Child care providers struggle financially
Donise Keller has made many sacrifices in 20 years as a child care provider, but she has rarely questioned her calling. She puts in 12-hour days. She gets by on less than $20,000 a year. She worries about getting COVID-19 on the job. But, despite it all, she says she loves what she does.
“Children are our most precious gifts. I feel honored to help take care of them and help them grow. It's a labor of love,” said the 53-year-old single mother who lives in Antioch.
Her struggles are typical of child care workers, predominantly women of color, who have long been among the lowest-paid workers in the country, experts say. The median hourly pay for a California child care worker in 2019 was $13.43, while preschool teachers earned $16.83 and kindergarten teachers earned $41.86, according to data from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley. About a third of all child care workers are on some kind of public assistance, the study found.
Over the years, Keller has gone without health insurance, losing a tooth because she couldn't afford dental care. She has given up on owning a home. She knows how to make do, but the future still frightens her.
“It's frustrating. You do what you have to do, but it shouldn't be this much of a struggle to take care of children. It's really hard,” said Keller, who has an associate degree in child development. “I have no retirement plan. Will I have to do this even when I'm too old to do this? What will my quality of life be when I'm older?”
The pandemic has only worsened matters, driving many to leave the field of education in search of higher wages in the fast-food industry or retail sector. Those who stick to child care despite the obstacles often feel crushed. The depth of frustration they grapple with alarmed researchers from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment.
“I would say we expected, knowing what we know about low wages,” said Anna Powell, a senior research and policy associate at the center, who worked on a new report about the state of the child care workforce. “However, what I was really not prepared for was the outpouring of frustration. And even in some cases, despair. Educators were telling us about their precarious financial situation. …They feel overlooked and forgotten.”
Of the roughly 1 million child care workers in the country, research shows, 1 out of 3 experienced food insecurity in 2020. That's about 8 to 20 percentage points higher than the national average.
Many people do not realize that child care workers are more than babysitters, advocates say. They are early childhood educators at a pivotal period of learning.
“Child care is undervalued and underpaid because we don't appreciate how important the early years are to a child's whole education,” Leyva-Cutler said. “Children don't magically start learning at age 4. You have to plant the seeds much earlier.”
If child care workers are beaten down by the grim realities of poverty, advocates say, they are less likely to be nurturing to the children in their care.
“We are asking child care workers to be superheroes when we expect them to be at the top of their game caring for our children while they are stressed about keeping the lights on and having food on the table for their own families,” said Jhumpa Bhattacharya, vice president of programs and strategy at the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, a research and advocacy group.
Overwhelmed caregivers may struggle with focusing on the needs of children. They might lack patience or empathy, both of which are crucial in educators. That means children can be directly affected by the pressures facing child care providers.
“Children with fragile home environments often see their child care site as a sanctuary,” said Gina Fromer, CEO of Children's Council of San Francisco, a resource and referral agency. “Disruptions to the kids' daily routines and adapting to new caregivers, who themselves are under an enormous amount of stress, all add up to traumatic experiences that could impact children for the rest of their lives.”
Keller, for her part, finds deep satisfaction in her work that helps her stay engaged with the 10 children she cares for, ages 8 months to 8 years, every day. She enjoys teaching them things, taking particular pride in those she has taught how to read, for example.
“You don't do this job for the money,” she said.
A fierce devotion to the craft is something many child care providers share, but it is rarely reflected in their economic prospects. The dismally low wages for care work, advocates say, might reflect a systemic lack of respect for what is traditionally seen as women's work.
The pandemic has shined a harsh light on many such issues of race, gender and equity, advocates say.
“Over the past two years, the nation has seen firsthand what we in the early education field have been saying for decades: Child care is a critical linchpin to our children, working families and to our economy,” Fromer said. “COVID has revealed a deeply flawed, highly fragile child care infrastructure.”
President Joe Biden has been pushing for a plan to bolster the beleaguered child care sector. That proposal, which is languishing in Congress, calls for increased pay and training opportunities, in addition to more affordable fees for families.
The U.S. currently ranks 35th out of 37 major economies in public investment in young children. Many advanced countries spend an average of $14,000 per year for a toddler's child care, compared with roughly $500 in the United States.