Postcards from the Rogue Valley

Finding affordable, accessible, quality child care in America has become a Rubik’s Cube. Getting the squares to line up is harder than ever.

I had no idea how lucky I was raising our two young sons in Rhode Island in the 1980’s, when my husband’s and my combined salary barely reached thirty thousand and the closest inlaw (the hat trick of many neighbors) lived 3,000 miles away. We were able to share sitters with friends who had a child similar in age to ours, sitters who glistened in everyway at a price we could afford, even if it added an hour to my daily commute.

As I’ve watched my children look for daycare for their children, I sometimes find myself thinking, “Dang, maybe we should just move to Denver,” where it took our younger son and his partner, both with demanding jobs, a year and a half to solve their child care crisis. 

With our older son, we did just that — we moved. When Carl and his Ethiopian sweetheart relocated from East Africa to New York City and had a baby, we realized that the traveling requirements of Carl’s job (organizing local coffee farmers along the Equator) and Kidist’s unfamiliarity with just about every aspect of American life cried for support. Winding down our work lives at that point, Tony and I sold our home of 25 years in Rhode Island and rented a small walk-up in Brooklyn. Helping care for our grandson for three years turned out to be a gift for all of us.

Child care desert

Half of Americans live in a child care desert, with only one available child care spot for every three children in need of care. In Oregon, the number of communities lacking adequate child care options approaches 72 percent. Ashland is no exception.

I recently joined a meeting between our State Representative Pam Marsh and a group of Ashland parents and daycare providers to talk about the gaping child care needs of local families. Pam Marsh is a standout in today’s crippled legislative process, possibly the most progressive and effective state representative anywhere in the country. 

“This conversation is perilously overdue,” Marsh began.

“There is no way I can have a family and work at the same time,” said Axia, with her youngest child, about to turn one, bouncing on her knee. “Affordable options simply don’t exist here and infant care is phantom.”

Jess, the mother of two young children, went to law school and worked with various nonprofits before quitting when she couldn’t find adequate child care in town, no matter how hard she looked. “The way we are structuring our society is pulling women out of the work force at all levels,” she said.

Rachel, who provides day care to vulnerable three to five-year-olds through one of the state’s few subsidized programs, talked about the other side of the equation: staff burnout. “Pay incentives,” she cautioned, “aren’t enough to compensate for the burnout providers feel, having to work with inadequate staffing and resources and with kids who desperately need more support than we can provide.” Unable to replace staff lost in the pandemic (quiet quitting reaches far and deep), she has run the center solo the past six months with sporadic help, though technically the sixteen children merit a staff of three.

The lay of the land

In every other post-industrial country in the world, child care is considered a public responsibility, with governments spending an average of $14,000 per year for the care of their youngest citizens. In New Zealand, for example, the figure is $10,359.

In the U.S., where child care is seen as a private family matter, public support for families needing child care plummets to $500 — in a country that leads the post-industrial world in its child poverty rate paired with the highest GDP in the world. (When the United States started recruiting women for World War II factory jobs, the government subsidized childcare for the first, and only, time in the nation’s history, serving an estimate 550,000 to 600,000 children.)

In Ashland, like nationwide, preschool and child care are predominantly delivered through a patchwork of private providers, whose annual fees can approach a years’ college tuition. For households with an annual income of $58,000 — the median for families aged 25 to 44 in Ashland — the math is impossible. 

And as Jess’s story shows, affordability is not the only hurdle. Child care that extends beyond 1 pm is a rarity here (in part because of licensing regulations) and waiting lists are long even for four-hour slots.

“It’s no wonder that so many women with young children lose footing in the work force,” said a local early childhood educator. She called it the “motherhood penalty.”

Initiatives underway

The good news, Marsh told the group, “is that we have a new governor who talks about making child care a top priority and we have legislative leaders who are really stepping into the space and trying to elevate it.” 

Not surprisingly, Marsh is leading the charge. One bill (HB 3005) puts 100 million dollars into child care infrastructure, intended to grow day care “slots” in communities across the state. Another bill (HB 3029) provides incentives for badly needed child care providers — loan repayment subsidies, stipends, scholarships for students in early childhood professional development and housing assistance. 

A third bill would launch what’s being called The Southern Oregon Early Childhood Support Network, a coordinated network targeting young children living with trauma. 

A few weeks ago, the Ashland City Council announced an ad hoc task force to address the paucity of child care options in the city.

Holes in the system

Nevertheless, in a child care system with many holes, legislation here and elsewhere faces stiff obstacles.

Staff compensation is one. The median hourly wage for childcare workers in the U.S. is currently $10.39, nearly 40 percent below the median hourly wage of workers in roughly comparable occupations. Indeed, the first roll out of the initiative to grow new day care slots across Oregon quickly hit a roadblock: not enough takers for the salary offered.

“I drive by Chick-filet on the way to my day care job, I see the sign ‘Now hiring, $15/hour,’ and I ask myself, ‘Am I crazy?’” said another provider in the Saturday afternoon group.

If the pay is so low, why is the cost of staffing — which accounts for roughly three-quarters of the cost of running a daycare program — so high? “Licensing requirements that require a high ratio of staff are hugely important for safe, quality day care but bad for the bottom line,” the National Center on Early Child Care Quality Assurance explains.

Finding suitable facilities at an affordable rent is no less challenging. 

Last summer, Pam Marsh secured special funding to create a day care program with 20 slots for struggling families in Ashland. There was no shortage of families, but months of searching failed to turn up an affordable setting that also met the outdoor space required for state licensing. The project never got off the ground.

Marsh recently introduced new legislation focused on barriers to creating suitable child care sites.                                                                                   

Why quality child care matters

The arguments in support of a robust child care system are as plentiful as slots in the current system are rare. As the Saturday afternoon meeting wound down, participants came up with a list of why child care matters. It went like this.

• The economics seem more apparent than ever: the pandemic reminded us that childcare is a linchpin of our economy. Put simply, parents can’t work without it. 
• High-quality child care keeps children safe and healthy. It helps children develop the social and emotional skills they need for success in school and in their lives outside of school. For vulnerable children, building these skills can make all the difference.
• For families struggling with formidable circumstances — from poverty to the death of a spouse — it makes gut sense that supporting a child carrying these stressors can empower parents too.

Ruth, who balances the gifts of her Waldorf-inspired preschool program with the limitations of what she can provide, fought back tears as she talked about what she wished for beyond the success of her own program: “A world in which we are connected, where people care about other people’s children and not just their own, where we help people we’ll never meet.”

Seconding that emotion, Pam Marsh pushed hard for local action.

“We can no longer avoid the issue of child care,” she said. “We have families in our community who need it, it has become an issue for growing our workforce, it’s an issue for attracting families to our community, it’s an issue for supporting students and for people working in our community institutions.”

“We need to come together,” Marsh continued. “We need a community campaign, we need a plan, and then we must act. This is doable.”

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