Editor’s note: This commentary is by Chloe Learey, the executive director of Winston Prouty Center for Child and Family Development in Brattleboro. She served on the Blue Ribbon Commission on Financing High-Quality, Affordable Child Care. You can learn more by visiting winstonprouty.org.
[O]ften, as executive director of the Winston Prouty Center for Child and Family Development, people who do not have young children ask me: “I don’t have kids. Why should I care about child care?” It is a good question with several answers, such as “these children are the future, they learn skills in the earliest years that they need to be successful later in life.” While this is true and a meaningful argument for some, for others it is not concrete and immediate enough to be compelling. They do not see the benefits they reap every day from a system of reliable early care. Imagine a day when your doctor had to cancel your appointment because she had to take care of her 3-year-old son, a day when there were only two checkout lanes open at the grocery store because everyone else had to stay home to care for children, a day when it took an hour for a police officer to respond to a traffic accident because he was the only officer available. This point is made with humor in the video “the day without child care,” created by the Local Child Care Planning Council of Humboldt County, California, and highlights some of the immediate issues that can bring regular business to a halt when there is a “child care breakdown.”
How can you attract that workforce to the region if there is not enough early care available, like the fact that there are only two part-time infant spots in Windham County, and they are not in Brattleboro?
What about the larger picture of business and economic development? How is that impacted when young families cannot access the early care they need? While it might not grind to a halt, it is significantly slowed.
If there is not a system of reliable, quality and affordable care, people will not be able to participate in the workforce, or, at the very least, will not be able to participate with a rate of productivity that businesses may want and need to achieve outcomes that make the business sustainable. Consider one of the goals of our local economic development plan, to attract a younger workforce (aged 23 to 44). These are the prime years for people to have children. How can you attract that workforce to the region if there is not enough early care available, like the fact that there are only two part-time infant spots in Windham County, and they are not in Brattleboro? And, what if the care is such a large portion of household income that it makes more sense to stay home? This is especially a bind for young families because of an economy where most households need two-wage earners to live in this area. In the equation for economic development, if early child care is not taken into account, a critical piece of the puzzle is missing. It is right up there with affordable housing, strong wages, and opportunities for career growth.
As large employers in our region explore options such as opening their own child care centers, they discover it is a business that does not always make economic sense. The cost of quality care outpaces the tuition you can charge families if you want the care to remain accessible. Therefore, the care ends up subsidized through fundraising, grants, or low wages paid to staff. However, paying low wages is not sustainable. Part of the cost of child care is driven by the qualification of the teachers you want to hire to provide the quality care. As the field continues to be professionalized, with expectations of college-level education required to be an early educator, wage growth has not kept pace. Is that growth going to come on the backs of families who are already struggling to pay tuition in the current system? Investigating other mechanisms for financing early care is required if we truly want to spur economic growth by attracting a younger workforce.
So, to answer why you should care about child care regardless of whether you have children or not, imagine how much more difficult your economic well-being will be without it.
