

Leanna and me and our colleagues at the New York editorial board a few weeks ago, he was surprised

that so many upper income and upper middle class people really appreciated and embraced the pre-kindergarten program and actually

used it for their own kids. So, Leina, you've raised three children in New York City, in Brooklyn,

New York. When do parents start thinking about childcare and how do they go about thinking about it? But usually you start thinking about child care and how do they go about thinking about it?

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