COVID-19 economic recovery requires affordable child care
Recent stories of a kidnapping in the Bay Area and of child endangerment in Ohio have made headlines across the nation. The parents’ same impossible decision led to a father’s car being stolen with his two young children inside, and a mother of two being arrested for leaving her children alone. That decision was to go to work.
These stories have highlighted a systemic inequality parents are dealing with daily: How a woefully underfunded child care system, outdated to meet the needs of today’s working parents, is leaving us with dangerous and unjust consequences.
This reality isn’t new. At Parent Voices, we’ve spent decades working to advance access to child care for parents so that they do not have to choose between going to work in order to feed their children or to stay home with their children when there is no care available. Workers deemed essential for the economy and safety of Californians during COVID-19, such as those in the gig industry, food industry and retail, are unable to access child care to care for their families while they care for ours.
Our essential working parents are some of the lowest-paid workers and are primarily from marginalized communities and communities of color. Their jobs often require nontraditional working hours for delivering dinners to other families through gig work or being at work late into the evening to make the food those gig workers are picking up.
In 2019, California had only 23% of the licensed child care it needed for children up to age 12 with working parents. And less than one-third of those licensed programs offered nontraditional hours of care.
Since the start of COVID-19 shutdowns, the child care crisis has become even more grim, with more than one-fourth of programs now closed nationwide. Experts estimate that nearly half of child care centers nationwide may be closed for good by the end of the pandemic if additional support does not come through.
There are some glimmers of hope on the horizon. Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted the crisis in an op-ed for The Washington Post, calling for investment in child care in order to save our economy.
President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan calls for $40 billion in immediate COVID-19 child care relief. When passed, that could bring $4 billion to California, expanding access to affordable child care for essential workers, paying living wages to child care providers and incentivizing more providers to offer nontraditional hours of care.
This down payment could help us redesign our child care system to meet the needs of working families instead of forcing families to fit into a system that doesn’t meet their needs.
Record state budget surpluses must also be part of the solution. For decades we have subsidized the child care system by paying poverty wages to predominantly Black and Latina early educators or by forcing low-paid working families to pay fees they cannot afford. It’s time to right the wrongs of the past.
While there is much to restructure in this country, especially as we look to heal and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, we must not lose sight of the importance child care plays and will continue to play in our society. From the economic impact to the basic safety of our children, access to child care must be seen as a core function for an equitable and productive society and not left up to individuals and Gofundme fundraisers when tragedy strikes.