Celebrating Child Care Providers

Ms. Foundation for Women Economic Justice Grantee All Our Kin shares departing reflections from policy fellow Ana Rader, who championed family child care providers, families and children online and in person. Read Ana’s full blog post here.

The family child care providers I’ve met while at All Our Kin are remarkable. Teresa Younger’s words in her keynote at our conference have stayed with me, and I’ve mulled over them often. Quoting a colleague, she said: “The best thing I can do for myself is to drop my daughter off at day care…. I have found an amazing provider who loves her, teaches her, keeps her safe and happy…. I love being at work.” Then, “Today, we celebrate who you are, what you do, and what you make possible for the rest of us to do.”

And it’s true. The work of family child care providers is the reason many other parents —many other women — can leave their homes, enter the public sphere to work and thrive. And I’m not talking about Sheryl Sandberg, here.  Family child care providers enable the women even the feminists forget — not the women “leaning in” as they rise to corporate and political power, but those entering the workforce with low-wage jobs, who might need care overnight as they work unpredictable schedules, who are grateful for an ounce of stability upon arriving in this chaotic country. And that’s important. That’s wonderful.

But these family child care providers, these women I’ve known, are far more than their value as a stepstool for other women. In a time when we often measure women’s equality by the number of women in seats in which men once sat, these family child care providers are instead redefining what it means to be a powerful, autonomous woman. They are reclaiming caregiving as a profession requiring strategy, skill, practice and patience; reclaiming the home as a space that can be lucrative, important, dynamic and rewarding. They are teaching their husbands and sons, bringing them into the home to join them as business partners and educators of young children. Siloed though they may be in their day-to-day work, at meetings and through telephone calls these family child care providers support and celebrate each other, strengthening and growing this community of women who are neither leaning in nor opting out. This, too — perhaps this, especially — is how change really happens.

When a Mother Has No Choice

While politicians scrambled to distance themselves from Hilary Rosen’s ill-chosen remarks about Ann Romney, the bigger point was overlooked.

“All moms are entitled to choose their path,” the candidate’s wife tweeted.

Unfortunately, that’s just not true.

It’s not a choice for the single mother to work three jobs to keep her family afloat when she would rather be a stay-at-home mom.

It’s not a choice for the woman whose family will lose health care benefits if she reduces her hours to care for her special-needs child.

And it’s not a choice for the woman who can’t afford not to work because her family needs her additional income to survive.

For these women, work offers a lifeline for their families. Without it, they couldn’t put food on the table or clothes on their children’s backs.

On the other end of the spectrum is the growing number of women who would prefer to work but whose salaries won’t cover the high cost of day care. For some of these women, low levels of education are a barrier in attaining jobs that pay well enough. For others, disparities in pay prevent them from earning as much as their male counterparts.

The Ms. Foundation wants every woman to have the same choices that Ann Romney did. That’s why we support organizations like All Our Kin, whose Toolkit Licensing Program helps support women who need access to affordable child care while also creating jobs for women, who constitute the majority of child care providers in the United States.

It’s why we advocate for access to affordable health care services, including contraception. And why we promote policies that help women and families achieve economic security.

Because wealth should not be a prerequisite for choice.

Guest Blog: Affordable Child Care Yields Social and Economic Benefits

Ms. Foundation for Women grantee All Our Kin authored this guest blog post about the substantial economic and community benefits of access to reliable, high-quality child care. Please join All Our Kin Jan. 19 at 9 a.m. at the Yale Club of New York City for a presentation and discussion of the University of Connecticut’s study on the economic impact of child care. Click here for more information and an event flyer.

By Shannon Hill, All Our Kin

Recently, in an interview with Melinda Henneberger, Nancy Pelosi remarked that next on her agenda is “the mother of all women’s issues: child care.” She lamented that she had never been able to find a babysitter, and that everywhere she goes women are talking about how hard it is find the kind of reliable care that would enable them to be more productive workers. When it comes to “unleashing women” in a way that would boost the economy, Pelosi said, “[child care] is the missing link.”

According to a new study conducted by the University of Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis, Pelosi is absolutely correct - investing in early childhood care and education is the missing link. It not only supports women who need access to child care in order to work, but creates jobs for women, who constitute the majority of child care providers in the United States.

The University of Connecticut study looked at an innovative child care licensing initiative implemented by Connecticut-based nonprofit All Our Kin. All Our Kin’s Tool Kit Licensing Program helps family child care providers become licensed and empowers them with the resources and skills they need to run a successful small business and provide high-quality child care.

By increasing the availability of flexible, affordable, high-quality child care, the program enables more low-income parents to work; the study estimates that for every child care provider licensed through the program, four to five parents entered the workforce.

It also increases the earning potential and quality of life for family child care providers. Sixty percent of family child care providers who became licensed through the program earned $5,000 more the first year after getting licensed, and forty-five percent of providers earned at least $10,000 more the second year. Fifty-five percent of providers used their increased income to pay down debt, forty-two percent opened a savings account, thirty-one percent moved to a larger apartment or house, and twenty-four percent bought or leased a car. Moreover, fifty percent of the child care providers went on to achieve either an Associate’s Degree in Early Childhood Education or a Child Development Associate credential.

Through its impacts on both providers and parents, the Tool Kit Licensing program generated $18.4 million in additional tax revenue and $15.2 million in gross regional product (GRP) between 2006 and 2009.

In total, the University of Connecticut study found that for every $1 spent on the Tool Kit Licensing Program, $15-20 are returned to the economy in terms of gross regional product (GRP).

That is a significant economic impact, and the findings reify something many feminists have long known: that child care is a job issue, a matter of economic justice.

Lack of access to reliable, high-quality child care makes it more difficult for parents – especially mothers - to hold or find jobs, particularly when the jobs they have or need are during nonstandard hours (forty percent of Americans work some form of nonstandard hours). And the high cost of child care, coupled with the fact that many parents have lost their child care subsidies due to state funding cuts, means that many parents cannot afford child care while they look for work or work low-wage jobs.

But parents shouldn’t have to choose between the economic survival of their family, and the safe, healthy development of their children.

It is critical that economic development and recovery plans, which have focused heavily on male-dominated industries such as construction and banking, include women and children. It is critical that these plans include family child care providers, not just because family child care providers care for the majority of our most vulnerable infants and toddlers, but because investing in them gives parents the support they need to work and has the potential to boost our economy.

It also provides our children, the workforce of tomorrow, with the educational foundation they need to succeed in school and in life. Children in high-quality early childhood education programs are less likely to be held back, drop out of school, go on welfare or commit crime. According to studies, every dollar invested in early childhood education today saves the public eight dollars later.

When that figure is combined with the immediate economic impact, it is easy to see that investing in our children, and the women who teach and care for them, really is the best of investments: the social benefits are enormous and the economic return rate is high – both today and for years to come.

In US, Child Care Costs Outpace College Tuition

According to a report [pdf] just released by the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, in 39 states across America, a year of child care now costs more than the annual tuition at a public university. And for an increasing number of families, expenditures on child care now top the amount of money spent monthly on food.

As you'll see in the following video, which ran on Good Morning America earlier this week, the staggering cost of child care is putting more and more families in a terrible bind as the economy continues to flag: without child care, parents can't work or look for work -- but low wage jobs and lack of employment make it impossible for them to afford the child care they need.



Ms. Foundation grantee All Our Kin stands at the forefront of the fight to make child care safe and affordable. They are campaigning hard to ensure that Care4Kids, Connecticut's child care subsidy program, remains funded and functioning -- so that families like the ones profiled in this video are spared some of the impossible choices put before them. The group was recently able to secure ARRA funding from the Department of Social Services that will help them train up to 400 family child care providers across the state of Connecticut, providing education, employment and quality, collaborative child care to those who need it most.

Learn more about how the Ms. Foundation partners with grassroots groups to promote just economic policies that benefit women, families and communities.