With Dwindling Child Care Resources, Mothers Are Assuming Duties Of Care
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“When the pandemic hit, it was largely mothers who took on the additional child care duties; became remote teachers; and, in large numbers, quit their jobs,” writes Claire Cain Miller in her recent article in The New York Times.
Mothers have always been filling when unexpected family needs arise, reads the article, but the pandemic has exacerbated the difference. Research suggests that mothers are more likely than fathers to reduce in-person time at work when work and family obligations collide pre-pandemic. In opposite-sex couples, wives are more likely to quit their jobs when their husbands worked long hours; whereas when women worked long hours, their male spouses didn’t quit.
And now, as seven in 10 mothers are shouldering the bulk of child care during the pandemic, women’s participation in the workforce has taken a hit. Some 1.6 million fewer mothers are participating in the labor force this fall, and more have passed on promotions, reduced working hours, or are still struggling to strike a balance between caring for their children and tending to their careers.
The lack of social safety nets for child care, therefore, is as much an economic problem as it is a gender or family issue. “Part of the reason is that the United States has fewer family-friendly policies and benefits than other rich countries — a pattern that has continued during the pandemic,” the article concludes. Making sure that working mothers can access and afford child care would be the first step in fixing this problem.
New Research Shows Gap Between Need And Access To Child Care In 25 States
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Child care supply does not match the potential child care need, a recent Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) study of 25 states found. Based on state-level child care data from each of the 25 states surveyed and a national parent survey, BPC found that 31.7% of, or nearly 2.7 million, children below the age of six with all available parents in the workforce don’t have access to formal child care.
The report also revealed the divide between the need and supply of child care in rural and urban communities. Notably, over 30% of parents living in rural neighborhoods drive more than 10 miles to child care, compared to 15% and 9% among suburban and urban parents. Meanwhile, while urban communities had higher potential need for child care, in 17 of the 25 states surveyed, rural child care gaps were greater than urban child care gaps.
Shown in blue, the 25 states surveyed.
The study also reveals two areas in which our country can improve to boost the understanding of our child care system, namely to gather better quantitative data and to pay more attention to specific needs of the parents. “An accurate understanding of child care demand and how it affects child care gaps across the country will also be necessary to accurately estimate the economic effects of these child care gaps,” wrote authors of the study.
“The time is now,” the study says, as it calls more attention to national child care efforts that could save the sector that brings the American economy $50-100 billion a year. As child care providers are forced to close permanently or operate at reduced capacity due to the pandemic, assessments of child care capacity in each neighborhood are even more salient to understanding both the needs of parents and the need for relief among child care providers.
Read the full report and explore the interactive map here.
New Analysis Highlights Unsustainable State Of Child Care Due To Low Enrollment And Increased Operating Costs
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A new column from the Center for American Progress (CAP) demonstrates that child care providers are struggling financially as they continue operating on reduced revenues and increased costs. Based on data from the Early Milestones Colorado survey, the article uses Colorado to illustrate how lack of public funding endangers invaluable child care infrastructure across the country.
Key findings include:
Enrollment in early care and education is only 52% of pre-pandemic levels. This means that 56,000 infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in Colorado have not returned to child care.
As of July, 23%, or around 4,000 members of the Colorado child care workforce were laid off or furloughed. Many of them were women or operated minority-owned businesses.
Pre-K programs were most affected by the enrollment decline, losing over 70% of their children. Child care centers and home-based programs were able to retain 52% and 66% of their pre-pandemic enrollment respectively.
These statistics shed light on the need for additional federal relief, as programs that received some form of public assistance saw less severe declines in enrollment and were able to retain more educators. “If child care were publicly funded rather than funded largely by parental tuition and fees,” CAP researchers imagine, “the industry’s ability to withstand the pandemic would play out more similarly to that of K-12 schools, which may close in the short term but will retain their staff and facilities so that they can reopen when it is safe to do so.”
“These early data from Colorado show that child care providers are in an untenable position, with fewer children and families to serve and greater expenses to cover,” the analysis concludes. “Action is needed now—before we lose this crucial economic infrastructure.”
