https://www.fcd-us.org/to-abolish-poverty-we-need-a-fully-funded-21st-century-child-care-system/
The other day as I was scrolling, I came across an Instagram post of a man attempting to go about his day without using anything that was invented by women. He spit out his morning coffee, because it tasted terrible without the filter. He had trouble getting to work with the rain hitting his windshield without wipers. His meeting was cut off without the technology we use today for FaceTime.
It was a lighthearted way of acknowledging the many contributions women have made to our society and economy. But it got me thinking of the heavy reality that we are still so far behind in valuing the work women do. To demonstrate, we need look no further than the childcare industry.
Here we find women, particularly women of color, shut out of so many benefits of the formal economy, even as they shoulder much of the burden to keep it running.
How Women Can Gain $130 Billion in Income
While the Biden Administration has outlined new guidance for people using childcare subsidies that would limit the amount families pay for child care to 7% of their income, it’s typical for many right now to use 30% or more. This untenable burden has caused too many mothers to lose out on employment opportunities because it makes more financial sense for them to stay home. One report showed that if we had more accessible child care, it could boost women’s income collectively over their lifetimes by $130 billion.
At the same time, too many childcare providers are waking up at the crack of dawn to prepare the day’s curriculum, only to be left at night without enough pay to buy their own kid’s school clothes. The underfunding of our childcare system, made worse by the recent ending of the pandemic-era childcare stabilization funds, has left 70,000 early childhood programs at risk of closing and has made running and working at childcare businesses an unprofitable career choice.
Undervaluing childcare providers is rooted in the history of the profession, when enslaved Black women were forced to care for white children without pay. When Franklin D. Roosevelt stewarded passage of transformative New Deal policies in the 1930s, in a concession to Southern lawmakers who wanted to preserve Jim Crow and maintain an economic advantage for white men, he excluded domestic workers from Social Security, minimum-wage laws, and overtime pay.
Today, early childhood educators remain woefully underpaid even as the rising cost of child care makes it unaffordable almost everywhere in the United States. This combination has contributed to widespread poverty for women and children, particularly families of color.
Strength in Solidarity
The north star of Community Change is poverty abolition. We organize and mobilize people of color from low-income communities to take center stage in the fight for an economy where everyone can thrive. Through hands-on coaching, technical assistance, storytelling, bridge-building, and fundraising, we empower thousands of “Changemakers” not connected to any organization as well as support the campaigns of partner organizations across the country.
At Community Change, our work to transform the childcare system is just one piece of the puzzle. We create opportunities for solidarity among the many groups who care about leaving a better world for our kids, giving them an equal opportunity to thrive.
That includes Black communities who continue to fight to close the racial wealth gap and ensure that the Black child poverty rate is no longer double that of white children. That includes the immigrant families fighting for citizenship rights and access to benefits in the economy they help run. That includes those in the climate justice fight to ensure our planet is habitable for the next generation, the advocates for universal healthcare who know that being poor can actually make you sick, and anyone who has had to choose between a rent payment and child care so they could get to work.
Our economy is skewed in favor of the ultra-wealthy. But together, we’re stronger than corporate greed and can rewrite the rules. These communities coming together is what will make it possible to not only change our childcare industry, but build power for women and women of color who have been shut out of progress for too long.
Success Starts With Access to Quality Child Care
A transformed childcare system is a keystone of poverty abolition, not only for women and care workers but also for the next generation.
Quality child care — from parents, care workers, and preschools — has huge impacts on the future of our children.
Research shows that from the time of infancy, a child’s relationship with parents and care workers “dramatically influences brain development, social-emotional and cognitive skills, and future health and success in school life.” And children who have access to early childhood education have a better chance at mastering basic skills and avoiding repeating grades.
This period matters so much because the brain is the most flexible in the first five years of life. Unsurprisingly, kids who do better in those early school years have a higher rate of career success.
In other words, the success of an equitable future generation starts with an equitable childcare system.
Winning Real Transformative Change
Our childcare organizing started as a small campaign doing a landscape analysis to find out who was organizing on childcare, and now it’s grown to encompass close to twenty state-based organizations and a network of 50,000 parents and providers across the country winning real change.
- In 2022, our partner OLE in New Mexico won a constitutional amendment to create a permanent fund for childcare. This was done by organizing not only childcare workers but the larger community of immigrants, Indigenous people, and labor.
- In 2023, our partner ISAIAH in Minnesota won more than $1 billion in their budget for childcare and early learning initiatives. They leaned into multi-faith, multi-racial and immigrant community organizing and brought different parts of the community together on shared values to make their state a more family-friendly place to live.
- In both 2022 and 2023, our partners and base of Childcare Changemakers took action on a Day Without Child Care — with providers shutting their doors for the day, parents calling out of work, or organizers hosting town halls — to elevate the childcare crisis into the public, demand transformational investment in our childcare system, and flex their power. They shared stories not only about childcare, but about the economic connections to housing and food insecurity and corporate greed. They were able to bring thousands more people into the movement year over year.
For every single person in this movement, it’s personal. It’s personal for me as a father of two trying to navigate the labyrinth of the DC childcare system – which ranks number one in the country for both highest childcare costs and highest burden compared to income, especially for Black families in the District.
With so many people across the country sharing this same experience, it’s clear that without a fully funded, 21st-century childcare system, there will be no poverty abolition.
When my daughters grow up, I want to be able to tell them the story of how a movement led by thousands of women and women of color was heard, valued, and paved the way for an economy that works for all of us.
This is the seventh blog in the Foundation’s Social Justice for Young Children Conversation Series exploring what it means to pursue social justice for young children and their families.
About the Author
Dorian Warren is the co-president of Community Change/Action. A progressive scholar, organizer, and media personality, Dorian has worked to advance racial, economic, and social justice for over two decades.