What Military Families Want You to Know About PCS and Child Care

Earlier this spring, NMFA examined why child care is a critical component of military family readiness. To continue that conversation, we asked military families how PCS moves affected their access to child care.

For one military spouse, it meant receiving PCS orders with one to two months’ notice while facing daycare waitlists that stretched beyond six months.

For another, it meant paying for a nanny at roughly three times the cost of daycare because suitable child care wasn’t available when it was needed.

For a military family moving overseas, it meant losing access to grandparents who had once helped provide overnight child care.

Their stories reveal that for many military families, child care is not simply another item on the PCS checklist. It is often one of the first challenges to solve and one of the last to fully disappear.

When PCS Timelines and Child Care Timelines Don’t Match

PCS orders and child care waitlists at a family’s next duty station often operate on vastly different timelines.

One military spouse and Army veteran described the challenge plainly:

“Our orders usually come with only one to two months’ notice, and daycare waitlists are six-plus months long.”

For families with young children, that mismatch can mean relocating before child care arrangements are in place at their new location.

One Army family experienced that reality during moves to Virginia and New York.

“Moves to Virginia and to West Point both presented challenges, primarily due to extended waitlists. The uncertainty during those transitions added a great deal of stress.”

After one move, the family waited approximately four months to secure child care.

Availability also varied widely by location, with some installations offering robust resources while others left families searching for solutions largely on their own.

“When we were located farther from a base in Virginia, finding consistent and reliable child care for several years was especially challenging.”

Another military spouse described facing similar obstacles after a PCS.

“As a working spouse, it has been very stressful. We have not been able to access high-quality daycares that we are comfortable with in a timely manner or at all.”

Their experiences highlight a challenge many military families face during a PCS: even when families begin planning as soon as orders arrive, child care options at their next duty station may already have waitlists that stretch months into the future.

When Child Care Challenges Become Employment Challenges

When child care isn’t available, military families often find themselves making difficult decisions about work.

One spouse explained that when daycare wasn’t available at her new duty station, her family turned to another option.

“We have resorted to paying out of pocket for a nanny, which costs about three times as much as daycare.”

Another active-duty respondent said child care challenges became significant enough to influence professional decisions within their household.

“Child care limitations have influenced our family’s professional decisions. At one point, it was suggested that my spouse consider adjusting employment to help accommodate child care needs.”

For military families navigating a PCS, child care decisions often intersect with work schedules, household finances, and professional goals at the same time families are adjusting to a new community.

Balancing those competing demands can be difficult.

“It has been a significant source of stress and has at times created a sense of not fully meeting expectations, either professionally or as a parent,” one service member explained. “Balancing both roles during transitions can feel particularly difficult.”

Military spouse Ashley Stack encountered another version of that challenge following her family’s overseas move.

A photographer by trade, Stack closed her studio when her husband received activation orders. After relocating overseas, she found maintaining outside employment increasingly difficult while managing the realities of daily family life.

“The system, at least OCONUS here on our base, is very much set up to have one parent staying at home,” she said.

Starting Over Without a Village

Child care challenges during a PCS are not always limited to finding care. For many military families, they also involve leaving behind the family members, friends, and support networks that help fill child care gaps.

One spouse captured that reality in a single sentence:

“The biggest challenge that people don’t understand is that we don’t have family and friends when we move to help with child care.”

For many military families, a PCS means relocating away from grandparents, relatives, trusted babysitters, neighbors, and friends who might otherwise help care for children when schedules change, emergencies arise, or parents simply need a helping hand.

For military families, child care challenges are often compounded by distance. While many civilian families may be able to call a grandparent, sibling, or close friend for help, military families frequently find themselves rebuilding those support networks from scratch after each move.

For Stack, that reality became especially clear after her family’s move overseas.

“Our recent OCONUS PCS completely removed any option for overnight care for our children,” she explained.

Before the move, grandparents lived close enough to occasionally help care for the children overnight. After relocating overseas, that option was no longer available.

“The lack of child care has definitely had a negative impact,” Stack said.

She has found that the effects extend far beyond family schedules.

Working with Transition Toys, a toy-lending library founded by military spouses on her installation, Stack regularly sees families attending newcomer and area orientation programs with young children because child care is unavailable.

“Having to bring your young children with you means that you can’t fully pay attention to the important information that’s being presented,” she said.

In other cases, one parent stays home with the children while the other attends, creating another challenge during an already busy transition.

For families stationed overseas, either scenario can mean missing critical information about everything from emergency procedures to community resources, making an already complex transition even more challenging.

More Than a Spot on a Waitlist

The families interviewed for this article were clear: child care challenges during a PCS often extend far beyond what many people realize.

“A common misconception is that access to Child Development Centers is straightforward and readily available,” one respondent shared. In reality, waitlists stretch for months, capacity constraints can shut doors before families even arrive at a new duty station, and the support that does exist varies so dramatically from installation to installation that the same family can experience abundance at one base and near-total absence at the next.

“Gaps in availability and responsiveness can make an already challenging transition more difficult for families.” It’s a careful way of describing something military families know viscerally: when child care falls through, everything else tends to follow.

For military families, child care is rarely just another box to check on a PCS move. It determines whether a spouse can return to work, shapes household finances for months, and dictates the rhythm of daily life while a family is still finding its footing in an unfamiliar place. Solved late, or not at all, the ripple effects touch nearly every corner of family life.

Every PCS forces families to start over in some way, and for those with young children, that reset includes rebuilding something that should never have had to be built from scratch in the first place: access to safe, reliable, affordable care for the smallest members of a family navigating one of its biggest disruptions.

Behind every PCS is a family navigating its own unique challenges. Has your family experienced child care challenges during a move? Share your story below. Your perspective helps shine a light on the realities of military family life and may help other families facing similar situations.

Together We’re Stronger®

By: Olivia Brinsfield, Content Manager