I work in marketing for a couple of large child care companies and the struggle for parents is real. I am also a parent with an elementary age child.
This article is spot on and these smaller areas are where I see a lot of decline for conversion because there just isn’t a pool of reliable child care workers there or centers to service them. It’s a combo of lack of professionals who left the industry for being under paid/exposed (sickness is unavoidable for littles) during the pandemic and the cost of child care for parents who either don’t want to pay what it should cost or they can’t which is awful! Many women bear the brunt of this, unfairly because of gender wage gaps and social “norms”.