Two leading experts on care weigh in on the kinds of policies that families—especially working mothers—need to succeed, and how they’re playing out in the ongoing election.
Taking care of our family members is one of those critical, universal needs that most everyone experiences—whether it’s childcare, or caring for sick or elderly loved ones. Yet it is also one of those areas in our country where support systems and policies have been sorely lacking. The U.S. is one of only six countries that doesn’t have a paid leave program, and Americans are struggling to afford the care they need for their children and aging parents.
The lack of policies around care disproportionately affects women, often hampering their ability to advance in their careers or, in many cases, deterring them from even pursuing careers or leadership positions at all. It’s no wonder we don’t have more women leaders—they don’t have the resources or support they need.
In response to voters’ needs and demands, the issue of care has been receiving outsized attention during this year’s election season.
Reshma Saujani, a leading activist and founder of Moms First, “a national movement to center women in our economic recovery and champion public and private sector policies that support all moms,” went viral when she asked this question of Trump at an Economic Club of New York event: “If you win in November, can you commit to legislation making childcare affordable? And, if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”
“He botched the answer,” said Saujani, “but in the days following, all the news cycle talked about was childcare. The issue finally was getting the attention that it deserves. On the morning shows, in every outlet, everybody was debating about how to fix the childcare crisis. It was a huge moment for moms across the country—their voices and concerns were finally being heard.”
Vice President Kamala Harris has also been asked about the issue and has said, “My plan is that no family, no working family, should pay more than 7 percent of their household income in childcare,” and announced a plan to expand Medicare to cover the cost of long-term care at home. Both candidates and their running mates have talked about increasing the child tax credit.
The cost of childcare is rising at nearly twice the rate of inflation. Parents, especially moms, are desperate for solutions from our elected officials.
Reshma Saujani
To explore this topic further, I spoke with two leading experts in this space, Saujani and Ai-jen Poo, co-founder of Care in Action, a national organization of care workers, family caregivers, disabled people and aging adults “working to transform the way we care in this country,” who has spent the past few months going around the country on a bus tour with a coalition called Care Can’t Wait.
“Having access to home care for disabled people, or older adults or to have paid family leave so that we can take time away to be with a newborn or to heal or whatever it may be,” said Poo, “these are actually fundamental economic issues that have never been treated as such, especially in the election context.”
I spoke with Saujani and Poo about the importance of care, including how the issue is connected to the larger economic situation in the U.S., the implications of this issue finally receiving long overdue attention in this election, and what solutions they propose.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Marianne Schnall: The economy is one of the biggest issues in this election. How do you see issues around care as connected to the larger economic situation in this country?
Reshma Saujani: Childcare is the issue for moms this election. And it’s no surprise why. Childcare is more expensive than rent in all 50 states. Forty percent of parents in the U.S. go into debt because of the obscene cost of childcare. And the cost of childcare is rising at nearly twice the rate of inflation. Parents, especially moms, are desperate for solutions from our elected officials.
Women can’t work without childcare. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, 50 percent of prime age women who are not in the workforce are not working because of caregiving challenges. And 59 percent of parents with young kids have had to cut back on work hours or even leave their jobs because they couldn’t find reliable, affordable childcare. At the same time, employers are losing $23B a year because of childcare-related complications, causing a $122B hit to our economy.
And the U.S. Census just found that, for the first time in two decades, the gender wage gap just got wider, with women now earning just 83 cents to a man’s dollar. This is cause for alarm. But the solution is also alarmingly simple: If the lack of affordable and accessible childcare is what’s holding women back from reaching their economic potential, then we should make childcare affordable and accessible.
Ai-jen Poo: What we have is a demographic reality where 10,000 babies are born every day, and 10,000 of us are turning 65, the boomer generation. And then we’re also living longer, so we have extended our lifespan by almost a generation, but we haven’t adapted any of our systems or our policies or programs to support quality of life for this longer lifespan. And we never really adequately invested in our ability to take care of newborns and young children or older adults as a nation.
We’re far behind other G7 countries and the kind of investments needed in childcare, paid leave, aging. So what we have is this reality where we have so many sectors of the economy that are growing, but we have actual workforce shortages because people don’t have access to care.
We have not invested in a strong childcare or direct care workforce. The wages for these workers are below $13 an hour. On average, the median income for home care workers in the U.S. is $22,000 per year. It’s impossible to survive on these jobs. You can make more working in the fast food sector in many states than you can working in care. So we’re losing what little care workforce we have, which means that people can’t get access.
There are huge parts of the country that are called “childcare deserts,” “home care deserts.” There are 700,000 people with disabilities and older adults who are on a waiting list who are eligible for Medicaid-based home care, but can’t get access because either their states haven’t invested in building the system or there are no workers to provide those services.
So this is an economic issue because it means that family caregivers have to leave the workforce in order to care for loved ones. Parents have to not enter the workforce or leave the workforce. You have an insecurity at the level of the workforce, and particularly in growth sectors. That is a huge economic concern—especially when we’re thinking about how to address inequality, economic mobility, how to create opportunity in different parts of the country with investments in other sectors, leveraging the power of the private sector. If there’s no one to work because there’s no one to care, then we have a problem.
Another way of saying it, Sen. [Bob] Casey [of Pennsylvania] said this on the floor a couple years ago: “Some people need a bridge or a tunnel to get to work, and other people need childcare, other people need home care.” It’s like infrastructure, which is something that we’re accustomed to investing our tax dollars in, where it is this foundational resource that allows society and the economy to function, it allows for commerce to take place. Care is the same. It is that input that is necessary in order for everything else to function. But we haven’t built the capacity to actually offer that resource to the working people of this country.
Economists will tell you that investing in making a childcare job or a direct-care job a better job is such a great return on investment because you turn a poverty-wage job into a living-wage job; it benefits that worker and her family and community. But then it also enables all the people who rely on her care services to get to work.
It also makes sure that our children are getting the right care and early education, our older adults and people with disabilities are getting dignified care, quality of life and the potential to actually live a full life at different stages—that is actually beneficial because you might save the healthcare system a whole lot of waste from unnecessary hospitalizations or institutionalizations. And in general, healthcare outcomes are much better when people have good care. So when you understand that human beings power the economy, then it becomes very obvious how this is important.
We have so many sectors of the economy that are growing, but we have actual workforce shortages because people don’t have access to care.
Ai-jen Poo
Schnall: How are the issues of family planning and reproductive rights connected to this issue and the economy?
Poo: To me, it all comes down to economic freedom. If we are not able to define what happens to our bodies, and when and on what terms we have families—which is the biggest decision we’ll make among them—then it actually limits our ability to be free and make smart, good, wise decisions about every other aspect of our life, including our careers, our role in the community, everything. So to me, the two issues go hand in hand.
You want the freedom to decide and chart out a path for your family and your future that is rooted in a reality to give yourself the best chance of success. You want to increase the likelihood it’s going to work out, but then you also need systems to increase the likelihood it’s going to work out.
And those systems are impossible to build as individuals. We can’t create a childcare system, just like we can’t build a bridge or a tunnel or a highway, as individuals. You need both the individual personal freedom and you need the infrastructure that values your choice to start a family and your choice to care for the people in your family. And the two things are like two sides of the same coin, which is about: How are we valuing the economic opportunity and choices of every person in our country?
Saujani: Childcare and abortion are without a doubt connected to women’s economic freedom in the United States. Sixty percent of people who have abortions are already mothers, and most of those moms are living under the poverty line.
I have to point out the hypocrisy of the lawmakers who claim to be “pro-life” but deny mothers the basic rights we need to survive. It’s no coincidence that in the 13 states with a total ban on abortions, moms don’t have access to paid leave.
In Texas, a state where abortion is completely banned with very limited exceptions, childcare costs single mothers 28 percent of their income. Nothing has made me more of a supporter of abortion and our reproductive freedom than raising children in America.
Schnall: Reshma posted, “Childcare and now paid family leave being a question in two debates is absolutely unprecedented.” What do you attribute this to? Are we at a turning point where childcare is finally being recognized for the critical issue it is in our country?
Poo: It’s a huge benchmark of progress for us. These issues are so fundamental to our economic capacity and ability to be in the workforce—like having access to childcare, or having access to home care for disabled people or older adults or to have paid family leave so that we can take time away to be with a newborn or to heal or whatever it may be.
These are actually fundamental economic issues that have never been treated as such, especially in the election context. I think what we’re seeing now is the first time in an election campaign that this is an issue where it’s seen as politically important to be connecting with voters and their everyday concerns around the cost of care and the challenges of having access to care. It’s squarely in the political campaign debate in a way that is also unprecedented.
So it feels like another big indicator that this is an issue that’s time has come, and the solutions are clear, and it is about finding the leaders with the courage to actually move those solutions forward. So I feel incredibly hopeful.
There are 105 million caregivers in the United States today, so a third of the country. And the isolation of that experience, the invisibility of that experience, we’re finally breaking out of that, and you’re starting to see that power of the caring majority in this country, the people whose needs and whose impossible choices between caring for their families and working are finally getting the attention that we deserve. That feels like a huge moment.
I know for the care workers, the domestic workers that I meet and talk to every day, it feels so significant. When you know the dignity and the value of your work, but nothing else in our culture and in our policy really reflects that, it is a disconnect. To finally see it being recognized for the value and the incredible profound contribution that it offers, and for our caregivers to be in the conversation about our future, is so powerful. It’s so moving and motivating for our care workers and our caregivers.
Saujani: For years I’ve asked elected officials, “Why aren’t you passing childcare?” Time and again, I was told, “Listen, it’s just #13 on the priority list.” So many women have been fighting for childcare for decades, but time and time again, childcare has fallen out of the spotlight, leaving moms to pick up the pieces and struggle with the financial and mental costs of childcare alone.
We knew that if we really wanted to make change, we needed to do something different. So Moms First created a plan to make childcare impossible to ignore. And it worked. We mobilized 15,000 moms to sign our petition and successfully got a question asked about childcare at the first presidential debate. We set off a viral news cycle after asking President Trump about childcare at a major economic address. We mobilized thousands of moms across the country to share their childcare stories. And, at the vice presidential debate, the candidates spent nearly 8 minutes debating solutions to our childcare crisis on the national stage.
Before we started this campaign, no one had released any childcare plans or made any childcare commitments. Now, both presidential candidates and their running mates have openly committed to tackle the childcare crisis.
As we head into the final weeks of the election, one thing is clear: The conversation has shifted. Childcare has finally been elevated into the national conversation. Now we have to keep up the pressure to ensure it stays at the top of the priority list—no matter who the next president is.
At Ms. magazine, our mission is to deliver facts about the feminist movement (and those who stand in its way) and foster informed discussions—not to tell you who to vote for or what to think. We believe in empowering our readers to form their own opinions based on reliable reporting. To continue providing you with independent feminist journalism, we rely on the generous support of our readers. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today if you value the work we do and want to see it continue. Thank you for supporting women’s voices and rights.
