As money tightens, the economy is squeezing working parents and day-care directors alike inside a vicious financial circle.
With fewer families able to pay for day care, the centers are forced to reduce services or raise prices to make up the difference.
Which obliges even more parents to pull their children out of day care.
"We are losing children because people can't afford child care," said Pearl Bailey, executive director of the Pied Piper Playhouse in Jackson, one of the state's 1,740 licensed day cares.
"For some parents, it's cheaper to quit their job and keep their children at home."
Apparently, the impact is nationwide.
In June, well before the stock-market plunge, the research firm IBISWorld Inc. forecast that day-care revenues would rise by just 1 percent in 2008; that's a little more than a third as much as in each of the two previous years.
"My costs have gone up, and I've lost 15 or 20 parents the last month," said Kalita Jones, director of Evans Infant Care in Yazoo City. "But I don't know what else I can do to cut expenses."
At Pied Piper, too, costs have climbed, even as enrollment has fallen, Bailey said.
"We had about 105 to 110 children for the last school year. Now we have about 84.
"We had to raise our tuition; for infants, it went from $84 to $98 a week. That's the first time we've raised it in 10 or 12 years.
"We've had to reduce our after-school pickup service, from nine schools to only three.
"Once we eliminated those schools, the parents went on to find other day cares."
The hardest-hit parents, of course, work at low-wage jobs.
"We're in a low-income area, so we're really affected," said Carolyn Mims, director of the Discovery Center in Canton, where about 28 children have left over the past six weeks.
But even parents with good-paying jobs are struggling to pay for day care, Mims said.
"Some of our parents work at Nissan, which has cut back its overtime," Mims said. "Some counted on overtime to be able to afford all their bills."
Yearly day-care costs average between $3,380 to $10,787 for only one preschooler, according to the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies.
It would have cost Leroya Smith of Byram at least $4,400.
"The day-care centers in Byram wanted $85 to $150 a week," Smith said.
"I couldn't afford that, even when I had a job," said Smith, who hasn't been able to find work since being laid off by an auto-body stamping company in June.
"Instead I paid a babysitter to keep my 4-year-old when I was working," said Smith, whose husband also is employed.
"I'm to the point where I believe I'll have to work two jobs to afford child care."
Many families turn to federal assistance to help them pay for day care or after-school care. But for some, that aid has dried up or diminished.
Among them is Yvette Melvin, 29, of Jackson, a single parent who makes $10 an hour selling insurance.
With federal assistance, she was paying $70 a month for after-school care for her two children.
Starting in October, she had to pay $70 - per week.
"I could pay only half my light bill to be able to afford to pay for after-school," she said.
Melvin has relied on child-care certificates; these vouchers can be used at any day-care center, offering at least partial payment for child-care costs through the Department of Human Services' Child Care Development Block Grant assistance program. The funds come from the federal government.
As of October, the start of the new federal fiscal year, DHS lacked the funds needed to serve some families, such as Melvin's.
Depending on income and other factors, qualifying families are assigned a priority, said Rick Berry, DHS deputy administrator. "For those with higher priority status, the needs have increased," Berry said.
"But funding has remained stable. I hate it that we can't serve them, but this year there hasn't been money left over for those with lower priority."
Naturally, many day-care centers feel that pain, too.
"About 90 percent of our children are on some kind of day-care assistance," said Bailey at Pied Piper. "That's why we've lost so many."
At Carrie's Learning Day Care Center in Jackson, director Eddie Shelton has lost 10 children because the parents lost their vouchers.
"People call all the time asking about child care, then find out they can't afford it," he said.
In the cash-strapped Delta, many teenage parents drop their children off at Johnnie's' Day Care Learning Center in Belzoni, which is open 24/7.
"Some of these parents are in school and have lost their child-care certificates, or have to pay more for child care; they're really feeling it," said Johnnie Mae Rucker, the center's director.
"And a lot of people here are just losing their jobs. It's really crunching us," Rucker said.
"Lately, the economy has blown our business projections out of the water. At this point, we're just looking to survive."
As for parents, some are surviving rising costs by enrolling their children in Head Start, the national school-readiness program that's free for low-income families.
"I can't say that we have had an increase in enrollment; we're funded to serve a certain number of children," said Clifton Whitley III, head of Hinds County Human Resource Agency's Head Start and early childhood education, which serves more than 2,000 pre-schoolers.
"But we did reach full enrollment much earlier," he said. "Some years, it wasn't until November or December. This year, it was before the first day of school."
But many Head Start parents also need after-school care.
"Many of our families can't afford that," said Marvin Hogan, executive director of Friends of Children of Mississippi, which works with more than 30 Head Start centers.
"Ninety percent of our families are two-income and still are having difficulty making ends meet."
Middle-class families, too, feel the day-care crunch.
Allison and Todd Tew of Pearl work full time, but they're balking now at paying $6,000 a year to put their daughter Haley, 4, in a church-run day care.
"We've been very pleased with it," Allison Tew said, "but when Haley starts school next year, we've toyed with the idea of my mother picking her up after school to save money."
As for Melvin, the single parent with two sons, she faces an even more difficult decision.
"I can't continue to pay for both my boys; it's been such a toll on me the last two months after losing my voucher," she said.