Child care

Before the nineteenth century, childcare was rarely a problem because most mothers cared for children at home. Enslaved mothers and farm women often took their children to the fields with them. During the Industrial Revolution, however, the working class’s need for childcare became more urgent. When women were recruited for jobs during World War II, the US government solved the childcare dilemma by establishing temporary government centers. The number of working women continued to increase over the course of the twentieth century, and by the twenty-first century, finding dependable and affordable childcare had become a top priority for working parents. The debate was about who should pay for it, how to pay for it, how much should be paid for it, what provisions employers should make, and whether those changes should be mandated by the state and/or federal government. Conservatives believed the government should not be in the childcare business, while liberals believed childcare should be supported by not only federal and state governments but also by employers. In 2023, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimated that 68.9 percent of women with children under the age of six and 77.8 percent of mothers whose youngest child was ages six to seventeen were in the workforce.

Brief History

The US government has historically been reluctant to become involved in the issue of childcare. By 1840, a few childcare centers were established for White children. The first kindergartens were established by mid-century. The first organized daycare centers for working-class mothers were established by Progressive reformers such as Jane Addams (1860–1935) in the early twentieth century.

During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal provided aid to low-income mothers with young children, establishing the welfare program that became increasingly controversial over the course of the twentieth century. When the United States entered World War II in 1941, the government used the provisions of the 1940 Lanham Act to set up government childcare centers, which were attended by some 100,000 children. Participation in the program was not based on income.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson established the Head Start program as part of his War on Poverty to provide access to educational, social, and health services for low-income children from birth to five years. The chief purpose of the program since its inception has been to prepare children for school. Research shows that the program has had a significant impact on the participants’ development of language, literacy, vocabulary, and spelling skills.

In 1971, Congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which would have provided funding and training for well-regulated daycare centers, but President Richard Nixon vetoed the bill and insisted that childcare was a family matter. Following the passage of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, low-income parents began receiving childcare subsidies or vouchers. All qualifying parents with children under the age of twelve received a tax credit of up to 35 percent of childcare costs.

Childcare Today

More than two-thirds of America's children have two parents in the workforce, according to the Center for American Progress in 2023. High-quality daycare is expensive, and many facilities have long waiting lists. Depending on their economic and social situations, working parents use various forms of childcare. According to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics in 2024, 86 percent of children ages 3 to 5 who had an employed mother and were not yet enrolled in kindergarten had primary childcare arrangements with a non-parent (2019), and 69 percent of children ages 3 to 5 who had an employed mother and were not yet enrolled in kindergarten attended center-based care for any amount of time (2019).

After-school care within schools has become common in the United States, and parents pay to enroll their children in these programs, if they are available. Others look to community, religious, or private institutions to meet their needs. Additionally, many children look after themselves after school.

Fatalities due to events such as shaking, drowning, and fires have become all too common in childcare situations. Fatalities related to childcare are more often recorded by individual states than nationally. However, in a national study of childcare-related fatalities between 1985 and 2003 in the United States, Julia Wrigley and Joanna Dreby counted 1,362 child deaths. Of these, 656 occurred in the children’s own homes, while 270 occurred in the care provider’s home, and 110 took place at childcare centers. High-profile news stories have kept the dangers of childcare in the spotlight. In 2019, five children between the ages of eight months and eight years died in a fire at the Harris Family Daycare in Erie, Pennsylvania. Four of the children were siblings. The daycare had only one smoke detector. Because of a lack of affordable childcare, some parents turn to relatives or unlicensed childcare providers. A three-month-old boy died in an unlicensed daycare in Tennessee in 2024, where a woman was watching ten children under the age of three. The woman stated that she put the child down for a nap and later found him unresponsive. Although an autopsy was conducted, the cause of death could not be determined.

Educators and researchers have developed a greater understanding of child development since the 1990s, placing greater emphasis on the need for high-quality childcare. New research indicates that children who grow up in nurturing environments are more likely to adjust well to life’s problems as adults. Conversely, adults who received less nurturing as young children are more likely than others to have anger management problems and tend to perform more poorly in academic situations.

Childcare experts point out that the major problem with US childcare is the lack of government oversight and low pay. They suggest that there should be one worker for every three infants, but few small facilities meet these recommended guidelines. Many childcare workers have little or no professional training. While childcare centers must be licensed by state and local municipalities, day-to-day operations receive little oversight. Only after an incident occurs is a facility likely to be forced to close.

France is often cited as an example of the ideal childcare model because preschool education is overseen by the government, and childcare workers must have college degrees. Mothers who care for their own children receive tax breaks. The US military also has a well-respected childcare system designed to serve the needs of the growing number of women in the military. In 2013, President Barack Obama announced a plan to establish “universal prekindergarten” in the United States, but his plan met with considerable resistance from conservatives who opposed the federal government mandating a policy that usually was governed at the state level. In 2021, seven states and Washington, DC, had universal prekindergarten for four-year-old children. That year, President Joe Biden also proposed a plan to make free preschool available to all three- and four-year-old children. However, the proposal was part of Biden's Build Back Better plan that was not passed by Congress.

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