Issues: Family Care

BACKGROUND

Research shows a lack of access to affordable child care pushes parents out of the workforce, affecting their long-term earnings. Additionally, the financial burden of child care does not fall evenly across all working families: households with lower incomes spend a larger share of that income on child care. In 2020, this reality has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing and temporary closures have made it difficult for child care facilities themselves to remain open long-term, stoking fears that costs will continue to rise; meanwhile standards for paid family leave vary across the country.

Caregiving is not limited to children. Women disproportionately take on caregiving roles for family members, such as aging relatives with dementia.

WHAT ARE THE RESPONSES?

In the U.S., child care subsidies are distributed at a state level. On a community level, child care collectives have sprung up to pool resources and space between parents that share neighborhoods or workplaces, while some employers themselves have begun to offer onsite child care.

Recognizing the contributions of small scale providers that serve families in their community is also an opportunity to focus on local responses that are working.

Other city and state programs focus on supporting informal caregivers, like older relatives, to provide better or additional child care. Looking globally, countries like Denmark, Sweden, and France subsidize the cost of childcare on a national scale.

Programs that address the needs of caregivers could be part of examining the care needs of families and communities when reporting on economic mobility.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR:

It’s critical to look at gender disparities when examining child care issues. Though women make up nearly half the U.S. workforce, they typically bear the brunt of child care — both at home and in the industry itself. Because of this, women are taking on more family child care responsibilities, which experts worry could cause record numbers of women to leave the workforce. Additionally, while many family care solutions focus on localized problems, it’s important for reporters to ask, what are the barriers to systemic solutions in the U.S.? How have other countries addressed this need through national programs or legislation? What responses are working well in some communities and create insights worth sharing? Finally, reporters should also keep race, immigration status and disability in mind when reporting on family care, as these are compounding factors for economic mobility.