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Susan Young is the Bangor Daily News opinion editor.
With many businesses saying they can’t find enough workers and many working families still struggling to find and afford day care for their children, I am surprised at how controversial support for child care can be.
The child care situation in America is so bad that it was the focus of a question during Thursday’s presidential debate. President Joe Biden broadly said he would increase the availability of child care and encourage businesses to provide it, and that he supports significantly increasing the child tax credit. Former President Donald Trump did not address the topic at all.
The Bangor Daily News opinion page recently published a column that detailed the country’s child care crisis, which harms children, their parents and our economy. For example, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that each month, tens of thousands of Americans miss work due to a lack of child care, resulting in $122 billion annually in lost productivity, earnings and revenue. At the same time, child care workers are among the lowest paid workers in the country, the column’s author, a military veteran, noted.
The responses to the column from some BDN commentators — while perhaps not necessarily a good barometer of general sentiment in Maine — were disheartening. To me, they betrayed a troubling lack of understanding of, and empathy for, the struggles of working mothers and working families.
Many commentators harkened back to a long-gone time when families could support themselves on a father’s income. Others suggested that women shouldn’t have children if they couldn’t stay home and care for them. Others demeaned child care as “babysitting,” rather than see it as a vital part of our economy.
Let’s look at some economic realities today. According to one recent analysis, a dollar earned by today’s young people has 86 percent less buying power than one earned by baby boomers at the same age. That’s because the national Consumer Price Index increased by more than 500 percent between 1970 and 2022, while wages have only increased by 80 percent. Housing costs, which have more than doubled since 1970, are a large driver of this cost-of-living increase.
The rising cost of living, and the decline of manufacturing jobs that paid well enough to allow a worker, usually a man, to support a family on one income, pushed growing numbers of women into the workforce.
The U.S. is a laggard in adjusting to this reality. In a recent analysis, UNICEF ranked the U.S. 40th out of 41 high-income countries for its child care policies. Only Slovakia ranked worse. Although the U.S. got high marks for the quality of its child care, it was near the bottom in terms of access and affordability.
The disparities begin immediately after a child is born. The U.S. is the only wealthy country that does not have a national policy for parental leave, although Maine recently joined 12 other states in having a paid family and medical leave law. Many countries offer more than a year of paid leave for mothers.
The U.S. nearly stands alone in the developed world in viewing child care as a private matter, not a public policy responsibility. As a result, it can be hard to convince people in the U.S. to see affordable child care as a public benefit.
Making child care accessible and affordable, first and foremost, is about supporting families and children. But it also has significant economic benefits.
Nearly half of American workers are women. If even a small number of these women left the workforce, it could have a devastating impact on businesses that are already struggling to find enough workers. Already, thousands of Mainers cite a lack of available child care as the main reason they aren’t in the state’s labor force.
To be clear, many parents choose to forgo work to raise their children. I would never take that choice away. But, for many families, work is a necessity. For these families, child care is a necessity, as it is for their employers.
As a working mother, who grappled with the challenges of finding child care years ago, here’s a suggestion: Instead of denigrating women for working, instead of telling families they should be like those of a bygone era, we could better support all families. That includes financial support for child care centers so they can pay their workers better without raising rates that price families out of needed care. It should also include an enhanced federal child tax credit, like the temporary one that was credited with cutting child poverty nearly in half.
When American families are stronger, our country is stronger.
