Black History Month Reflections on Child Care and Education

During Black History Month, we celebrate the achievements of the Black women and men that came before us. However, we can’t properly appreciate the weight of those triumphs without acknowledging the exploitation and marginalization of Black people that has served as a backdrop in our country’s history.

In Massachusetts, and across the country, our child care system continues to perpetuate inequality. Our child care system is rooted in the exploitation of Black labor, primarily women, who now constitute 41 percent of the early education workforce and are paid 78 cents less per hour than their white peers.

Toleration of unacceptably low wages paid to Black early educators and lack of proper investment in education for all children in Massachusetts is creating lasting disparities in learning, wages, and racial equity.

The average cost of early education and care in Massachusetts is $43,118 per year for a family with one infant and one toddler in care, an incredible financial burden for any household. The average family paying to put their infant in care spends nearly 23% of its income on that one child’s care; lower income families pay even higher percentages of their household income. When we consider that 18 percent of Black children in Massachusetts live in poverty, disparities in access to high-quality early learning programs are undeniable.

At Neighborhood Villages, we firmly believe that equitable access to high-quality early education and care is a racial justice issue and we are committed to shining a light on the roots of inequity as well as on solutions for rectifying it. For example, when we first launched our podcast, No One is Coming to Save Us with Lemonada Media, we explored the causes of our broken child care system, highlighting how it was founded upon and continues to perpetuate systemic racism.

From the inception of this country, Black women have provided the unjustly free or low-wage labor upon which our child care system was built. During the slavery era, Black women had no legal right to care for their own children; Black children born into slavery were considered the property of their enslavers. Moreover, Black women were tasked with the education and care of white children rather than their own. Today, structural racism is reflected in many elements of the nation’s broken child care system, but is particularly evident in the low wages paid to the early education workforce and the lack of benefits educators receive. If our country’s leaders  fail to place value on child care and provide it the public resources it needs and deserves, then Black families and educators will continue to suffer most.

To turn the tide, it’s critical to come together as parents, teachers, providers, and advocates to  lift up the voices and experiences of Black children, families, and educators and to co-create meaningful and inclusive solutions. Solutions that address financial barriers for accessing care, solutions that improve cultural competencies in early learning programs, and solutions that provide early educators with higher compensation and professional development opportunities. All children deserve access to high-quality early education, all teachers deserve living wages and professional benefits, and all families deserve to thrive. 

To achieve a more racially just Massachusetts, the Commonwealth must commit the public funds that are necessary to support the cost of an early education and care system that enables access for Black children, affordability for Black families, and fair wages for Black educators. 

At Neighborhood Villages, we are advocating for more families to be eligible for lower cost child care, improved compensation for early educators, and for direct-to-provider operations grants to be made permanent. 

We have transformative legislation before our elected leaders and we are in a position to right historical wrongs and address racial disparities in early education and care by putting in a well-funded reformed system in place that works for all children, families, and educators.