A new Pew Research Center survey of working parents shows that cost is far from the only wall families hit while searching for childcare. Hours of availability, location, and basic access to open slots are proving just as hard to solve for many households.
What Pew Found
The survey, conducted March 2-15, 2026 among 849 working parents with at least one child age 5 or younger, drawn from Pew’s broader American Trends Panel of 2,242 working parents, found that 48% of parents say it’s difficult to find care that meets their cost expectations. Pew also found that parents place just as much weight on hours of availability, location, and educational opportunities as they do on price, meaning affordability alone doesn’t explain why so many families describe the search as difficult.
The gap widens once school starts. Among parents of children ages 6 to 12, 47% report difficulty finding summer care, 43% struggle with before-school care, and 42% struggle with after-school coverage, according to Pew’s data. Those figures rival or exceed the share who cite cost as their main obstacle, undercutting the assumption that childcare strain mostly eases once kids reach kindergarten.
Where The Splits Show Up
Work schedule predictability matters enormously. Parents with predictable schedules were far more likely to find care with suitable hours than parents whose schedules shift week to week, per Pew’s findings. Income shapes the experience too: higher-income families report an easier time finding care that meets their standards for hours, quality, and educational opportunities than middle- or lower-income families do, even though all income groups report similar difficulty with cost itself.
About 39% of working parents said they rely on more than one care arrangement just to cover a single child, a sign that even families who do find care are often stitching together multiple providers rather than leaning on one. And while 59% of parents said onsite workplace childcare would be extremely or very helpful, only about 7% report actually having access to it through their employer.
Why This Complicates The Usual Narrative
Childcare policy debates tend to center almost entirely on price, subsidies, and tax credits. Pew’s data suggests that even a fully subsidized system wouldn’t resolve the search for many parents, since availability during specific hours and proximity to home or work function as separate barriers that money doesn’t fix on its own. For working mothers specifically, 68% said onsite workplace care would help significantly, a figure notably higher than the share who currently have any access to it at all.