Our Child Care 101 Blog Series focuses on informing and educating voters who want to support child care

When it comes to fixing our nation’s broken child care system, our leaders must address the worsening pay gap and low wages of Early Childhood Educators along with issues of child care affordability and accessibility. Early educators are not getting anywhere near the support they need as they provide the critical work of caring for our nation’s very future, our children.

Child care work is one of the lowest paid professions in the United States, with 1 in 7 early educators living below the poverty line. Child care work is one of the lowest paid professions in the United States. This despite rising requirements for credentials and education and extensive research illustrating the importance of the early years for the healthy development of young children and on their future outcomes. 

Many early childhood educators have their own children to support, being the primary breadwinners in 42 percent of families with children, and co-breadwinners—bringing in between 25 percent and 49 percent of family earnings—in another 22 percent of these families. It is a travesty that while childhood educators care for our nation's children, they often find themselves struggling to support their own.

This wage gap and lack of support for Early Childhood Educators also demonstrates glaring social inequities in our country, with women, women of color and women of immigrant backgrounds overrepresented within early childhood education. For example, Black women make up 12% each of child care workers and pre-K/K teachers, compared to 6% of workers in all sectors. Similarly, Latinas make up 21% of child care workers compared to 8% of workers in all sectors. More than 2 in 10 early childhood educators (22%) are women born outside of the U.S., while 8% of people working in all sectors are women born outside of the U.S. Many women of color in the early childhood field, particularly Black women and Latinas, are paid even less than their peers who are white, non-Hispanic women. 

Children and families suffer when child care workers are not supported. Just this past fall federal Pandemic-era stabilization grants via themerican Rescue Plan Act  were allowed to expire, removing essential funding from early educators and families with young children. For some background, the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden in March 2021 to stabilize the child care sector during the pandemic. It saved the child care industry from utter collapse during that crisis, but since the child care system was broken way before COVID 19, the expiring funds have once again thrown families and providers into turmoil by causing a major labor shortage of early childhood educators, the shut down of child care centers, a reduction in much needed slots for children and an increase in costs.

When it comes down to it, early childhood educators make all other work possible and should be treated as the foundation that they are. This means paying the people who provide care family supportive wages, and ensuring their work is given the economic value it’s due! When early childhood educators benefit we all benefit!

Be sure to check out our other blogs in this series

Child Care 101 : A History of Child Care in the U.S and the Nixon Veto

Child Care 101: Child Care Deserts

Child Care 101: The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG)