Desiree, a mother of three who lives near Santa Rosa, California, starts work at a local HVAC supply company every morning at 4:30. While she doesn’t mind the predawn start, it does pose one big challenge, especially now that she has a newborn: child care. The nearby child care center that offers subsidized prices doesn’t open until 7:30 a.m., and that “isn’t working for” her family. Desiree has a problem on the other end, too—children can’t stay at the center for more than nine hours, but the finishing time of her shift is inconsistent and once or twice a month she has to stay as late as 6 p.m. While she is currently on maternity leave, if she can’t find an affordable program that matches her hours, Desiree told us over text, “I would probably end up having to ask my job to change my hours … and if they can’t work with me or aren’t hiring for a later shift I would probably be forced to look for a different job.”
Child care policy conventionally focuses on the cost, availability, and quality of care options. By focusing on the provision of childcare instead of the more holistic ecosystem of family life, however, this approach misses all of the variables that go into parents’ decisions about care. In a broader sense, the misalignment is symptomatic of America’s lack of a comprehensive family policy: Schedule quality is a powerful force shaping how families engage with care, yet because labor policy and child care policy are seen as separate arenas, the nexus goes largely unaddressed.
Elliot Haspel is a Senior Fellow at Capita.
Elise Anderson is a Manager at Capita’s Family Policy Lab.