"How the Child Care Crisis Will Distort the Economy for a Generation"

You can read the rest of this article here, but here are some of the main points:

"Stevenson: I’ve been really struck by how much the federal government scrambled to save the airlines — “Oh, wouldn’t it be terrible for our economy if we lost all our airlines?” I guess it wouldn’t be great. But how terrible would it be for our economy if we lost all our child care and our schools? That would be way worse than losing our airlines! That would leave not only the current working generation unable to go back to work in the same way, it would mean that we are not preparing the next generation so that they have skills. I mean, it is so substantially worse than losing your airlines. And yet we gave less money to the entire child care sector than we gave to one single airline, Delta. I don’t mean to pick on Delta, but it seems crazy that we care more about saving Delta Airlines than we do about the entire child care industry.

“We gave less money to the entire child care sector than we gave to one single airline, Delta.”

Betsey Stevenson

Child care is one of those issues where we still really think it’s a personal problem: ‘You made the choice to have those little rugrats. You deal with them.’ Compare that with elder care. We recognized it was a social issue. We built a series of nursing homes and institutional care, and we have societal grants to cover some of that through Medicaid. But with child care, we’ve said this isn’t a social issue. And I think the pandemic has revealed that it is a social issue.

. . .

. . . You’re seeing child care centers that can’t stay in business. They can’t figure out how to reopen. They can’t keep their employees on staff. They’re letting people go. I see a world where we’re all vaccinated by next spring, and we’re ready to have every kid back in child care, back in school, back at camp — but now they’re starting from scratch, recruiting workers because all their workers have sort of disappeared or moved on. Some of them have gotten other jobs and are never coming back. Others have decided that they’re retiring early. Others have moved physically — ‘Yeah, maybe I worked with children before, and I’m ready to do that again. But I’ve never worked with this employer.’ So how do they make that match? That’s a slow process."



The lack of child care will take away "choice" from so many parents, mainly women, forcing many mothers back into full-time (or at least part-time daytime) parenting for lack of an alternative. As a consequence, much of what my generation fought for in the Women's Liberation Movement will be lost. 😢 Is "kinde, kuche, kirche" (children, kitchen, church--pardon my rotten German spelling) going to be women's only option all over again? Must anatomy be destiny? And if the continuity of the human species is so important, why do the people who perpetuate humanity get so little respect and have so little to show for it in our old age? Must parenthood make one poor?