Pick one: your child, your health or your job.

It’s a cruel and impossible choice. Parental love compels us to protect our children, even at our own expense. But how do we provide for our children without an income? Who takes care of our children if we get seriously ill or die?

This is the wretched calculus some families are grappling with during this pandemic. Parents with young children who must return to work as states reopen are dealing with difficult questions: Is it safe to send my child to day care, where children will inevitably be in close contact with one another? Should I risk exposing an elderly parent to the potentially fatal coronavirus by relying on them for child care? Can I trust an older child to watch younger siblings all day? Should I reach out to high-schoolers and college students for babysitting, even if they may not be following social distancing protocols?

And the most desperate situation: What should I do if there isn’t any child care available that I can afford?

About 45% of licensed day care providers closed their doors during the state stay-at-home orders in Missouri, according to Child Care Aware of Missouri. It’s unknown how many of those providers will reopen as workers are asked to return to their jobs.

“The only way the economy is going to recover is if there is enough child care for children to be left in safe places,” said Robin Phillips, CEO of Child Care Aware of Missouri. “If this child care situation does not improve, we’re going to be in a world of hurt.”

Seven weeks into this crisis, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson addressed the issue last week. Funds from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act will be used to expand the number of families who qualify for child care subsidies, offer child care support for low-income parents looking for work and disburse grant money to centers that remained open during the shelter-in-place orders. However, there are still significant gaps in the plan: The fate of centers that had to close during this time still needs to be addressed. They will need financial support to reopen.

And while families are struggling with questions about their basic survival, the Republicans in Missouri’s state legislature spent their time last week debating whether to prohibit state and local law enforcement from enforcing federal gun laws. Talk about a complete disconnect from reality.

Perhaps it’s a big ask for those dedicated to the needs of their donors, but, legislators: Consider focusing on the welfare of the children in your state.

Social services departments need to communicate directly and clearly with child care providers who need guidance about how to reopen with new health and safety practices. Incorporating the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as state and local rules, means adding to the costs for child care programs. Providers will need protective equipment for staff, additional cleaning and sanitation supplies and increased staffing to accommodate the smaller class sizes.

Day care centers already operate on thin margins, employ low-paid workers and rely heavily on tuition, which will take a hit as parents who have lost jobs keep their children at home. These added expenses will go beyond June, when the additional financial support for care programs is scheduled to expire.

Craig Stevenson, director of policy and advocacy with Kids Win Missouri, a child well-being organization, said there is still much more to do if we want our families to get back to work. In the coming months, parents who were counting on summer camps or summer school may no longer have those options as many camps cancel or move online.

“There’s not a lot of clear answers, and that’s a big problem for parents,” he said.

Given that an available workforce is critical to restarting our devastated economy, that’s a big problem for everyone.

When she was about to give birth, Melissa Andrzejewski was reminded of death.

She found out she was pregnant last summer, shortly before her father learned his pancreatic cancer had spread, and that he only had a few months to live.

He died in October. Andrzejewski told her family and friends she would need them more than ever during her labor and delivery.

“I can get through this as long as all of you are with me in the hospital,” she said. That’s what her family does: There were 15 people in the waiting room a year and a half ago when her first baby, Holly, was born. Her sister ordered pizza for everyone while they waited.

Back then, her father was in the hospital with complications of his chemotherapy. He met his granddaughter after he was released, when Holly was 2 weeks old.

Andrzejewski, 28, is an operating room nurse in Troy, Missouri. She kept working at the hospital through her second pregnancy. In mid-March, when she was 37 weeks, a nurse friend from the hospital where she was scheduled to deliver texted her a screenshot of the revised visitation policy due to the coronavirus pandemic.

No visitors would be allowed when she gave birth.

The fact that the waiting room would be empty hit her hard. Andrzejewski broke down, then called her husband and her mom. At her next doctor’s appointment, she asked if it was possible that her husband might even be restricted from attending the birth; her doctor told her it was a very real possibility.

She had already been fearful about being exposed to COVID-19 at her job and possibly being separated from her baby, so Andrzejewski stopped working. She looked into a birthing center, which assured her that her husband could still be present for the birth. But it was too close to her due date for her to feel comfortable about making such a drastic change, and her obstetrician was not keen on the idea.

When she went into labor, she and her husband entered through the ER, wearing face masks, and had their temperatures taken. Andrzejewski’s mother had self-quarantined for two weeks so she could watch Holly.

Hayden was born on April 1, and she met her big sister and grandma through FaceTime.

“(Holly) called herself ‘sissy,’” Andrzejewski said. It made her emotional to think that her father would never get to know Hayden. But the moment Hayden was born, Andrzejewski said she experienced an overwhelming feeling that her dad had met Hayden before and was there with her.

“I had an image in my head that he had kissed her and handed her over to me,” she said.

They came home 24 hours after the birth, and waited a month before any relatives met Hayden. Andrzejewski has barely left the house, except to go to the backyard with the babies.

“I don’t have plans on taking either one of the girls out for months,” she said, even though her county has reopened. She’s nervous about the expected second wave of infections, and isn’t sure when she might return to work.

She’s taken some comfort in how much Hayden resembles her father, Steve.

“My dad was Italian, and Hayden looks exactly like him,” she said. She said he would have been screaming it from the mountaintops that he has a grandchild that looks like him.

Recently, she did venture out for an outing she felt compelled to do: She took her daughters to visit her father’s gravesite.

“Here are your two grandbabies,” she said. “I wish you were here to see how much she looks like you.”

Once in a while, her mom will call the baby “Stevie.”

It’s a reminder that a little piece of her father is still with her.

In the before times, decision day -- typically May 1 -- was when high school seniors committed to their colleges and paid deposits. Now, the decision at hand is far bigger: Should students even start, or return to, college in the fall?

Institutions realize that families are grappling with difficult decisions pitted with unknowns because of the coronavirus pandemic, such as whether fall semesters will be delayed, conducted entirely online or held in person, with restrictions. Several colleges have delayed their decision deadline to June 1. But it will take more than pushing back deadlines to make sure students don’t permanently fall off the higher education track.

Four-year colleges may face a loss of up to 20% in fall enrollment, according to an analysis by SimpsonScarborough, a higher education research and marketing company. The Melching family in Ballwin, Missouri, will be part of that exodus. Lisa Melching said her son, Jack, was accepted to Southeast Missouri State University, but then her husband, a pilot and flight instructor, lost his job of 20 years on April 1. Given the family’s dramatically changed financial situation, her son decided to forgo studying wildlife biology at SEMO, and will attend community college in the fall.

It’s not just first-year students rethinking things, either. Madison Savedra, a junior at Loyola University Chicago from Kansas City, Missouri, said that if her university opts for online learning in the fall, she might take a semester off or drop to part-time status to save money.

“I don’t know if taking a semester off would hurt my chances of getting a job or going to grad school,” Savedra said.

While the death toll from the pandemic for young adults has been low compared to older demographics, those in their late teens and early 20s are facing consequences that could alter the trajectory of their lives. Meanwhile, college students have been excluded from government interventions meant to blunt the blow of the pandemic: They are not eligible for food relief like schoolchildren getting free meals, nor did they receive a stimulus check.

Ronne Patrick Turner, vice provost for admissions and financial aid at Washington University, said it’s critical for students to communicate with their universities’ financial aid offices as soon as possible. Students can provide additional documentation about changes that might make them eligible for more funding, she said. She cautions students who are considering taking a deferral or gap year to check with their schools to find out the specific conditions for holding a spot. At Wash U., a deferral requires university approval, and the student may not enroll in a degree-seeking program elsewhere during that time, she said.

Community colleges, which offer rolling admissions, are also trying to plan for the fall. Dr. Andrew Langrehr, vice chancellor for academic affairs at St. Louis Community College, said while they are building a schedule around lower enrollment expectations, they are creating extra capacity behind the scenes in case of a late-breaking influx of students. Currently, their enrollment for the fall is down about 18% compared to this point last year.

“I wouldn’t advise my students to pay a lot more for an experience where you’re not going to be setting a foot on campus,” he said. Several parents and students echoed that sentiment: If college is online-only, students will miss out on science labs, arts rehearsals and performances, and on-campus athletic experiences.

Parents are weighing the costs of paying full freight for a lesser experience. Sarah Albus, in Kensington, Maryland, has two college-aged daughters headed to universities in different states, both with different backup plans. Albus is reluctant to pay full tuition for online classes at Tulane, where one of her daughters is a sophomore. But her daughter intends to apply to medical school, and missing one semester of a yearlong science class might complicate the requirements for her degree.

“It’s so anxiety-provoking,” Albus said. “You can’t move forward on anything because you’re waiting for someone else to make a decision, and they’re just waiting to see what happens.”

Meanwhile, she expects tuition bills to arrive mid-July.

It’s impossible to measure the toll this disruption -- in social interactions, education, work experiences and professional aspirations -- will have on these young adults’ futures.

Mara Morell, a senior in Ballwin, Missouri, had planned to attend college in Florida, but says she will likely switch to community college if the fall semester is online.

She talked about the milestones her class has missed due to the pandemic -- graduations, proms, farewells. She said that through those losses, they kept saying, “‘At least we’ll have college’ -- but now we don’t know that for sure.”