The NOICTSU Rundown – Episode 3: “Good Childcare *Can* Work”
In the first two episodes of the series No One is Coming to Save Us, the podcast highlights the many systemic reasons for why the child care system in our country is broken and how families, providers, and educators are struggling. (If you missed it, catch up on our episode two “Rundown”)
Fortunately, it’s not all bad news – there ARE places where high-quality, affordable child care actually exists!
Episode three, “Good Child Care *Can* Work”, dives into a few of these examples and discusses how an early education and care system that works can become a reality for everyone.
Episode 3: Good Child Care *Can* Work
In “Good Child Care *Can* Work” host Gloria Riviera begins by speaking to Charles and Caitlin Vestal, an American couple who moved from Portland, Oregon to Berlin, Germany – and how they plan to stay there because early education for their son is FREE. If that seems crazy, it gets even better: in Berlin, every neighborhood has at least one child and family center that offers full wraparound services for parents, including therapy, unemployment resources, food support, and more.
The result of having this level of support? “We are able to focus on being good parents, not on how to afford to be good parents,” says Charles.
But you don’t have to go as far as Germany to find a program like this. Gloria also visits our neighbors in Quebec, Canada, where all parents – no matter how much money they make – pay no more than $8.50 a day for child care. Why would Quebec do such a thing? Canadian economist Pierre Fortin explains,
“Our research found that the amount of money that the government is making out of the additional income from women entering or staying in the labor force is much higher than the $2 billion that the government has to pay in order to finance this system.”
That’s a huge ROI. If the United States came within striking distance of Quebec’s numbers of female labor participation, about 5 million more women would join the country’s workforce.
If this makes you want to hyperventilate, you’re not alone. So, take a deep breath with the podcast’s “Tell It Like It Is” Special Correspondent Kristen Bell as she takes you on a meditative journey to fully visualize what it would be like if America had a program like this.
Here’s the twist: we already do have one! That’s right – America has its very own high-quality, federally-funded child care system, created for our military. This program is known for its affordability, high-quality care and robust teacher training. It was created in 1989 through the Military Child Care Act, which required the Department of Defense to fund a child care system with appropriate teacher to child ratios, good wages for teachers and, above all, quality education. Military Child Care is essentially a blueprint for how we can build an affordable, high-quality early education and care system that is available to everyone.
In this episode, Linda Smith, Director of the Early Childhood Initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center and an original architect of the military child care program, explains how it all happened – and why the military continues to prioritize this program today. Fun fact – Linda is also a member of Neighborhood Villages’ Board of Directors!
The military isn’t the only employer that provides high quality child care. Gloria also talks with Jenna Johnson, the head of Patagonia, Inc., about Patagonia’s seemingly utopian child care program for its employees. Launched in 1983, Patagonia’s Great Pacific Child Development Center, located at the company’s headquarters in California, is open to any Patagonia family that wishes to use it. Johnson enthusiastically talks about how this investment is a no-brainer, because the company understood from its earliest days the program’s long-term value – especially when it comes to reducing turnover and increasing staff productivity and commitment-level (and stoke factor!).
Johnson says, “This experience shouldn’t be unique. This should not be exceptional. This should just be the norm.”
So how can we provide this level of high-quality, affordable child care to everyone?
For that answer, Gloria turns to our very own Neighborhood Villages co-founders Lauren Kennedy and Sarah Muncey to talk about what a high-quality, early education and care system can look like – and how Neighborhood Villages is already implementing one by incubating scalable programs that address the biggest challenges faced by child care providers and the families that rely on them.
“All these things you saw in Berlin, we’re doing them right here in Boston. Because we know that if you want families to thrive, they can’t be stressed and they can’t be worried,” Sarah says.
And right now, parents are stressed. And worried. Leslie Forde, founder of Mom’s Hierarchy of Needs, wrote more about this recently in a guest blog post on The Desktop: Is Good Childcare the Answer to Better Mental Health? (Spoiler alert: it certainly helps.)
We know that good child care holds the answers to a lot of solutions – from better mental health, to better health outcomes, to economic mobility, to equity in education, to a more equal and just America. As the episode closes, Gloria notes to Lauren and Sarah, “When I listen to you guys, it sounds like you are doing this with the intention of providing it to everyone.”
We are.
Lauren says, “Preschool should not be the privilege of those who could afford it. It should be the right of every single family. And I don’t mean preschool as starting at three, I mean preschool that begins at birth should be the right of every child and should be something we provide parents support with from the earliest days.”
We know great child care is possible. Now, it’s up to us to make it happen – for everyone.
Tune in to our fourth and final episode, available on June 3rd.