Far too many family childcare educators eke out a living on razor-thin margins or are forced to close. That’s bad for them and for us, too.
Childcare had its moment on the closing night of the Democratic National Convention. In her speech, Vice President Harris referred to Mrs. Shelton, the “second mother” who ran the childcare downstairs in her apartment building and helped care for Harris and her sister while their mother worked long hours. There are Mrs. Sheltons across the country. Small business owners like her provide nurturing care for the children of hundreds of thousands of parents. They often become “family by love.” And they need our help.
Since entering the presidential race, Harris has made childcare a tenet of her campaign. Good. Childcare is critical for working parents. And it’s the critical economic infrastructure issue that everybody should be talking about more.
Childcare costs are skyrocketing, which Harris has promised to address in part by expanding the child tax credit. It won’t be easy. In 2023, the national average price of childcare reached $12,000—more than the cost of an annual mortgage payment in nearly every state.
At the same time, childcare workers—the invisible backbone of America’s economy—are both critical but also underpaid and undervalued. They are critical because they teach and care for the next generation. Children’s brains are literally built during the earliest years. Yet childcare workers are still eight times more likely to be receiving poverty-level wages than their teachers in K-12. And most are Black and brown women whose labor has historically been exploited.
We can do better. With a real federal commitment, we can create a publicly-funded system that lets families afford care and childcare workers earn decent wages. The American Rescue Plan Act took a good step in the right direction. Its childcare funding made it possible for parents to go back to work after the COVID shutdowns. But Congress let that funding expire.
It also provided critical support for childcare educators like Shanette Linton, a family childcare educator in the Bronx. Shanette cut her own earnings to cover the costs of running her childcare business, until federal funding during the pandemic let her to pay her assistant’s wages, and care for more infants. To Shanette, the federal money was a “great Band-aid,” but now she’s back to struggling to keep her business afloat. Shanette is not alone.
Over the past 25 years, All Our Kin – a national organization that supports and trains family childcare educators – has connected with more than a thousand family childcare educators across New York and Connecticut. Like Mrs. Shelton, these educators run small child care programs in their homes and thereby serve families and communities. They are small-business owners and entrepreneurs who help grow our economy.
As Maria Amado, a family childcare educator in Connecticut, puts it, “We do thousands of jobs—we are business owners, we are psychologists, we are therapists. We do jobs that are meant for all kinds of people but as one person.”
For those who give so much to their communities and our economy, we owe it to them and ourselves to help them and their businesses thrive.
Far too many family childcare educators eke out a living on razor-thin margins or are forced to close. That’s bad for them and for us, too. Lack of access to childcare has forced mothers out of the workforce, with an estimated 617,000 fewer women working now than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Leaving their jobs will potentially cost them up to $600,000 over their lifetime. Unless we rethink how we invest in childcare, our economy will pay the price.
Harris’s plan is a good first step but it is not enough. For every politician running for any office, we must ask them how they will help our nation’s educators, families and youngest learners. Childcare is the critical infrastructure for a strong workforce and a strong economy. That’s why investing in childcare should matter to all of us—whether we have children or not.
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