Season 2 of the Six Hundred Atlantic podcast looked at a child care sector that’s struggled for decades at the expense of families and the economy. But the pandemic reignited interest in reform by highlighting child care’s problems and importance.

In a bonus episode, child care experts Beth Mattingly and Tom Weber discuss the latest developments – including worries that the moment for major reform is passing.

They talk about how historic worker shortages have been exacerbated, whether an increasingly remote workplace will change child care demand, and why more businesses are realizing better child care is critical to economic development. They also discuss why the politics of reform have proven so difficult.

JAY LINDSAY:

Hi, I'm Jay Lindsay. I'm the host of the Boston Fed's Six Hundred Atlantic podcast. So, we decided to focus Season 2 on child care, because we, at the Fed, thought the issue was really important, but also under-covered. This is a sector that's been in crisis for decades, and its problems have long impacted innumerable families and the overall economy. But as important as these problems are, it's been an under-the-radar issue. It just hasn't really fired up the public. Well, the pandemic changed that a bit, because it's demonstrated the importance of child care to a lot of people who just weren't thinking about it. People are talking about reform now more than in quite some time. And, of course, there have been developments since we wrapped up the podcast. So, we wanted to update things by talking to some child care experts about what's been going on.

Here with us today, we have Tom Weber. Tom is the former commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care. It's a post he served in for more than six years before moving on to his current role as the executive director of the Massachusetts Business Coalition for Early Childhood Education.

We're also joined by Beth Mattingly. She's an assistant vice president here at the Boston Fed. Beth was one of our chief consultants in Season 2. She's been researching child care for years, including at her previous post at the University of New Hampshire. Just since the pandemic started, she's written about the overall state of the sector and a proposal that would cap child care costs for some New Englanders.

We'll jump into this right away. You know, I just referred to this, in the pandemic's early days, child care advocates expressed hope the crisis would open people's eyes about the need for major reform, and it has to some degree, certainly. But today, has the ground shifted as much as either of you thought it would? Can you talk about how it has or hasn't and what needs to happen? And Tom, maybe we'll start with you here on this one.

TOM WEBER:

With respect to the child care crisis, I think the ground has shifted in important ways, but thus far, roughly only in proportion to the damage inflicted by the pandemic on the child care sector and not yet in proportion to the deep, fundamental systemic challenges that rendered child care and education inaccessible and unaffordable and inadequate for too many working families long before the pandemic.

We've seen federal assistance for child care increase, and that's helped stave off the ruin of the child care sector, and our elected officials deserve credit for that. But it hasn't come close, really, to providing the resources necessary to reverse the tide that, for example, in Massachusetts, saw a 25% of our licensed child care programs closed in the decade leading up to the pandemic, or has created annual child care costs for families that easily rival the expenses for housing or the cost of a college education.

So, so far, I think we've bought a little extra time for a portion of the child care sector, but certainly not a permanent solution.

BETH MATTINGLY:

Tom, I think that really frames this nicely. I want to draw some attention to, and we may get to this later, Jay, to one of the issues that's been quite newsworthy later and that we're doing some research on here at the Boston Fed, and that is child care workers, that fundamentally this sector relies on very low paid labor in a field that requires often advanced education, training, certification, ongoing education. So, that the pandemic highlighted this, and we're having a hard time in this labor market recruiting and retaining workers in child care centers. So, that's another part of the problem. It's not just that it's unaffordable for families, but it's not really workable for most providers.

JAY LINDSAY:

Yeah, let's ask about that. So, that's something that's been in the headlines. The child care worker shortage is causing some centers to just shut down. And I’m wondering, you talked about low pay, but I'm wondering, is this something... There's a couple of questions I have here, I guess. What's at the root of this? Was it avoidable? And is there a way out of this?

BETH MATTINGLY:

Catherine Tonsberg on my team and I have been studying this a bit and have a piece we're going to soon release and really looking at the root cause of how this system evolved and how structurally this is a field that was dominated by women of color. Historically, this labor was done in homes, going back to the days of slavery and evolving from there. We kind of contrast it with the emergence of public school teaching, which was a much more professionalized field. So, if we want to go way back, some of the roots are to how this labor was exploited hundreds of years ago and continues today. So, that's one of the roots. I'm forgetting the second part of your question, Jay.

JAY LINDSAY:

Well, it's basically we have the staffing shortage today. I'm a lay person. I look at it, and you figure it's pandemic related. So, what is it? What is at this shortage right now post-pandemic?

BETH MATTINGLY:

I think the pandemic highlighted this and exacerbated it, but it's a field with high turnover because the wages are so low. People leave for other fields. People leave for other centers that can pay just a little bit more per hour. So, this is a problem endemic to the sector. Because it's a private pay system, primarily, it means that it's out of reach for most parents. But even at that out-of-reach level, it's hard for providers to pay living wages.

JAY LINDSAY:

Tom, any thoughts on this?

TOM WEBER:

I think that Beth makes some fantastic points. And, obviously, I'm not a working mother, and yet I think it's incredibly important that we take this as a learning opportunity to listen to women in the labor market. And women are speaking to us with their feet. They've fled the labor market in record numbers. I think we've all certainly seen the Pew Institute research that concluded that labor market participation among women is at the lowest point that it had been in 35 years. So, we've seen a considerable amount of evidence from families with young children and especially from women with young children that the balance between work and home, between being engaged in the labor market, in caregiving, was an incredibly fragile balance even before the pandemic, and the pandemic really broke that tenuous set of circumstances for many, many working women.

I think we certainly have ample evidence to show that all of the historic trends that Beth cited to are still on display within the existing labor market for early childhood educators. In Massachusetts, turnover rates before the pandemic were about a third annually. That means that we had a third of our early childhood educators and a third of our early childhood education administrators who are turning over on an annual basis. The lack of competitive wages, the lack of a very effective pipeline for sourcing and training and retaining early childhood educators was already a major, major concern for the sector, and it has been exacerbated, as Beth said, in the course of this pandemic.

And today, we see child care programs that are struggling to achieve the capacity that they had pre-pandemic, not because the demand isn't there from families. It's because they're having an impossible time finding early childhood educators to keep classrooms open. And so, this remains a major, major issue. There was no effective pipeline for early childhood educators pre-pandemic. The pandemic has only made the matter worse, and it's among the areas that we're really going to need to focus on if we're going to build a sustainable early childhood education system that's going to work better for working families.

BETH MATTINGLY:

I want to pick up on some of the gender dimensions that Tom points out, because, absolutely, the aggregate statistics show overwhelmingly women bearing the brunt and women leaving the labor force. Now, that often makes sense economically, because we know, on average, women make less money than men do. So, if someone's going to stop work, from an economic perspective, that works. But at the same time, I want to acknowledge the dads who've picked up a lot during this, who may have made labor force sacrifices, who may be exiting or cutting back on work and flexibility. And I want to move the child care discussion beyond, yes, it is a working moms issue, it's a working dads issue, it's a working parent issue, but it's also an employer issue. It's a society issue, right? So, if people aren't able to contribute to the economy in the ways that they otherwise would be, we’re all losing out. So, it's both- and. It's not just a parent issue, a mother's issue, a father's issue. It's also a business, economy, broader issue.

JAY LINDSAY:

Thanks for bringing that up. Obviously, it's one of the reasons we wanted to focus on child care in this podcast, because it is so broadly important. Before we get off of this particular question, we talked about the staffing shortage. It's historic. And we talk about the pay. I mean, low pay is obviously something that we hear about frequently when it comes to child care. So, is solving this particular problem, which is in the headlines right now, is it really just about more money for better pay? Either one of you can feel free to take that one.

TOM WEBER:

I don't think that there's any lasting solution to a sustainable workforce for early childhood education that doesn't include a substantial strategy to increase compensation. I think it's perfectly reasonable, given, as Beth said, that the expectations on the field are to be highly educated, trained in child growth and development, and to bring a level of skill and competency to the work commensurate with the profession. That simply is not reflected today in the compensation levels of most early childhood educators, which are being provided at an hourly rate that's not much beyond the minimum wage. It's not a family-sustaining profession. If you engage in this work, you're doing it at considerable sacrifice and not in a way that's going to really be rewarded. The remuneration is simply not commensurate with those expectations.

The labor market, as we know, is really, really tight right now. And so, better options exist. And until we make this a competitive profession with a competitive wage, we're simply not going to be successful in addressing those turnover rates that have been so problematic.

BETH MATTINGLY:

Yeah, I agree with that, but I think even if we supplemented wages and stabilized the workforce, we still have an affordability crisis. Child care is out of reach for so many families, so we need to do something, and that's, again, an investment of dollars. The other piece we talk a little bit less about is accessibility, where the child care is, if there's a slot for the age of the child or children that you need it and what that looks like. And I think that with more and more people working in a 24-hour economy needing child care outside of traditional business hours, and especially a lot of those people being people of color, we are doing a disservice and building in inequities if we just say, "Okay. The system is pretty much... The structure is there. We just need to pay for it.

There's, I think, a fundamental rethinking. What does it mean to provide child care if a parent works the night shift and doesn't have another adult home to watch the child? What does it mean if that parent needs care to sleep during the day? What does it mean if someone works the swing shift from 3:00 to 11:00? How did they meld school and child care? So really thinking about the flexible options that people need. And, on that, what does it mean if people need different amounts of care or different hours of care week to week? I mean, that's the economy we live in. So, I think child care needs to be responsive to that, or we're still going to have some problems.

TOM WEBER:

I would, if I can, I would simply like to underscore that Beth's response, I think, is really important for listeners to understand. Many of the features of what is currently plaguing the child care system, if addressed in isolation will only exacerbate the other challenges. And so, Beth took the occasion to note that increasing compensation for the workforce, if left on its own, likely would lead to a further exasperation of the affordability issue and likely could lead to a further reduction in access to families as well. So, it really is, I think, an excellent point and is indicative of the fact that we really need a systemic response that addresses access and affordability and quality, as well as the early childhood education workforce challenge, in conjunction with one another, if we're really going to get to a system that's going to work for families, particularly those families that historically have had difficulty accessing the current system.

JAY LINDSAY:

Yeah, clearly, it's not just as simple as throwing money at it, which is, I think, a point that you're making here, that it is a system-wide thing. But the problems of the sector, they're decades old, and there's been a resistance, I guess, or maybe a lack of willingness to take up that kind of complexity. And I want to ask a little bit about why over time this sector has, I guess, struggled to get the kind of attention that it needs. There was a couple of things we talked about in the podcast. I'm going to throw them out there. I'm wondering how relevant you think these attitudes still are, and certainly feel free to throw in a couple of your own. But one thing we talked about: societal attitudes towards women with young children who choose to work. And then another thing we talked about was, and you've hit on here, the general lack of value on the work being done. Are there other factors that have made this such a hard thing to tackle?

TOM WEBER:

I think that they absolutely are still factors. I've had the opportunity to present hundreds of times on all of the evidence of the value and importance of early childhood education, the societal benefits, the return on investment, which is unbelievably strong, stronger than really any other public policy that I've ever come across. And typically, at the end of those presentations, I'm asked, ‘How is it possible that we aren't further along yet in providing this as a service to families?’ And I think the simple reality of that is, is that gender politics have played a massive, I think, role in preventing us from getting at these stubborn issues. It is, again, something that historically has been seen as the role of family to solve.

The care of children has fallen in large measure on the shoulders of families, and within the family unit, while not exclusively on the shoulders of women, in high disproportion on the shoulders of mothers. And that has led to a model that assumes cheap, or in some cases free, care, and that continues to play out within the market for child care today, where there's a number of forces that continue to suppress the ability to provide quality child care in a way that's successful and affordable to many working families. And so, I think it's part of the shift that we see occurring now, in employer recognition of this as a broader workforce and economic development issue.

In order for them to have the robust workforce that they desire, including a healthy participation among women in the labor market, there's a renewed energy in looking at child care as an economic development and workforce development tool.

JAY LINDSAY:

Beth, I wonder if you have any thoughts about the historical factors we've talked about, and maybe there's others you'd want to bring up.

BETH MATTINGLY:

Yeah, I agree with just about everything Tom said. And I think that underlies that the role of women and also the class structure of which women were working and entitled to child care. I mean, it really grew up around a white middle-class family, and we see that echoed today in middle-class jobs, you know, the white-collar, professional, nine-to-five kind of work. If you look at the general social survey, gender roles certainly have shifted and perceptions towards women have shifted over time, but that shift can take a while to show up in our policymaking, and there's a long legacy. And I think this is big. This is expensive. This isn't a one-time, if we infuse cash. This is a long-term investment along the lines of public school. And that's a big commitment, and the timeline of politics is long.

Tom’s absolutely right about the return on investment, but that happens way down the line. So, if a politician spends the money now, it's way past their political timeline to reap that benefit when that child produces more in the economy, or doesn't get arrested, or continues their education. So, I think the time horizon, it's hard to see that in the immediate term.

TOM WEBER:

Beth, I'd add that the shift that is beginning to occur... And I want to be careful not to overstate that any real significant shift has occurred in a permanent way. I think we're still very much at a point in time where the fate of child care remains unresolved. But one shift that is occurring in the course of this pandemic is the return on investment is not only viewed as the return on investment in investing in that child, which is a long-term return on investment, but on the investment in the family unit. Which is to say, ‘Is this inhibiting the ability of working parents today to participate fully and productively within the labor market?’ And I think that there is a growing recognition that the answer to that is, ‘Yes, it's impacting workers today, and we aren't reaping the benefits of the strong long-term return on investment.’ So, I think that that's a palpable shift that hopefully will have consequences in terms of enabling us to make some real meaningful progress in addressing some of these longstanding child care concerns.

JAY LINDSAY:

Thanks, Tom. I want to shift just a little bit here, a real specific question, I guess I should say a question specific to the pandemic, and that is the rise of remote work. Either of you could take this on. How does the increase in remote work affect this sector? For instance, does it reduce demand for care? Does it push policymakers toward any particular model of care? Does it exclude some groups? Because this is a real change a lot of workers are experiencing, and it certainly has to be affecting the child care sector.

BETH MATTINGLY:

I think those are really good questions, Jay. I don't know, Tom, if you know of any research on this. I can tell you some of the things I'm thinking about. I haven't seen good studies yet, and I think it's too soon to really know, because the pandemic... We're not just dealing with remote work, we're dealing with health concerns. But I do think with remote work, when parents work may be shifting, where they want care might be shifting. I think about after school. If parents are home after school, they may shift what they want for older children. So, those are the things I'm thinking about.

TOM WEBER:

Jay, I think it's a really important set of questions, and I think this is what we've learned thus far. And Beth is correct in saying that it's a moving target. But there are certain things that I think are resolving that are important to recognize. The first is that for many employers, particularly for those that employ high percentages of so-called white-collar employees, the shift to hybrid and remote is no longer viewed as being a feature of the pandemic economy. It's being viewed by many of these employers, and there's tons of surveys that indicate this, as a permanent feature of the way in which they intend to organize their workforce. So, we're going to see a significant increase in remote working and in hybrid work situations into the future. Your question is, ‘Is this going to impact the child care sector?’ And the answer is, ‘Absolutely.’

Now, some may argue that what you're doing is creating more flexibilities for families, so that will decrease the demand. I think that remains to be seen whether or not that's true because the children are still with us. People may be working from home. They may be working non-traditional hours. But in order to be engaged and productive in their work, there's still going to be a significant need for the care of their children and, ideally, care that is developmentally enriching for their children. And so, I think what we're going to experience, and we're already seeing this, is that the child care sector is going to need to evolve to create flexibilities that are commensurate with the flexibilities that employers are now offering their employees, and that could very well lead to different models of care – provision for non-traditional hours, for example – than presently exist in any large measure within the child care system.

JAY LINDSAY:

Thanks, Tom. So, I kind of want to wrap up the discussion here. It's one of those typical end of discussion questions where I ask you to prognosticate a little bit. The basic question is this: I mean, are you confident sitting here today that the future of child care is brighter than its past? And talk to me a little bit about why or why not? Beth, maybe we can start with you.

BETH MATTINGLY:

I would say I absolutely hope so, and I see some key markers that we could head in a new direction. I mean, some of the policy debates that are happening federally and at the state level are promising. I'm not sure. It's still too soon to say, and right now, child care is in crisis. We don't have the workers. Centers are closing. Parents can't afford care. So, I'm not confident. I'm hopeful.

JAY LINDSAY:

What gives you hope?

BETH MATTINGLY:

Some of the proposals on the table right now, a lot of the attention. The worker shortages give me some hope. If businesses can't recover because parents can't come to work because they can't provide care for their children, that's an opportunity to mobilize a group that hasn't really been mobilized around child care.

JAY LINDSAY:

Tom, any thoughts, looking ahead?

TOM WEBER:

I'm in the same camp as Beth, where I certainly recognize that there is a greater level of energy right now and attention being provided to child care. There has been meaningful progress over the last year and a half through some increased federal investments, primarily, and through new attention and energy coming from stakeholders who previously were disengaged, including the business community, which in large measure has really sat out discussions around child care. But, as evidenced even from the group that I'm involved in, the Massachusetts Business Coalition for Early Childhood Education, there's a significant, I think, increase in recognition that this is an important economic and workforce issue for the broad-based business community and for the economy broadly.

However, this isn't the first time in our nation's history that child care has been at or near the top of public policy discussions. And I think we have to admit to ourselves that in prior instances, the measure of progress at this moment feels as though it was far too little. And I think it remains to be seen whether or not this moment is going to deliver more urgently and robustly than those prior moments. I think the opportunity certainly is more present than it's ever been. I believe that the arc of times bends towards an issue like this, which is so incredibly important for our society on every level. And yet, I think it's not a done deal until it's a done deal. And so, I think for those that are interested and committed to this, and we all should be, the moment to lean in is now, and the achievement is within our reach, if we're willing to commit ourselves to it.

JAY LINDSAY:

Thanks for listening to Six Hundred Atlantic. You can find our first two seasons and subscribe to our mailing list at bostonfed.org/sixhundredatlantic. Listen and subscribe to Six Hundred Atlantic on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Tune-In.