As we look toward 2025, it is critical that we promote the well-being of young children and their families by investing in care. Every day, young children are nurtured by a wide range of caregivers in a variety of settings—including teachers, parents, grandparents, and other loved ones and community members. In order for young children to thrive, we need to support every care arrangement and ensure care providers are financially supported so that they can do the critical work of providing loving and enriching care.
Sandra, a mother in North Carolina, told CSSP that the work of caring for her two children in their early years involved a web of loving adults. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles who watched her children as she completed her own education and worked. A child care center that taught her oldest Spanish—and where her daughter now returns as a teenager to volunteer. A friend of the family who became her go-to child care provider when her youngest was born with a serious health condition that compromised her immune system, and made the illnesses shared at child care programs risky. A devoted father who cares for the children on weekends and takes off work when the youngest is sick.
At the center of this web stands Sandra herself, who has worked hard “to build my home around love” and made the decision to take a lower-paying job as a home health aide so she could have the flexibility to be there for her children when they need it most. Reflecting on what care means to her and her family, Sandra explains, “to provide care is to be, of course, sensitive to my children’s needs, to be a nurturer, to do everything from cooking and cleaning, to reassuring them, to affirming them…. For me, it is a big responsibility. It’s very important and it’s something that I put a lot of effort into because it means a lot to me.”
Why Care for Kids?
Caregivers across the country spend an enormous amount of time and energy making sure the young children in their care are loved, nurtured, and have everything they need. This is true of parents and other family caregivers who, like Sandra, are not paid for the care they provide, and it is true for caregivers in the informal and formal child care workforce.
All of this care work is absolutely essential for young children to thrive, but caregivers—and the children for whom they care—too often struggle because care is not adequately supported. The United States is the only wealthy country that lacks a national paid parental or caregiving leave program, leaving too many parents and caregivers in the of choosing whether to put food on the table or be there for their children when they need them most. Meanwhile caregivers in the child care workforce are paid such low-wages—averaging just under $14 per hour— that they often struggle to support their own families. This financial hardship can be compounded by the stress and anxiety of trying to manage an enormous responsibility with little societal support, and places a particular burden on women— and especially, Black, Latine, Indigenous, Asian American Pacific Islander, and immigrant women— who do the vast majority of care work, paid and unpaid.
To set children up to succeed, we need to better support every care arrangement, and all of the caregivers in their lives, so that caregivers can focus on the critical work they do every day raising the next generation.
The Opportunity Ahead
There is growing recognition of the need to better support care—and agreement around potential policy solutions. During the pandemic, temporary investments in children and families—from the Child Tax Credit to stabilization grants for child care providers— demonstrated the benefits of supporting caregivers through direct federal investment. As these temporary supports have ended, a growing chorus of voices across the government have called for revisiting these solutions to ensure security and stability over the long term. Most recently, the Surgeon General of the United States—in a report titled, fittingly, Parents Under Pressure—recognized the toll that caring for young children can take on parents and caregivers in the absence of basic family supports, and called for a national paid medical and family leave program, expanded assistance for child care, and more.
If policymakers want to ensure children thrive, it is important to invest in care, and caregivers. Specifically, Congress can support young children and caregivers when it tackles major tax legislation next year, not only permanently expanding the Child Tax Credit, to make it easier for families with children to make ends meet, but also directly investing in caregivers by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit to enable full-time caregivers to qualify due to their unpaid care work, as modeled in Congresswoman Gwen Moore’s Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act. Meanwhile policymakers can and should look beyond the tax code to better support caregivers and child care providers—including by investing directly in child care providers and programs and creating a national paid family and medical leave program.
Taking on this unfinished business will not be simple, but at the end of the day effectively supporting caregivers will set young children—and all of us—up for a stronger future.