In March 2021, American parents got something unexpected: help.In the same month, Congress passed American Rescue PlanThe agency allocated up to $24 billion to child care providers as part of the Child Care Stabilization Plan. Prior to that, child care costs had been soaring for decades, reaching levels that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had been under. is called “A textbook example of a market collapse.”
But this extended helping hand is being rejected, and on September 30 this year, parents are prepared for a beating. Pandemic aid is set to expire this weekend, leaving the United States on the brink of what many experts and politicians are calling a “crisis.” parenting cliff This will impact providers, parents and children.
For decades, due to poor pay and working conditions for staff, and lack of federal investment This leaves working parents with limited and unaffordable child care options. The crisis has been exacerbated during hiring shortages caused by the pandemic, which has further strained child care centers and led to burnout and turnover.
According to one agency, this rebound will close a third, or 70,000 subsidized child care centers Report From the liberal think tank Century Foundation. The report predicts that more than 3 million children will be lost from care, forcing some working parents to leave the workforce entirely, with a knock-on effect on the economy of $9 billion a year. Under the bill, employers and taxpayers would lose $23 billion and $21 billion annually, respectively, as parents struggle to work effectively without child care assistance. committee for a strong america.
“Our child care system is not only stretched, it’s broken,” said Jill Koziol, CEO of Child Care Platform. maternal love,Tell wealth. “We’ve put a Band-Aid on a situation where federal support is about to expire. But when parents can’t access child care, everyone ultimately loses.”
Many Democratic lawmakers are trying to plaster the $16 billion Band-aid solution to cliff problem, but with govt Shutdown looms, passing it in time seems unlikely. “Our nation’s child care problem predates the pandemic, and now Republicans are threatening to push child care funding to the brink,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said in a statement. wealth. “Congress must pass $16 billion in emergency child care funding to prevent millions of parents from needing to scramble or leave the workforce entirely.”
Childcare centers that don’t close may be forced to lay off staff Employees who have been underpaid. The lack of stimulus will primarily hit facilities in underfunded programs, which Koziol said often serve lower socioeconomic families led by frontline workers who are often unable to work from home or without child care. Work.Child care is also likely to become more expensive; about 40% of child care providers said they may have to raise prices by 2022, when funding ends poll From the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Koziol said that could turn off the middle class. And, because of gendered assumptions about childcare, women who work outside the home often bear the brunt of this systemic failure.
An (im)perfect storm is about to hit working mothers
As child care has long been in disarray, the impact of ending funding will be slow but lasting, Julie Kashen, senior fellow and director of Women’s Economic Justice Century Foundation,Tell wealth. She said the discussion around the child care crisis often “gets bogged down” in the question of whether the government should be involved, but what people really want is for the government to help with resources “so we can take the trouble out of parents,” children, and people of color who are disproportionately racial women and childcare workers who earn less than $12 per hour generally. The bottom line, Cashen added, is that child care workers tend to be paid less than dog walkers.
“We often hear the saying: ‘If you can’t raise a child, don’t have one,'” she said. “But having a baby isn’t like buying an indoor sauna or a luxury car, and it certainly shouldn’t be reserved for the rich.” But the reality is that affordable care is seen as a privilege, not a right, as Card. As Shin explains, currently only the rich can afford child care or unpaid leave.
She said that while the parenting cliff will have lasting effects on many people in rural areas and cities, working mothers will ultimately pay the greatest price for the federal government’s impact. They already face the “motherhood penalty,” in which their careers are affected after having children – they are unable to get promoted, receive lower wages, or are forced to drop out of the labor force entirely. Even women who support their families are not immune. So when parents are forced to make difficult choices about prioritizing their partner’s income, the situation doesn’t work in the mother’s favour.
Last spring, families reported spending more than a quarter of their income on child care. That’s exactly what nearly half of parents of children under five would consider the devastating cost of being a stay-at-home parent, according to one survey. wealth and the Harris Poll earlier this year. While it’s generally accepted that the partner who makes the most money should stay in work, gender gaps and sexist cultural assumptions mean that in heterosexual relationships, this role often falls to men.Research shows that men Not as expected Or maybe quitting your job to fill a gap in childcare. Although stay-at-home dads are more common than they used to be, stay-at-home dads often end up becoming mothers, especially among highly educated women.
“As a society, we have imposed a false equation on families and mothers, tying the cost of childcare to the mother’s income rather than family income. This false equation means that every time the cost of childcare rises, mothers The value in the labor force will decrease.” The most educated group. Kashin added that the childcare cliff could also affect other industries in which women are active, such as teaching, which is already experiencing a shortage crisis.
While not a solution, flexible work arrangements have become a balm for many mothers, who are able to work from home while caring for their children piecemeal. early evidence Research shows that working remotely can help ease the intensity of the balancing act of working parents, especially mothers. The problem is that just as the federal Band-Aid is being ripped off, many companies are issuing another round of return-to-office mandates—the enterprise version of rejecting Advil.
Entering and exiting the labor market
Although in the early days of the epidemic, many mothers quit the workplace due to the intensifying childcare crisis, Since then many people Back. But a lack of funding and less flexibility could change the tide again. According to Motherly, the number of stay-at-home moms will nearly double from 2022 to 2023, returning to its pre-pandemic baseline. “Last year, this perfect confluence showed us a model for increasing mothers’ productivity to support our economy. The resilience of the entire system began to weaken and mothers began to opt out of the labor market,” Koziol said, noting that Motherly Research found that one in four mothers had been fired from their job over childcare issues.
But the Century Foundation’s Kashin explained that not everyone has the option to leave the labor market because inflation has made childcare costs mostly affordable only for two-income families. That’s why women, especially people of color, have been in the workforce, she said.
“Even if there’s not enough child care, sometimes they still try to stay in the workforce, even if it doesn’t really make a difference,” she explained. This could lead to higher labor force participation rates, even if it means mothers “sacrifice their physical and mental health in order to overwork themselves or seek out lower-quality options.” But at the same time, we’re still likely to see women leave the workforce entirely, she added.
America’s deep-seated history of racism leaves women of color Long-term work outside the home more; black and latina women Historically, they had to cobble together child care services while also taking on the low-wage jobs of caring for white women’s children. When Yellen talks about a broken model, it’s because the current system of work is not designed to thrive in the workforce we have today.
But Koziol believes the country can make great strides toward a future with affordable child care as much as it was once a part of our history. Koziol explains that during World War II, when men were overseas and the United States instituted universal child care, there was unprecedented respect and demand for women who cared for them at home. “When we value women in the workforce, we find ways to make it work,” she said. But Congress failed to extend the program and general aid after the war, plunging the United States into a child care crisis.
Eighty years later, history is revealing its roots. Although Kashin hoped to resolve the cliff with $16 billion in funding by the end of the year, it still caused the system to malfunction this fall. “Public and workplace policies in the United States are built on the assumption that men will be part of the wage labor force while wives stay home and care for children; or that the undervalued and underpaid labor force of black, Latinx, and immigrant women will Meeting the care needs of families,” she said. But “that’s not reality,” she continued. “Now is the time to adopt public and workplace policies that adapt to this reality so that children, families and our economy can thrive.”
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