Some have been waiting for as long as 15 months to get subsidies for child care to which they are entitled.

The foundering economy keeps adding children to the list. And the subsidies get harder to come by.

Since 2002, there has been a 400 percent increase in the number of children waiting on the list in the five-county area, according to figures from Public Citizens for Children and Youth, a Philadelphia nonprofit advocacy group.

The wait has forced parents into sometimes terrifying choices: Do I risk financial catastrophe by giving up work to watch my kids? Do I go to work, but hand over a huge chunk of take-home pay to day care? Or do I simply place my child in a potentially unsafe day-care arrangement and hope?

"Oh, God, it's so hard to be on the list," said Kadi Schenk of Newtown Square. The single mother of two girls, ages 2 and 4, has been on the list since September 2007. "It's not a fair thing."

As of last fall (the latest data available), 5,401 Pennsylvania children in Philadelphia and its four suburban counties, from birth through 12, were waiting to receive subsidized care, PCCY data show. Statewide, the number is around 8,400. In New Jersey, 3,162 children are on the child-care subsidy waiting list.

Throughout Philadelphia and its suburbs, the list has been rapidly expanding.

PCCY figures show that in Philadelphia, the subsidy waiting list tripled, from 1,078 children in October 2002, to 3,243 children last October.

In Delaware County, the list grew from 170 children to 1,001 children over the five-year period.

"The list has grown and grown, and I'm tired of seeing moms on the list, crying," said Alice Peterson, executive administrator of Today's Child Learning Center, a day-care facility in Sharon Hill, Delaware County.

"The government tells people to do well, to get jobs," Peterson said. "Then we knock them down. The list is a slap in the face."

For Schenk, 25, things are growing ever tougher. She makes $31,000 a year working in an insurance office, and spends $1,800 a month - nearly $22,000 annually - on day care for her two youngsters.

The average family of four with an infant and a toddler in day care will pay around $19,500 a year in the five-county area, according to PCCY.

Families of four are eligible for subsidies if they make up to $41,300 annually - twice the federal poverty level.

"Child care is like a mortgage payment," Schenk said. "It's stopped me from living on my own and forced me to move in with my parents."

Neither grandparent can care for the girls: Schenk's father works, and her mother is undergoing cancer treatments.

It just has to be this way for now, Schenk said. "Quality child care is very important, so I just have to explain to my children that it doesn't mean I don't love them when I can't afford extravagant birthday parties, like their friends'."

If and when the subsidy comes through, Schenk said, she'd only have to pay $45 a week for both children. (Depending on income, some may pay just $5 a week.)

The waiting keeps her up nights. "You just don't know when you'll be called, and taken off the list," she said.