We Must Address the Child Care Crisis to Advance Racial Justice and Equity

By Alina Lopez Thomas, Senior Director of The Neighborhood at Neighborhood Villages

Our nation’s broken child care system is one of the greatest drivers of racial inequality. It is a system based on unjustly free or low wage labor, built on the backs of women and predominantly women of color.

In my over thirty years in the early education industry, I’ve seen the profound impact that structural racism has had on our child care system. Children, parents, and educators from historically marginalized communities have been experiencing the consequences of our failure to invest in our child care system for generations.

Today, our child care workforce is disproportionately made up of Black, brown and immigrant women. Toleration of unacceptably low wages paid to early educators and lack of proper investment in education for all children is creating lasting disparities in learning outcomes for children and economic mobility for families.

To advance racial justice and equity, we must, as a nation, invest in equitable and affordable high-quality early education and care. That means we need to make early education accessible for all families and make long-overdue investments in raising the salaries of early educators. If we don’t, we will continue to perpetuate the racist structure this system is built upon. Importantly, these investments can’t wait… we need to solve the child care crisis now. Why? 

Failure to solve the child care crisis hurts children. By denying our early education and care system the public resources it needs, we tie a child’s education opportunity to a family’s ability to pay. If a family can’t afford the more than $30,000 it often costs per year for early childhood education, we bar their children from entering the classrooms that set them up to thrive. We need a more equitable high-quality early education and care system to rectify education disparities experienced by communities of color. If we want to close the racial education opportunity gaps that have existed for far too long, we must focus on when learning begins.

Failure to solve the child care crisis hurts parents. The child care crisis also impacts the ability of parents to work and to pursue employment opportunities and the higher earnings that accompany them. Studies show that families of color disproportionately experience child care-related job disruptions — such as quitting a job, not taking a job, or making a significant job change — at nearly twice the rate of white parents. Further, many families of color suffer the cost of care even more acutely because of the enormous racial wealth gap that exists across our nation. 

Failure to solve the child care crisis hurts educators. Solving the child care crisis would also promote economic justice for our early education and care workforce. Despite high tuition rates, early education and care providers often struggle to pay their staff more than minimum wage. Nationally, educators earn wages as little as $12 an hour, many live in poverty, and 44 percent are food insecure. Furthermore, our child care system is rooted in the exploitation of Black labor, primarily women, who now constitute 40 percent of the early education workforce and are paid 78 cents less per hour than their white peers. 

Racial justice requires committing the public funds needed to support the cost of an early education and care system that pays its workforce equitably. Until we make this public investment, our educators, and their commitment to our children, will continue to be exploited.

Fortunately, some states, including Massachusetts, have taken steps to address the child care crisis for their residents. But child care should not be a privilege, it should be a right that should be accessible for every family and child in every state.

To truly advance racial justice and equity for everyone in the child care system, we need action at the federal level to ensure a sustained public funding stream year after year. 

Racial justice requires public investment to support the cost of an early education and care system that prioritizes all children, families and educators.