By Karen D'Souza. EdSource. Bay City News.
Nearly 90 percent of brain growth occurs before children start kindergarten. That's why experts say high-quality care is so vital for young children. It is also why the current child care crisis is so troubling and why the administration Biden is once again trying to tackle the problem on a national scale.
To be sure, the child care industry has long been marked by a brutal economic tug-of-war.
Most families cannot afford the high cost of care, while many child care workers cannot survive on wages. Keep in mind that child care for an infant in Alameda County costs about $20,000 a year in 2021, for example.
Now consider that the average child care worker makes about $13 per hour. Raising awareness about this situation is the goal of events like the upcoming Day Without Child Care, when many providers across the country go out of business and speak out about the issues.
"Child care is a textbook example of a broken market," as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen put it. “The free market works well in many different sectors, but child care is not one of them. It doesn't work for caregivers. It doesn't work for parents. It doesn't work for children. And because it doesn't work for them, it doesn't work for the country."
The pandemic has deepened the pre-existing child care crisis, closing nearly 16,000 child care centers and increasing operating costs for those who remain in business. Inflation also means everything from masks to snacks is costing more than before, experts say, while many workers have fled to higher-paying jobs at Starbucks and Target, putting even more strain on the system.
Amid the current crisis, the Biden administration initially proposed an ambitious plan for federally subsidized child care that was struck down in Congress. Now he is pushing several smaller solutions, including mandating semiconductor makers that are lining up to receive nearly $40 billion in new federal subsidies under CHIPS and the Science Act to provide child care for their workers.
«The pandemic? made it even clearer how difficult it is for millions of working and middle-class families to care for their families," Biden said last month. "It's not just how important the care economy is to the whole economy, but when people have to leave the workforce or can't get in because of care responsibility, they can't fully participate in the economy, and that it drags down the productivity and growth of the entire nation in general.”
Many praise this strategy for creating more affordable child care options by enticing corporations to provide coverage for their employees.
“Innovative ideas like the CHIPS Act are what we need to start addressing the child care crisis that has been brewing for generations,” said Gina Fromer, President and CEO of the Children's Council of San Francisco.
"Semiconductor industry groups and even top CEOs are supporting the program's effort to link workforce development with child care, citing the need to re-engage the 2 million women who left the force." work during the pandemic to care for their relatives.
Yet others warn that linking child care to employment rather than treating it as a public good, such as K-12 education, risks leaving millions of struggling families out of the loop. Think health care. When you lose your job, you also lose your coverage, along with your children. These people say it should be the government's role to oversee vital social infrastructure.
"Kudos on a creative idea, but isn't the child care system complicated enough without now adding a healthcare-style system to the top layer?" said Scott Moore, director of Kidango, a nonprofit organization that runs many Bay Area child care centers. "Another disadvantage is shifting responsibility from government to business."
Biden also recently issued an executive order directing federal agencies to find ways to make child care more affordable and accessible. White House officials have described it as the most comprehensive effort by any president to optimize child care delivery.
However, some suggest that the strategy of privatizing some of the high costs of child care may prove to be a more practical step.
"Biden's pressure on chipmakers to expand their own child care centers as they recruit new workers may prove more important," said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley. "The president could redouble efforts and push for similar provisions within $1.2 trillion in infrastructure projects, which benefit a variety of energy, bridge-building and construction companies, all of which employ parents with young children."
While many child care advocates believe that universal early education should be the gold standard, some suggest that economic and political complications may make it difficult to achieve that goal.
“Early education advocates must continue to push our local, state, and national leaders toward the ultimate goal of universal child care for all. That should be our ultimate goal, period," Fromer said. “But, as with any large-scale socioeconomic change, it has been and will continue to be a long and hard battle to achieve. Meanwhile, what may seem like short-term incremental steps have proven to be real solutions."
Another key issue is how to lift child care workers out of poverty while making care more accessible. The child care industry, a workforce with a significant number of women of color, has long suffered from poverty wages.
"Early childhood teachers work with children during their most formative years of development and growth," Moore noted, "yet they are the lowest paid in a low-paying profession."
Others caution that the bottom line is maintaining a high quality of care. Simply expanding access to child care or reducing its costs is not enough to give children the head start they need in early childhood.
"One concern: We don't want to expand the number of new child care spaces with static funds," Fuller noted. “This would erode teacher quality and increase class sizes in pre-K programs. The long-term benefits of child care only come from high-quality programs.”
Read the original note giving click here.
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