Forty-seven. That’s how many days of child care Kathryn Anne Edwards’ 3-year-old son missed in the past year.
RSV, COVID-19 and two bouts of the dreaded preschool scourge of hand, foot and mouth disease struck one after another. The illnesses were so disruptive, the labor economist quit her full-time job at the Rand Corp., a think tank. She switched last month to independent contract work to give her more flexibility to care for her son and 4-month-old daughter.
Chicago educator Tamisha Holifield spends time with her 2-year-old daughter Rian on Dec. 29, 2022, at Nichols Park in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.
In the first and even second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, multiweek quarantines and isolations were common for many Americans, especially children. But nine weeks of missed child care, nearly three years in?
“The rest of the world has moved on from the crisis that I’m still in,” said Edwards, who studies women’s issues. “That’s sometimes how it feels like to me.”
People are also reading…
The arrival of vaccines for younger children and the end of quarantines for coronavirus exposure were supposed to bring relief.
Instead, families were treated to what some called a “tripledemic”: Flu, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus cases collided, stressing children’s hospitals and threatening the already imperiled child care system. Even parents of babies with less serious cases of COVID-19 ran into 10-day isolation rules that taxed the patience of employers.
A record-high 104,000 people missed work in October because of child care problems, surpassing even early pandemic levels, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows. Child care-related absences fell to 59,000 in November, but numbers still surpass typical pre-pandemic levels.
The instability has hurt many working parents’ finances. Most of those who missed work in October because of child care problems didn’t get paid, according to an analysis from the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.
Doctors are bracing for the number of sick children to rise after families gathered for the holidays.
“I think we’re going to have to be ready to do it all over again,” said Dr. Eric Biondi, director of pediatric hospital medicine at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Maryland.
Illnesses among teachers and children strain a child care system already short-staffed.
“This is the worst year I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” said Shaunna Baillargeon, owner of Muddy Puddles Early Learning Program in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. She faces “a constant battle of staff and children being sick with a different virus every day,” with no backups if a teacher calls in sick.
At the Washington, D.C., day care where Jana Williams teaches, illness has caused classroom shutdowns almost weekly since October. Her 19-month-old daughter is enrolled there, coming down with the same viruses.
“It’s stressful,” she said before Christmas, when she was home with her sick toddler. “You want to stay home and care for your child. But then it’s like, you have to get to work.”
During the early months of the pandemic, women in the prime of their careers left the labor market at a rate far exceeding men. They were more likely to work in service-oriented fields that were decimated, and they often were caring for children, Edwards said.
Women have since returned to the workforce, particularly women of color, said economist Diane Swonk of professional services firm KPMG.
But the participation of prime-age working women in the U.S. lags most industrialized nations, Swonk said. Advocates have long blamed the country’s lack of universal preschool and paid family leave.
Finding child care and heading back to work has proved far from simple. At the pandemic’s height, more than one-third of day care jobs were lost, Edwards said. Staffing hasn’t fully recovered. As of November, the country had 8% fewer child care workers than before the pandemic, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows.
The strong labor market has driven up the cost to hire new workers. That means child care spots are pricey and hard to find. Even centers with openings may close when staff or kids are sick.
That babies and toddlers are prone to illnesses adds to the challenge. In the wake of COVID-19, day cares are more anxious about accepting a snotty toddler.
Isolation guidelines have hit parents of babies especially hard. While older preschoolers who have COVID-19 may return with masks after five days, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends children under 2 stay home for 10 days, or until they test negative twice, 48 hours apart.
One issue is masks aren’t recommended for the under-2 crowd. Their smaller airways mean wearing them can increase the risk of suffocation, according to Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio.
Not all centers are adhering to the CDC’s guidance. But many are following it to the letter, or even going further.
When Chicago educator Tamisha Holifield and her daughter had COVID-19 in May, the toddler had to miss 15 days of child care. Bouts of colds followed, in what Holifield described as a “constant whirlwind” of sickness that has been stressful both financially and emotionally.
“It’s a major inconvenience. But I’m a single parent, so I don’t have a choice,” Holifield said. “If I drop the ball, the game is over.”
About 1 in 3 child care workers are going hungry
About 1 in 3 child care workers are going hungry
Of the nearly 1 million child care workers in the United States, my colleagues and I found in a recent white paper that 31.2%—basically one out of every three—experienced food insecurity in 2020, the latest year for which we analyzed data. Food insecurity means there is a lack of consistent access to enough food. This rate of food insecurity is anywhere from eight to 20 percentage points higher than the national average.
In Washington and Texas, one study found 42% of child care workers experienced food insecurity, with 20% of child care workers experiencing very high food insecurity. High food insecurity is when a person reports reduced quality and variety of diet. Very high food insecurity occurs when a person reports disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.
Another study in Arkansas found that 40% of child care workers experienced food insecurity.
Effects of food insecurity
People who are food insecure are at increased chances of being in poor health, with conditions like hypertension, diabetes, asthma, arthritis, and depression, among other chronic diseases and health conditions.
Low wages and food insecurity may contribute to child care workers’ high stress levels. When child care workers experience stress, they tend to reduce the amount of positive attention to children and increase their punitive responses to children’s challenging behavior.
Causes of food insecurity
Overall, child care workers’ wages are low, with the median hourly wage being $12.24 per hour. This means child care workers make little more than fast-food workers, whose median pay is $11.64 per hour. What child care workers make is not considered a living wage.
Low wages meant more than 53% of child care workers from 2014 to 2016 received public assistance, including Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. This compares with the 21% of elementary and middle school teachers who received public assistance in that period. When so many child care workers rely on public assistance, it reveals how many of them don’t make enough money to get by.
Nearly all U.S. child care workers are women, and half are people of color. This workforce is central to providing high-quality early childhood education to children up to 5 years old.
Early childhood researchers and policymakers have focused on increasing the education and training of the child care workforce to bolster quality. The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment recommends that lead teachers, the primary teachers in early childhood classrooms who are responsible for the day-to-day management of a classroom, at least have a bachelor’s degree and that assistant teachers at least have a child development associate certificate or equivalent. Despite the fact that the more education child care workers have the higher-quality care they deliver, many states require only a high school diploma or equivalent, and some states do not have any education requirements for entry-level positions.
On average, child care workers who have a bachelor’s degree do make more than those who don’t. However, going to college doesn’t pay off as much for child care workers as it does for those in other fields. Child care workers with a bachelor’s degree average $14.70 per hour, which is just under half the average earnings overall of those with a bachelor’s degree—$27 per hour.
It’s one thing to expect child care workers to get more education to become better at what they do. But it is also important to ensure that additional education pays off.
Policymakers have recently focused on child care workers’ wages. For example, the Build Back Better legislation would raise payment rates to meet the cost of care for children from birth to 5 years old. The cost of care would include wages.
