How Much Working Mothers Spend On Child Care

Unfortunately, it seems that progress for women isn't exactly heading in the right direction in this current administration. Despite claims that no one cares about women as much as President Donald Trump, nothing that has come out of the White House since his inauguration supports that. And while the American Health Care Act and the firing of FBI director James Comey seem to be garnering much of the attention lately, a new report shows just how much working moms sacrifice for their kids, and how relatively little Trump plans to do about it. Because working mothers spend 25 percent of their income or more on childcare, and Trump's tax plan would do next to nothing to support them.

A report from the Democratic staff of the Congress Joint Economic Committee that was released solely to Glamour on Thursday, entitled "The State of Child Care in America," proves that much to be true. The report showed that, as mentioned, single working mothers spend upwards of 25 percent of their income on child care, with costs sometimes totaling 50 percent of a woman's entire paycheck. And while the White House likes to claim that Trump's tax plan will provide some much-needed relief for families, in the form of a child care tax credit, it simply isn't enough.

As a study by the Center for American Progress showed back in April, Trump's tax plan would only give average Americans less than $20 per year in so-called tax credits. And families that don't earn enough to have to pay taxes? They get nothing.

So really, this new information from the JEC only serves to drive home the point that Trump's tax plan seriously doesn't cut it. If working mothers already spend so much of their available funds to provide child care for their kids, then they need a greater tax break than the kind Trump is proposing.

The assumption that a family's income is directionally proportionate to how much they spend on child care is, for lack of a better word, bogus. A teacher with two kids living in Austin, Texas, will have the same child care costs as an oil tycoon with two kids living in Austin. The difference? The oil tycoon would receive a significantly higher tax credit under Trump's plan.

As the Glamour report indicates, most working mothers are already spending a high portion of their paycheck on child care, and despite Ivanka Trump's claims that her father is a "tremendous champion of supporting families," Trump's tax plan is not enough to support all women, no matter what he might want to believe.