A Moment with Dr. Moore

America Has Questions: Child Care in 2024 

Our nation hit two alarming highs and lows this year, according to the news. In August, the number of Americans absent from work because of child care issues reached a record 69,000 employees. And this data from the Department of Labor “underscores the severity of America’s child care crisis,” NBC News warned on September 6. So does a demographic crisis that’s begun to brew, according to the August 5th New York Times. “The total fertility rate has dipped to 1,616.5 births per 1,000 women, a historic low that is far less than the rate needed to maintain the population size, 2,100 births per 1,000 women,” the Times cautioned, too. Many Americans are choosing not to have children because “mortgage rates have risen and child care costs have soared,” making it “feel untenable to raise children in the United States.”

The plummeting U.S. birth rate is a problem, as the Washington Post pointed out on September 27. “Lower birthrates mean fewer young people, which means a shrinking workforce and more difficult economic growth”—problems that are already on the rise and drawing public attention to the child care crisis. Child care has taken center stage since the COVID pandemic led many providers to close their doors and early learning programs to go remote, forcing parents to juggle child rearing with their jobs. A shortage of accessible and affordable child care has dogged the country ever since, leading to recent headlines like “Work Hours Lost by the Millions,” “Child Care or Rent,” and “Child Care Crisis Hampers Opportunity for America’s Families.” During 2024, news outlets from the Eastern Seaboard to the West Coast have tracked the costs of the crisis for families and children, companies and the economy nationwide.

“Child care is finally getting widespread attention, but we have yet to answer the essential question: what is child care and who is it for?” The 74 wondered on October 29. “America doesn’t know how to talk about child care. Is child care primarily a work support for parents? Is it child development that helps kids with early learning and growth? Is it a way to reduce family stress and increase family functioning? Is it a social infrastructure that connects parents, like libraries and parks? Is it intended to promote gender equity? Who counts as a valid child care provider? Is the goal to have a minimum level of adequate child care that keeps costs low or to have abundant, first-rate child care settings with well-compensated educators?” And while the answers to these questions are vague, the impact of the child care crisis is clear.

The high costs of child care are cutting deep into families’ budgets nationwide. “Parents with two children in a child care center paid on average at least twice as much for that care as they did for the typical rent in 11 states and the District of Columbia last year. The states are Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin,” as CNN related on May 15. Then on May 30, ABC News raised an alarm that “the cost of child care in the U.S. is rising at nearly double the rate of inflation,” so the “child care crisis, which was simmering prior to the pandemic, has come to a boil.” And parents must have felt especially burned in New York, New Mexico and Hawaii, where child care consumed about 20 percent of a family’s income, as Newsweek reported on November 12 when it mapped the cost of child care nationwide.

Findings like this led CBS News to also declare on November 26 that “having a young child in this country is a cause of poverty. It is not correlated with it; it is a cause of poverty.” As a result, there’s a new measure of prosperity: “the number of children you can afford,” as the Los Angeles Times pointed out on September 6. “Child care is the top household expense in all but eight counties in California—and because of systemic racism and sexism in the labor market, the skyrocketing costs are hitting women as well as Latinx and Black families most.” At the same time, “white families are barely scraping by” the LA Times went on to add, as “high child care costs wage war on families.” And this is “a trend we are seeing spread nationwide as the costs of care for two children outweigh average mortgages.”

The high costs of child care also hurt business as companies struggle to retain working moms and dads. “The nation’s infant-toddler child care crisis costs the U.S. an estimated $122 billion in lost earnings, productivity and revenue every year,” CNBC pointed out on June 8. Absences and turnover cut into companies’ profits. So, “ReadyNation, an advocacy group of more than 2,000 business executives, lobbies in support of policies and programs at both state and federal levels that support a strong workforce and economy, including child care.” And “the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has championed the cause,” according to a September 4 article from NPR. “More private and public companies have heeded the call” and “child care centers are popping up more often in workplaces,” the Christian Science Monitor reported on June 1. “Skyrocketing child care costs and staffing shortages have complicated arrangements for working parents. Some have left their jobs after struggling to find quality care. Employers, in turn, view their entry into the child care realm as a competitive advantage”—one with implications that cross political lines.

More Republicans back spending on child care and now say that it is a broad economic issue. Granted, “Republicans have historically been lukewarm about using taxpayer money for child care,” explained a February 8 report from AP. “But the pandemic, which left many child care providers in crisis, underscored how precarious the industry is and how many working parents rely on it.” As the lack of child care access contributes to a labor shortage nationwide, “many industries have started lobbying for states to invest more in child care” and “Republican state lawmakers across the country are embracing plans to support child care—even making it central to their agendas.”

There’s growing concern on both sides of the political aisle with a nagging problem: how to budget for the child care our nation needs. “The promise of affordable child care has long been a point of bipartisan agreement,” the Los Angeles Times reported on August 22. “Both the right and the left see the need for children to be taken care of while parents work.” So, red and blue states alike have explored ways to finance child care programs as they wait for a long-delayed federal solution, Fortune reported on May 14. “New Mexico, for instance, has tapped into its petroleum revenue. Washington State put a new tax on investment profits. Kentucky is incentivizing parents to become child care workers. And while the largest investments in child care have come from Democrats, Republican state lawmakers across the country are embracing plans to support child care—citing the importance to the economy.”

And some members of Congress are reaching across the aisle to take on the challenge. “For example, Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Katie Britt (R-AL) unveiled a package of bills aimed at making child care more affordable and accessible for low-income families,” ABC News reported on July 31. “Their proposal would modify existing tax credits to help working parents afford child care and would implement a new program to keep child care workers on their jobs, the senators told ABC News. ‘Every community that I go to in Virginia, I hear the same thing: Why am I paying more than I would pay for college?’ Kaine said of talking to parents about the cost of child care.”

Kaine’s experience isn’t unique since the soaring cost of child care is a “kitchen table issue,” as USA Today related on October 12, a few weeks before the presidential election. “The vast majority of voters—89 percent—want candidates to have a plan to address the child care crisis, according to a recent poll from First Five Years Fund, which advocates for affordable access to child care. That cuts across party lines, with 80 percent of Republicans, 88 percent of independents, and 99 percent of Democrats supporting child care.” But despite this widespread support, there are questions about what’s ahead for early learning and care.

Still, history offers room for hope, as NBC News predicted on November 24 after Trump’s win. “In Trump’s first term, ‘he prioritized expanded access to child care and paid family leave, and he will do it again in his second term,’ Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.” At the same time, “he has not announced any formal plans to tackle the issue,” added NBC News. So, the future of federal child care policy now remains unknown.

“As the incoming Trump administration readies itself for office, early childhood advocates must press any advantage to keep child care and early learning a top priority,” Ms. magazine pleaded on November 26. “With this election, Americans have recharged questions about whether we, as a nation, are committed to fostering environments where families can thrive. The ballots we cast represented a referendum on whether families have the right to opportunity, but the work we do from here will determine whether we care enough to secure those rights for the next generation.”

America must learn how to talk about child care, news outlets have shown as they put a spotlight on the urgency of the issue. On September 5, LAist noted that the U.S. Surgeon General had issued a public health advisory on parental stress, citing child care costs as a factor. “It definitely is an added stress to parents who are trying to make sure that their children are growing and thriving in the best environment possible while they are able to put food on the table and make rent or their mortgage.” And parents aren’t the only ones with a stake in the future of child care, the New York Times made clear on March 13, as it discussed the enduring blow that the COVID pandemic had dealt on the child care sector and those it served.

“What American families experienced is not something you get over,” the Times declared. “And it’s meaningful that more and more people of all political persuasions see the provision of affordable, quality child care and the general well-being of children as issues affecting everyone and everything in our society. We shouldn’t have to remind people, least of all our elected leaders, that today’s children are tomorrow’s adults, or that the disruptions of the pandemic had a profound and lasting effect on American families—but sometimes we do.” Whatever future lawmakers have in mind, they must respond to voters’ concerns in the end. The questions that Americans are asking about child care will not go away.