The week of March 19th, 2020 I was running around frantic, making sure to send out thank you notes to the gifts arriving almost daily at my door for my upcoming baby delivery. I had mixed emotions as I was getting bigger, excited, and more tired each day. In February I had my baby shower and around 30 people showed up to celebrate. Little did I know that this would be the last celebration I would be having for a long time. As I was planning how to coordinate family visiting times for our newborn daughter, the world was being turned upside down. It started with a late-night call from a family member saying that they were worried about visiting the new baby with the threat of Covid-19 being mentioned on the news, then people from my church started mentioning it and finally our doctor quit having in-person appointments.
My April delivery ended up being chaotic and nothing close to what I had planned. I was not allowed to have visitors, get flowers, or get photos beside the ones I took. I spent all the time locked-down in my hospital room trying to recover from a C-section with my nervous husband and newborn baby. Like many people, I figured that this pandemic mess would be over by the start of the summer and that even though things had turned out not ideal, I would soon be able to share my little bundle of joy with the world.
Instead, as I write this in September the pandemic is still in full swing with a rising daily death toll around the world, violence erupting in the streets, the economy in turmoil, and all amid a presidential election year in the United States. As a new mother, I now join the ranks with other parents who have children that are too young to stay home by themselves and must find childcare and make money to take care of their families. Unfortunately, all the systems and services for the daycare that I had researched or had in place dried up or became so expensive it did not make financial sense.
Knowing that as time goes on I could find myself in a crisis if I am unable to find childcare during the times that I need to have in-person meetings. As a working mother, my concerns have started growing about the future of childcare in America.
As I began to research this topic I soon realized that my feelings are not unfounded as I join the chorus of families suffering this American social crisis. According to a recent Times Magazine special called The Childcare Crisis, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services considers childcare "affordable" if it costs no more than 7% of a family's income. It's a figure greeted with a dry laugh by most U.S. parents. Nearly two-thirds of them—and 95% of low-income parents—spend more than that, according to a 2018 report by the Institute for Child, Youth, and Family Policy at Brandeis University. And the problem has been growing worse for decades. More than 60% of families surveyed by Care.com in 2019 reported that their childcare costs had increased in the past year.
To get to the heart of the problem and to find out how people can start pushing back, I reached out to Statewide Organizer, Mary Ignatius of Parent Voices.
Ms. Ignatius has been working for Parent Voices a parent-led grassroots organization fighting to make quality childcare accessible and affordable for all families for years. The organization has 15 chapters across California, working to advocate for families, childcare, and parents.
How Did We Get Here?
Since no social crisis just happens, I asked Ms. Ignatius to give me her view on how this problem started.
“When the schools closed it suddenly became abundantly clear even for K-12 which is like childcare in many senses. For the longest time, childcare has been viewed as this individual parent problem to figure out on your own. We have a K-12 system where society says, "We're going to figure that out for you." But when it comes to childcare, you are on your own. You had a baby, that is on you. If you cannot afford it, you should not have had a baby. A lot of weird thinking that we do not apply to children when they turn five. “
Also, Ignatius says that in America there is that mindset that is still stuck in the 1950s, "It is that whole sense of June Cleaver is home and Ward is out working. It is the thought that during those early years, you have someone who stays at home and takes care of the baby. I guess that 1950's sort of reality, but it is shocking because we know that is just not the case. The fact is women are working outside of the home and want to work outside of the home. It's fascinating to me how much we're still very entrenched in these old ideas of stereotypes about family structure and families in general.”
In fact according to the Status of Women in the States and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics notes, As of 2014, nearly six in ten women aged 16 and older (57.0 percent) work outside the home compared with 33.9 percent in 1950 and 43.3 percent in 1970.
The shift to the American two-income household has been taking place since the late 1970s to early 1980s driven by economic necessity. The Population Reference Bureau notes that only 7% of U.S. households have a traditional family where the father works outside the home and the mother stays home taking care of the children. Currently, 40% of women are now the family breadwinners in America. This shift has happened due to inflation and economic instability, more women pursuing advanced degrees and wanting careers outside the home, and the breakdown of the nuclear family unit.
Even with all the changes in the workplace and economy, women are still seen as the primary caretakers in families who are expected to carry the burden of childcare. In the past, working women would have looked to their extended family members for assistance but, nowadays grandparents are likely to be unavailable due to having to work to provide for themselves, hence making outside childcare essential.
Unlike other countries, the United States has not embraced Universal Childcare. Instead, if qualifications are met, there are programs in place for low-income families to receive subsidized childcare assistance. Even if a family receives the assistance it does not guarantee that a center will have an opening to take their child. The problem is one of both economics and availability.
Why Does It Cost So Much?
The average cost of childcare in the United States is about $1,230 per month (American Progress) and the average family income in America is around $50,000 per year making childcare unaffordable for the average family. The reason for the expense comes down to individual child needs, supervision ratios, and business operations.
Ignatius referring to my mention that cost could be less, “Well, I don’t think you want 25 babies to one childcare provider to bring the cost down. That is the main reason why it costs so much. 80% of the cost to run a program goes to staffing. There are ratios in place to serve and protect both the child and the infant as well as the caregiver. Unless people want to increase those ratios and then increase the risk of injury or worse, costs are going to be high. To me, this cannot just be on the back of the mothers and fathers, but mostly mothers, single mothers, who need affordable childcare. We cannot ask them to pay any more than they are already paying. Even if you have subsidized childcare, even if you have assistance from the state, there are ways that the childcare centers can charge fees, and copayments, and things like that where even subsidized child care is unaffordable.”
The System is Breaking and Broke
According to the Economic Policy Institute, childcare is one of the biggest expenses families face, and adding the pandemic to the system that was already under tremendous strain is breaking childcare providers and centers.
Ignatius adds personal frontline insight, “The majority of childcare providers that have stayed opened, especially to continue to serve essential workers, are family childcare providers. They have always been on razor-thin margins, and now they are taking on additional increased cost in sanitizing, and cleaning supplies, and PPE equipment. Their ratios have been lowered, so they cannot serve as many people. They have had to lay off staff. They did not get all those PPE loans.
Some have also had to close because they have their health restrictions, immune-compromised issues or someone in their family does. Then, you have the schools in California, which have all determined they are going to do distanced learning. So, a lot of the family childcare providers have now taken on school-age children who would have otherwise been at school, and now they're supporting them with distance learning.”
Supporting Ignatius’ insight the latest DataUSA reports the average salary for a childcare worker is $16,390-$16,274 per year which is only $4,000 above the poverty line in the United States. In addition, the career field has a terribly slow growth rate of 1.95% but, the amount of families that need care continues to increase.
”These providers are doing it with extraordinarily little. They are not getting hazard pay, not getting the PPE equipment and they can't afford to hire additional support, so it's a critical situation. They have already struggled enough with low wages and no health insurance, no paid sick leave, no retirement, no 401(k). And now here they are stepping forward, stepping up where schools have turned their backs, where the world has turned their backs on them. And yet here they are still doing the work that nobody else is willing to do. There should be a family childcare day of appreciation. Childcare providers need a bailout.”
A bailout that Ignatius says will be only a temporary fix that has been created called The Child Care is Essential Act. The bill will provide over $60 billion in direct funding to the childcare industry and will use the same general funding mechanism as the CARES Act, which means state-by-state allocation.
“The childcare system has been tattered and glued together repeatedly for decades. We are still picking up the pieces from the last recession where it was terrible. We lost so many resources. It was the willingness of women, predominately, to keep programs open, to figure it out, to get loans. It is incredible how they kept it going for so long. But everything hits a breaking point. Why would we want to drive people to the edge when their job and role is to take care of children? I think it says something about us as a society than it does about them. What they do is nothing short of heroic every single day and for the last several decades because the crisis has been here before the pandemic.”
The Value of Children
The 2020 pandemic has opened Americans' eyes to look at what they value. It has always been touted that Americans value family but, this crisis has brought into plain sight for all the world to question if it is true.
Ignatius says, “We profess to have family values; however, we still suffer from the American rugged individualism believing if you work hard, you can make it. So that means you are on your own. And if you make it, good for you. The truth is you probably made it because of the help of thousands of people that allowed you to make it. We need to support families with a spectrum of care because it is infants, toddlers, and school-age kids. Then your parents and the elderly people in your life. We cannot only be these walking robots whose identity is “We Work”. We must be able to see ourselves as whole human beings who both work and care about people we love in our lives.”
As noted in Cultural Atlas a foreign collaborative project that aims to educate people about cultural differences and attitudes, Individualism influences many American family dynamics. There is a pervading cultural idea that you are what you make of yourself and who you choose to be. Therefore, people are expected to be self-reliant and personally responsible for their choices. For example, it is relatively common for American parents to emphasize a child’s independence and support their pursuit of personal aspirations, even if they differ from the family’s preconceived expectations. Similarly, American school systems often teach children to think of themselves as ‘special’ or ‘unique’ as they grow up.
The cultural emphasis on independence also sees many elderly Americans choose to live alone, preferring to be self-reliant in their old age rather than ‘burdening’ the younger generations of their family by living with them. The average adult over 60 only lives with one other person (usually a spouse).
This cultural mindset that Americans have shaped the results that are now seen in the childcare system and healthcare systems.
“My husband is from Italy. His entire family is in Italy. When my friend in Italy was pregnant with her first and I was pregnant with my first, it was like night and day the way we were treated and what I had access to and what she had access to. There are decisions that government and society make in Italy that says, "We are going to tax ourselves at a higher rate. That means in exchange we're going to get all of these services." She was made to leave her job at six months pregnant. She left work and was paid her full salary and then had around six months afterward, and then she put her child in a childcare program. They were paying €100 to €200 a month. Yeah, and that was it. There was no question about it. There was no guilt about you are going back to work. It was a system by which we are going to honor you for having a child and give you the time and freedom and not let you stress. I mean, women work up until the minute they deliver here in this country because they cannot afford to take time off or take a partial wage replacement, depending on what state you live in. In California, we are "lucky" that we have paid family leave and it is still not 100% of your wage replacement. So again, choices must be made about whether or not you can even sacrifice one penny of your paycheck.”
Solutions
Mary Ignatius Solution Suggestions
Make the Childcare Profession Attractive
1. Every solution takes money. We can call it what it is, but they all cost. You need to make childcare an attractive profession. If you're going to go to school to become an early educator, and you get a degree, and then you go work in a center or family child home and you're making minimum wage or less; it’s not going to work. Give Childcare workers the wages and respect they deserve. By doing that, you build the supply. Because then you are either going to have more people creating businesses out of their home or putting money into building facilities.
Incorporate Childcare into All Parts of Life and Work
2. If you are building a shelter, a new park, or a library, how do you think about as it as part of community infrastructure, how do you also include childcare? If you are building a business, a corporation, a headquarters, how do you build in childcare as part of a package and benefits for your employees so that you're attracting, especially more women to the workforce?
Reimagine Childcare
3. We cannot have a one-size-fits-all childcare system. We cannot build a bunch of buildings and just store a bunch of kids in them. We have to have a very comprehensive approach that is building both child care centers that are housed in communities as well as family child care homes, make it be a lucrative job for family members to be able to stay home with your child. Because it is not a one-size-fits-all approach, children with special needs have unique needs and need more individual attention. Children who are on the spectrum or children who do not do well in large groups need smaller settings. Parents with children where English is a second language could want to choose someone who reflects their community and traditions that they grew up with.
Government Funding and Recovery
4. We are looking to Congress and right now the Senate to include a minimum of $50 billion to ensure that the system can survive a new COVID recovery package. Because, at the state level, we are counting on them. If we do not get those dollars by October, there are going to be severe cuts to our childcare program. That is going to do us in for good.
Parent Voices is working with the legislature and the administration to make sure providers who are providing care are getting the funding they need, freezing any kind of parent fees because every penny you can hold onto really counts right now. So, trying to not take additional hundreds of dollars out of a parent's pocket right now.
As I mentioned, these family childcare providers are taking the school-age children into full-time care, and that needs to be paid for. We do not have secured funding for that. If the schools continue to stay closed, will the schools pay for these children to be in childcare? Because their parents cannot leave them at home. Their parents need to work.
Look Out for Everyone
5. The essential workers who are still out there, the grocery workers, the agricultural workers, the CNAs, and people who are working in the health care field that aren't the nurses and the doctors, but all of the support staff, they also still need access to affordable child care. The money that went to provide affordable childcare to essential workers ran out. So, what can we do to keep expanding that program? A lot of the focus is on Congress and passing something as soon as possible.
The Silver Lining
I feel the silver lining is that we have never had this many people see and recognize and validate the world's childcare in society. I think the pandemic has revealed what we have always known, is that childcare is always essential. And now that more people see it and that it's not a personal problem an issue to figure out, we do hope that the silver lining in all of this is that we come together as a nation to say, "We need to have a robust, comprehensive, funded system because it's necessary to a functioning society."
About Parent Voices
Parent Voices is a parent-led, parent-run grassroots organization fighting to make quality childcare accessible and affordable for all families. We have 15 chapters across California, all building momentum with the belief that it is the parents who must ignite and fuel the process of change. To strengthen our advocacy, we, as parents, conduct trainings on strategic organizing, leadership development, advocacy skills, and relevant issues; send out policy updates and calls to action; build relationships with local, state, and federal elected officials as well as coalition partners; convene local parents to build a support network as well as to take collective action; and finally, we constantly share resources, ideas, and challenges to weave together strong voices both locally as well as statewide to advance towards more quality, affordable and accessible child care system!
Take a Stand and Donate to Parent Voices
Make a difference by contacting the senate and call on them to pass the HEROES 2.0 Act which will provide the much-needed relief funds.
Give a donation to Parent Voices to take a stand for childcare.
Finally, make sure to Vote in November by mail or in person.
About the Author
Annmarie Hylton-Schaub, Head Marketing Strategist and Content Developer at Project Good Work a boutique marketing group focused on helping individuals who want to launch social impact projects, charities, and change-making initiatives. The marketing group works to develop branding, marketing strategy, and content to connect clients with the people who believe what they believe so that their project and business can thrive.
If you have a passion for an unserved community, a social justice problem, or simply want to change minds contact Project Good Work at ProjectGood.Work to start your project of change today.