High costs, extensive waitlists, endless paperwork: The reality of being a working parent at Yale
Parents say that the effectiveness of Yale’s child care support programs is often undermined by high costs, limited flexibility and administrative hurdles.

Baala Shakya, Staff Photographer
Since 2009, Jessica Thompson, an assistant professor of anthropology, has traveled to Malawi for summers to conduct fieldwork. But as a mother of young children, she often asked herself: Who would look after her kids while she was halfway across the world?
Yale offers some employees up to $1,000 to help cover child care-related expenses for work travel annually. However, if another parent remains at home, the reimbursement does not apply — even if the trip places an overwhelming burden on the remaining caregiver. Thompson ended up paying independently to bring one of her children to Malawi and have the other two taken care of in New Haven.
“To have my kids looked after while I do my field work for Yale, it costs me out of pocket, thousands of dollars a year. And that’s just a fact. It’s just the way it is,” Thompson told the News.
Child care subsidies, backup care services and affiliated daycare centers across New Haven are just a few of the resources for working parents advertised on Yale’s website. However, many parents report high costs, long waitlists, endless paperwork and logistical challenges that create significant gaps in the accessibility and affordability of child care. They say Yale’s offerings fall short, forcing them to independently navigate frustrating barriers to secure quality care.
A representative from the provost’s office told the News that the Yale WorkLife Center is the office overseeing child care support for Yale students, faculty and staff. In an email to the News, Angela Reese, the manager of the WorkLife center, wrote that the office “provides one-on-one consultations for parents to assist with finding child care,” but there are no plans for the expansion of affiliated child care centers.
When approached repeatedly for an interview, Nina Stachenfeld, chair of the Women’s Faculty Forum, which advocates for gender equity on campus, declined to comment and wrote to the News that “we have not made progress and have nothing to report.”
Some parents, like Valerie Horsley, a professor and mother of two, are frustrated that Yale’s efforts to address child care challenges remain limited. Horsley, herself a member of the Yale Faculty Senate, has repeatedly lobbied for child care reform but said she has not made substantial progress.
“I’m just not convinced that there’s a lot of forward movement that’s like being [made]. I don’t think this is the highest priority for the University,” Horsley said.
Other parents described a system that, while well-intentioned, has often left them feeling unsupported. Despite Yale’s subsidy offerings, the cost of child care in the New Haven area can reach up to $30,000 annually, making it a significant burden for many families, especially those with multiple children or single-income households.
Parents said that the effectiveness of Yale’s programs is often undermined by high costs, limited flexibility and administrative hurdles. Many families feel that Yale’s offerings, though helpful on the surface, fail to recognize the realistic demands of raising children while working at the University.
High costs, long waitlists for Yale child care centers
Yale provides a range of programs to support its parents. Child Care Subsidy Program, established in July 2022, is designed to help faculty, managerial and professional staff, postdoctoral associates and postdoctoral fellows offset the cost of child care by adding a child care stipend to their paycheck.
The subsidy is tiered based on household income. Families earning under $115,999 can receive up to $4,000 annually, while those earning between $116,000 and $159,999 qualify for $3,000 and those earning between $160,000 and $200,000 receive $2,000.
Only one subsidy is allowed per household, regardless of the number of children under five. Yale does not offer any financial support for expenses for children ages six and up.
“Does the university think kids between, say, five and thirteen can look after themselves while their parents work all day?” Thompson, whose children range from four to sixteen years old, asked.
The University also partners with seven local daycare centers in the area to provide high-quality, on-site options for parents. These Yale-affiliated centers offer care for infants starting at just a few months old through children about to enter kindergarten and either prioritize Yale affiliates or are exclusively for Yale families.
Despite Yale’s efforts to support working parents, the high costs of University-affiliated child care centers often put them out of reach for many families. Monthly tuition ranges from $2,000 to $3,000, which adds up to anywhere from $18,000 to $27,000 annually, a steep price for the average person working in academia.
For assistant professors, who earn around $125,000 per year, child care costs can consume between 14 and 22 percent of their salary. For postdoctoral researchers, who earn approximately $68,000 annually, that figure reaches up to 26 to 40 percent.
Many, like Thompson, frequently opt for more affordable alternatives farther from campus.
Victoria Bertacchi GRD ’25 and Alex Bertacchi GRD ’24, a doctoral student and postdoctoral fellow, respectively, welcomed their first child in August 2023 but also do not use Yale child care centers.
“For professors, it’s probably okay, but for grad students, it is almost unattainable,” Victoria said of the cost.
“Realistically, not even professors sometimes can afford that. So it’s really just for a small privileged group,” Alex added.
He wished that the University would make child care options part of employee benefits instead of providing a child care subsidy.
Thompson said another reason her family decided against a Yale-affiliated center was that its waitlists were “impossible to navigate.”
“You have to get on them when they’re not yet born,” she said.
Child care access has been a long-standing issue at Yale.
Upon her arrival at Yale in 2009, Horsley began advocating for more on-campus child care options. Due to the lengthy process, she had her first child on multiple waitlists for facilities in the area before even starting her job at Yale.
With support from the Office of the Provost, Horsley proposed the establishment of a child care center in an empty space in the Yale Divinity School, leading to the opening of The Nest at Alphabet Academy in 2013. The Nest, a three-classroom facility with few spots, is the most recently established Yale-affiliated center. Horsley described the ongoing push for more child care as “a constant battle.”
Reese, the manager of the WorkLife center, wrote that the office has no current plans to expand on-campus child care.
Backup Care: A Solution Parents Struggle to Trust
Yale offers subsidized backup child care through Bright Horizons for up to 10 days a year. This service helps parents manage emergencies when regular child care falls through, providing options for in-home care or care at designated centers.
The subsidized cost of in-home backup care is $6 per hour, and for center-based backup care, the price ranges from $25-$30 per day. However, many parents hesitate to use backup care due to concerns about leaving their children with unfamiliar caregivers.
“Children don’t really feel comfortable around people they don’t know very well,” Horsley said.
Andrea Aldrich, Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Political Science Department and a parent of a 3-year-old, echoed these concerns.
“These are people that my son has never met, so if there’s a crisis with child care, my first inclination is not going to be, oh let’s set up backup care,” Aldrich said.
The cost of research
Yale’s policies include travel-related benefits, such as up to $1,000 annually to help faculty cover the cost of bringing their children, family and caregivers to conferences or short-term research destinations. Costs eligible for reimbursement are listed on the Child Care Support for Professional Travel webpage. For parents still nursing at the time of travel, Yale also reimburses the costs of shipping breastmilk home to their infants.
For parents with demanding academic schedules — especially those, like Thompson, in research-heavy roles that require travel for fieldwork — finding flexible and reliable child care can feel nearly impossible.
“If I have to bring one of my children to my fieldwork with me in Central Africa,” Thompson said. “That costs $2,500 for one child. And if my parents travel to look after them, they’re not getting any money to subsidize that, to come here from across the country to do that, and that’s not enough money to cover the cost.”
Thompson’s experience is shared by many other Yale parents. Part of the financial strain comes from Yale’s extensive and specific requirements for which travel expenses are considered reimbursable, parents said.
For example, the program does not cover travel costs for children if a co-parent or guardian stays at home.
Victoria Bertacchi brought her child to Samoa to finish up her fieldwork, an expense that wasn’t considered a necessity because her husband had stayed at home. Still breastfeeding and wanting, as a new mother, to stay close to her son, she chose to pay herself to bring him along.
“Paying out of pocket because you need your newborn to come with you sucks,” she said. “He was eight months old, so it’s either I don’t go, or he comes with me, right?”
Drowning in paperwork: ‘We just gave up’
In addition to often falling short of the realistic costs of child care, Yale subsidies come with an added cost of time and frustration, parents noted.
Navigating the reimbursement process often involves a maze of detailed forms, invoice requirements and back-and-forth communications, leaving parents overwhelmed by red tape.
“The documentation that you need in order to claim the subsidy is a little bit taxing honestly,” Thompson told the News. “My husband submits it on behalf of our family, and every time it gets returned to us for some detail that’s not on the invoice.”
Providers must supply highly specific documentation, including itemized care dates and tax identification numbers, often formatted differently from one provider to another. Thompson said that she frequently had to follow up with her provider in Guilford to ensure the receipts met Yale’s requirements.
Moreover, informal child care arrangements for short-term care often do not qualify for Yale’s subsidy program due to strict documentation requirements, Thompson said. To be eligible for reimbursement, families’ independent caregivers must provide detailed information, including their Social Security number, a log of all payments and dates and their address, which casual babysitters, such as college students, may be unwilling to share.
Aldrich recalled instances where she covered expenses herself to avoid extensive paperwork.
“My spouse and I both went to a conference a couple summers ago when our child was one. So we took him with us, and we brought my mother-in-law, and we tried to get her plane ticket reimbursed,” Aldrich said. “The amount of paperwork that they required of us to be able to do that was so insane that we just gave up.”
After the stress of this experience, Aldrich has not tried to get other travel expenses reimbursed.
When asked about potential plans to simplify the reimbursement process, Reese wrote that the WorkLife Office “works with the program vendor to identify ways to further streamline the subsidy application process” but did not elaborate on specific details.
For now, parents continue navigating the complex system of forms and administrative barriers, often spending additional time and energy just to access the benefits.
Gender inequity in child care: ‘It’s just kind of the world that we live in’
A 2022 article co-authored by Thompson points to the deeper implications of child care inaccessibility. The pressures of balancing work and caregiving often fall more heavily on women than men, she wrote.
Biological factors, such as pregnancy and breastfeeding, compound the already significant social expectations placed on mothers, creating further imbalances in professional opportunities, the paper states.
“All of these burdens can lead to an imbalance in the opportunities women have to become leaders in their arena,” Thompson wrote.
The challenges of getting child care at Yale reflect broader societal issues that disproportionately impact women, Thompson said.
Studies have consistently shown that women bear the brunt of care work, even in two-parent working households, and that this imbalance is only exacerbated by inadequate child care systems. As Thomspon sees it, addressing these gaps is not just a matter of convenience but a question of equity and inclusion in academia.
“As your kid starts daycare, it’s like, everyone suffers, everyone is poor, everyone is sicker, everybody is lonelier,” Thompson said.
“It’s just kind of the world that we live in, and there are some things that you just can’t really change,” she added. “You know, if you want to be able to do certain kinds of jobs, you just have to have child care like that.”