Ohio lawmakers have had a lot to navigate lately, but recently released data from Groundwork Ohio should give them new tools to understand where working families need them to focus.

According to a report based on responses from nearly 500 Buckeye State parents, Groundwork Ohio says approximately one-third choose to stay home rather than pay high child-care costs.

WBNS-TV in Columbus reported 66% of those parents said they were struggling — an astonishing increase from the 10% who answered similarly in 2023.

Approximately 1 million parents have been forced to reduce the number of hours worked to care for their children, Groundwork Ohio found.

One mother who spoke to WBNS about child care challenges said she had been paying $2,500 per month for her children’s day care. She told the news station “There was no value to it and if you couple in all the sick days, the visits to the doctor because they were getting sick, there is no value except my child is in a semi-safe space.”

Groundwork Ohio found 61% of non-full-time Ohio moms would go back to work if their child had access to what it called quality child care at a reasonable cost. And, of course, the challenges become even harder to navigate for single parents. (This is, by the way, a burden still borne primarily by women.)

How can policymakers help? One child-care employee told WBNS the qualifications for child care assistance need to be lowered.

“It’s heartbreaking when you don’t qualify over a dollar, and I’m telling you they won’t budge,” she said.

Other ideas through which state government might tackle this problem are providing financial aid, tax incentives and grants for new and current providers, as well as large employers considering putting a child-care facility on site for employees.

It might feel as though none of that is on the table at the moment, but soon enough local and state governments will again have a clear picture of what resources are at their disposal — and will be able to figure out how to allocate those resources in a way that has the most impact. If hundreds of thousands of Ohioans are either removed from the workforce or must reduce the amount of time they work because of the high cost of child care, it sounds like lawmakers have a good place to start.