Sky-high costs for parents, low wages for workers and countless pockets of the country with little to no child care access. What can be done to fix the American child care conundrum?
Elizabeth Palley, PhD, professor in the Adelphi University School of Social Work and director of its PhD program, is an expert in the inner workings of American child care and the pressures that are weighing on a system that is nearing its breaking point. She is a leader on this pivotal issue and is a published authority on the topic, including recent op-eds in Newsday (“New Yorkers need universal child care”) and The Buffalo News (“Another Voice: Child care workers must be paid adequately [to] address a national crisis”).
We interviewed Dr. Palley to understand the child care challenges facing parents, workers and employers, and what steps she thinks might pull us back from the brink.
Q. Most people who have had experience with child care in the United States would agree the system is far from ideal. Can you give an overview of the multiple issues that have created this crisis?
A. The child care crisis in America is decades in the making. From industrialization to the introduction of computers, and more recently the introduction of AI, no existing innovations have made child care more efficient. There is no getting around the fact that child care is expensive. Children need people to provide them with care, and particularly babies and young children need a lot of supervision. At the same time, the workers who provide care usually make subpar wages. Like healthcare, child care doesn’t work well in a capitalist society. The most recent push to remove immigrants from the United States may also harm child care because some of the people who are willing to take the low-wage jobs in child care are new immigrants.
Q. What are the impacts on parents and their children who are navigating the current system?
A. Parents must navigate the high cost of care or, if they live in child care deserts (a geographic area with a significant shortage of licensed child care options relative to the number of young children who need care), they may not even have the option of using center-based care or licensed family home daycare. This leads parents to use a mishmash of family, friend and neighbor care which in the worst-case scenarios puts children in harm’s way. Even if that isn’t the case, children lack stability in this type of situation.
Q. What about the child care workers? What issues do they face that are contributing to the problems in the child care system?
A. They simply don’t get paid enough. A lot of both center-based and family-based home care providers struggle to hire staff and if they don’t have staff, they cannot provide care for as many children. Many receive public assistance. Many providers, particularly home-based providers, go without retirement savings or health insurance, or if they are lucky, rely on spouses for health insurance and savings. To make a living or what they refer to in the industry as a thriving wage, their salaries really need to be subsidized by the government. People in middle- to low-income families simply cannot afford to pay providers what they need to survive, and those who take care of children who receive government subsidies still make subpar wages.
Q. I imagine that the way the system is now would have negative effects on employers. Is insufficient child care a weak point for our economy?
A. Yes, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy loses something like $122 billion a year as a result of a family’s failure to access child care or women’s decisions not to work as a result of limited care options.
Q. What are the top-three things you think our society should get behind to turn this challenge around?
A. First, we need to subsidize child care worker salaries and set up health insurance and retirement benefits for the workers to ensure that there are people who can provide this care. There is a movement to do this in the state of New York, but I don’t see this happening on a national level anytime soon. Second, we need to create universal child care so that all children receive care that is publicly funded, whether it is home- or center-based. Again, there is a movement to do this in New York state. The reason I mention paying workers first is because we cannot create a system of universal care without child care workers. Third, as a country we need to realize that we need immigrants to provide some of this care and enable people in the care industry (both child and nursing care) to stay in this country.
Read more of Dr. Palley’s publications on child care:
- “Commentary: Fixing New York’s child care crisis starts with better pay,” Times-Union
- “Childhood and the Politics of Care,” Narrating Practice With Children and Adolescents
- “Hochul must make child care work,” New York Daily News
- “Albany should help families by expanding child care benefits,” New York Daily News
- “Opinion: Congress must act to guarantee funding for child care in New York,” City & State New York
- “Democrats are not defending women and children,” The Hill
- “Even working piecemeal, Democrats need a full agenda for children,” The Hill
- “Childcare aid that families can actually access,” New York Daily News
- “We can’t wait another 50 years for high-quality childcare,” The Hill
- “Voices of child care providers: an exploratory study on the impact of policy changes,” International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy
- “Child Care: A Grave Concern for Social Workers and What We Can Do,” Social Work
- “Provider Perspectives on Child Care in the United States,” Social Work and Society