Skip to main content

Child Care

Quality, affordable child care

Families want and need access to quality, affordable child care that offers their children a safe environment, nurturing relationships with caring adults, and positive early learning experiences, while supporting their own ability to work. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic further destabilized an already fragile, underfunded child care system that falls short of what babies and families need to thrive and our economy needs to stay strong. As child care rebuilds following the COVID-19 crisis, robust public funding is imperative for ensuring a diverse system of high-quality programs and providers is accessible to all families. Doing so will not only support our economic recovery, but will ensure our future workforce – today’s babies and toddlers – arrive at school ready to learn and prepared for future success.

Take Action

Tell Congress to #ThinkBabiesAndAct and support quality child care! 

Tweet Email

THE FACTS

Only 4.2% of families with low or moderate income have access to child care assistance through the Child Care and Development Fund.

THE FACTS

The child care workforce has shrunk by more than 11% since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

THE FACTS

Over 63% of mothers with infants and toddlers are in the labor force.

Legislation At-A-Glance

The Build Back Better Act 

This bill, largely based on the Child Care for Working Families Act, would ensure families have access to quality child care options that meet their diverse needs and support their children’s healthy development. It would ensure that the vast majority of families pay no more than 7 percent of their income for child care, with particular attention to the need to invest in and build a supply of high-quality infant and toddler care. It would also provide increased access to training and professional development, as well as increased compensation for the early educators who do the critical work of caring for our young children.

What it could mean for babies:

More families across the country would have access to high-quality, affordable child care. This would provide more babies and toddlers, including children with disabilities, with the developmental support they need to arrive at school ready to learn and prepared for future success. 

Advocacy Tools & Resources

Think Babies Storybook: Read and share this storybook which features stories from Strolling Thunder™ families and makes the developmental case for the policies babies and families have long waited for: high-quality, affordable child care, the expanded Child Tax Credit, and a national paid family and medical leave program.

Child Care Advocacy Toolkit: Use these tools to urge your policymakers to Think Babies and make quality, affordable child care a reality for all working families. 

State of Babies Yearbook: 2022: Use national and state-by-state data on the well-being of infants and toddlers to call on federal, state, and local policymakers to improve outcomes for babies and families. 

How COVID-19 is Impacting Child Care Providers: Stories from the Field: Read the first-person perspectives of child care providers and families on the ongoing child care emergency and amplify their voices in your advocacy efforts and conversations with policymakers.