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Even Women Without Children Should Care About Child Care Access

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This pandemic has hurt women of all ages, but in terms of productively moving forward, women need to promote access to child care in order for society to stop the persistent inequalities that all women face. Child care has been an issue in this country for years. Almost 50 years ago, the United States came close to treating child care as a public good by implementing universal child care but fell short due to a veto by President Richard Nixon, and the consequences of this veto have been felt ever since. In 2016 half of American families struggled to find quality child care. For some this was an issue of cost; even prior to the pandemic, child care costs exceeded the federal definition of affordability, and therefore middle- and lower-class families struggled to afford quality care. For others, this was an issue of accessibility; child care deserts, areas where there are three times as many children as there are licensed care spots, contribute to a decline in a mother’s chance of working by 12 percentage points. This correlation demonstrates the impact of access to quality care on the maternal workforce participation rate.

Access to quality child care allows for a better chance of a positive outcome for children regarding their social, emotional, and behavioral skills. Allowing children to flourish early on through quality child care is a preventative action that allows for less costly interventions later because it decreases the need for interventions such as grade repetition and incarceration later. For example, a study of Chicago’s government-funded Child-Parent Center found that children who did not participate in that center’s preschool program were 70% more likely to be arrested for a violent crime by the age of 18. This program has been able to save taxpayers, potential victims, and participants $7 per $1 invested. Whether you personally have children or not, therefore, it is safe to say that everyone would enjoy a more compassionate and pleasant society if we invested in quality child care.

Enabling greater access to child care will also help take the burden off women who are doing a disproportionate amount of domestic work. Women in the U.S. contribute about 4.5 hours of unpaid work a day, compared to 2.7 hours a day for men, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — and that balance has only gotten more difficult during the pandemic. Employed women with children under 13 struggled to maintain a healthy balance during the pandemic, with 12% taking care of their children while simultaneously working in the afternoons. This left women with the choice of carrying the toll of both paid and unpaid labor or dropping out of the labor force altogether. The pandemic further constrained women by contributing to a “she-cession”; from the onset of the pandemic in February 2020 to February 2021 there was a decrease of 2.4 million women in the labor force and 1.8 million men. In June of 2021, even though jobs began to reopen, there were still 1.8 million fewer women in the labor force compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Employers can also benefit by allowing for more flexibility in the workplace. Employees with and without children will feel as though they have more autonomy when attending to their care responsibilities and private lives. When private lives are valued, productivity tends to increase. This can be seen with an experiment that occurred in Iceland in which workers were given a shorter workweek for the same amount of pay. Unfortunately, the child care workforce dropped by 15% since the pandemic started, and this will only exacerbate the current child care deserts and harm the 16% of the overall workforce that depends on this care. To counter this supply shock, we need change that will allow for greater access to quality child care and for child care workers to be valued for their true worth.

To start, the newly implemented tax credit for children, a stipend of $3,000 for every child yearly and $3,600 yearly for every child under 5, should be permanent. This child tax credit is expected to cut child poverty almost in half as well as help parents with the enormous cost of raising children. Even Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has called for this refundable tax credit to be continued. Several countries already have child care allowances to help support low- and middle-income families, and this could be a key step to provide incentives for people to have children considering the current 35-year-low birthrate in the United States. It would allow more families access to quality child care, and help child care workers start to receive equitable pay.

The burden of care has been held by women for too long. It is time for the United States to make modifications to stop this betrayal. The pandemic has peeled back decades of triumphs, and this disaster should be used to build a just post-pandemic world. Even if I never have children, I want my friends, family, and future acquaintances to have access to quality child care. This is because I believe parents, as well as nonparents, will thrive when children are given the tools to succeed despite other adversities they may face. Equal opportunity in the United States cannot begin without equal access to quality child care.



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Johanne Nichols
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