The nonprofit Stay Work Play hosted its first day-long summit to hear from Granite Staters and develop approaches to keep young people in the state — and attract others to move here. Stay Work Play Executive Director Corinne Breton shared an anecdote of a New Hampshire college senior who plans to immediately leave the state after graduation. The student told Breton that while she was pursuing her degree in teaching, her priority in life is to be a mother.
“She cited an understanding that childcare is costly, impossible to come by, and by staying in New Hampshire she would be jeopardizing her career and ability to raise her family with the support she knows is needed,” Breton said to the conference room of attendees Monday.
Families across New Hampshire are facing what has become a growing issue for the state: rising childcare costs combined with long waitlists for daycare. In 2025, parents paid about $30,000 on average to enroll two kids in childcare, according to data from the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute. That’s up from approximately $22,500 for two kids in 2017. In addition, the state saw a decline of 120 daycare programs in the same time period, a decrease of 14%.
The state has a scholarship fund that allocates money toward a family’s childcare costs to help them, but it’s severely underused despite the state expanding enrollment in 2024. Families enrolled in the program still have to wait for a slot at a childcare center to open up, and they can stay on a waitlist for childcare for months or even years.
These childcare access issues are an even tougher problem for teenage parents, said Luisa Leger, a community health worker with the Manchester Health Department who led a panel at the conference. She said lack of childcare has led some of her teenage clients to drop out of school when they become pregnant.
Leger had a child when she was a teenager living in New York City, but she said her high school had a childcare center inside the building, allowing her to take classes and graduate. Her teenage clients don’t have similar options, and their parents often can’t take time off from work.
“They cannot be able to take care of their grandchildren in order for their kids to go to high school,” Leger said.
She said some of her clients who live in the state without legal status also aren’t eligible for the Child Care Scholarship. In one such case, a single mom with three children making $1,000 a week at work has to pay $800 every week to a babysitter.
“We have families with fears, we have families anxious,” Leger told the audience members at her panel. “We have families with many other mental health disorders due to the lack of assistance for child care.”
Jon Cook, a 22-year-old from Manchester, attended Leger’s panel. He lives with his parents and doesn’t know anyone his age who can afford to rent an apartment on their own right now, much less have kids. He’s talked with his girlfriend about wanting to stay in New Hampshire and live on their own, but he isn’t sure they could also afford to raise a family here.
“Adding everything up together — the cost of groceries, health care, cars, gas,” he said, “I don't know where I fit a kid in there ever.”
