What makes child care a “good job?”
And why this conversation matters
Let me tell you a story about Zonia Sanchez.
Zonia begins work at 6 a.m. and remains on the clock until 5 p.m., taking care of her four grandchildren, ages 2 months, 3, 5 and 11 years. She logs her hours into a notebook, and submits the total each month to the Child Care Resource Center (CCRC) in Palmdale, Calif., where she lives. She’s paid different hourly rates for each child — $3.61 per hour for the 3-year-old, $3.34 for the 5-year-old, and $2.63 for the 11-year-old. She doesn’t receive any payment for the baby because his paperwork hasn’t been processed through the system yet.
"These are my grandkids and my daughter has to work,” Sanchez says. (She primarily speaks Spanish, and her conversation with me was conducted through a translator.) “If it wasn’t for me, who would take care of my baby for no pay?”
Sanchez, 59, is one of an estimated 5 million Family, Friend, and Neighbor (or FFN) child-care providers in the United States. In more than 40 states, including California, the work she does is eligible for payment, even though she doesn’t have a child care license.
But the work of caring for kids is exhausting, underappreciated, and underpaid. Many people are willing to pay more for a latte than for an hour of care. And the high costs of child care usually have more to do with the required teacher-to-student ratios than the providers making livable wages - let alone wages that would allow them to live middle class lives.
So much of our child care conversation focuses on the burden faced by the parents:
→ It’s the parents that do the work to find quality, loving care for their children
→ It’s the parents who need the care to be reliable so they can go to work.
→ And in most cases, it’s the parents shouldering the cost and making sacrifices to make payments, and nearly half of parents with children under 18 say child care is difficult to afford.
There are conversations that focus on the kids - the benefits of high quality care on their rapidly developing brains, and the growing understanding that child care is really early education. We’ve come a long way from the early 20th century “day nurseries” of just wiping butts and noses. Walk into any high quality child care and see for yourself: when kids and teachers are engaged, there is no question that the benefits of play and relationships are crucial.
But not enough of our conversations focus on providers - the people doing the actual work of caring for our kids. Child care work is physically demanding, often unstable, low-paying, yet we need it for our economy to run. The labor shortages and high turnover of the child care field threaten the well being of our economy.
And, of course, the future of our children.
I’m inviting you - and anyone who follows this issue and cares about child care - to join this conversation about “What Makes a Good Job in Child Care.” If you’re in the San Bernardino area, you’re welcome to attend in person (and I’d love to meet you!) but everyone else can livestream the event on Monday, December 2nd.
(And if you’re like me and just realized that December is days away, the event is one week out).
California is an interesting place to be a child care worker. While “informal child care” workers like Zonia Sanchez do have the option for some subsidy reimbursement, the high cost of living and the high demand for care mean that even with a more generous subsidy option by comparison to other states, it’s still far too low and many child care workers struggle to pay their own bills.
As my colleagues at Zocalo Public Square shared:
In California, child care workers earn $18 per hour on average (less than the minimum wage for fast food workers) and most can’t afford quality care for their own children.
Women of color make up nearly two-thirds of the state’s early childhood workforce, yet they make less money and are less likely to be in leadership roles than their white counterparts with the same level of education.
And families are going broke to secure care for their kids, with child care costs outpacing housing as the top expense for households around the state.
So what would it take to make child care work a true, valued profession? How can we find a way to make sure the work of child care benefits caregivers and families alike?
Please join me for a conversation on Monday, December 2nd. Register here. Free food and drink will be provided, as well as FREE CHILD CARE for kids. Kudos to Zocalo Square for acknowledging that parents are more likely to attend when they have an option for care for their kids.
I’ll be joined by an excellent panel of people, including Child Care Law Center executive director Maisha Cole, child care worker and administrator Juanita Gutierrez, National Domestic Workers Alliance president Ai-jen Poo, and Child Development Consortium of Los Angeles executive director Lisa Wilkin to discuss what a good job looks like in the field right now, and their vision for a more sustainable and nurturing future.
This is part of my own larger goal of keeping child care in the conversation even as the political tides are shifting. We know that people of all political stripes need and value child care, and if we want to change the narrative about the people and providers providing the care, it starts here.
Know someone who may want to attend too? Please feel free to share this email.
And one more ask - as we wind down 2024 I want to thank you for being a Substack reader and subscriber. Every comment, like and sign up means a great deal. If you’re open to financially supporting this work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thanks to those that already do. Happy Thanksgiving!
Parts of this essay has been adapted from a Washington Post article, “Could Biden’s Child Care Plan Make Things Harder for Family Caregivers?”
As a family that is entirely dependent on childcare workers for our survival, and are lovely enough to have ones that care for us like family, I’m so grateful to see their conditions brought into focus. ❤️