Last week we told you about the effects the new minimum wage law is having on restaurant prices and your wallet. Dining out is not a necessity, though, so consumers have a choice. Albeit not one that restaurants might like.

Access to affordable child care, however, is a necessity that working families and single moms rely on in order to buy such luxuries as housing, food, and heat in the wintertime.

Now we learn that child care workers are getting a much-deserved raise because of the minimum wage law. But guess what? Child care centers will be passing that expense on to parents, who can barely afford what they’re already paying.

Reports Chalkbeat:

“I don’t know how much more parents can pay,” said Diane Price, who heads a nonprofit network of seven centers in Colorado Springs.

In some parts of the state, early childhood advocates also worry that the raises mandated by the minimum wage hike will cause some workers to lose public benefits by pushing their income just above the eligibility threshold — making it harder, not easier to make ends meet.

Coloradans were already paying between $6,000 and $17,000 back in 2014 for a year of childcare — more than some people’s mortgages.

Now we’re being told we have to pay more, and that the people we’re paying are also dependent on public benefits, also known as our tax dollars. So essentially, we’ve been paying them twice.

Keep this in mind the next time you hear childcare advocates insisting that daycare workers be paid on the same scale as public school teachers.