As the industry consolidates, it runs the risk of putting profits ahead of kids—and setting back the movement for universal childcare.
The picture of American childcare is one of chaos. The sector is still down 100,000 educators from pre-pandemic levels, nearly 10 percent of the workforce. Meanwhile, staffing shortages have led to agony for parents running into waitlist after waitlist. Thousands of programs have shuttered permanently, unable to keep the lights on. Only one player in childcare is expanding: large, for-profit chains.
Together, the top 11 chains—almost all of which are backed by private equity or publicly traded, most prominent among them being Kindercare, Bright Horizons, Goddard, the Learning Experience, and Primrose—serve around 12 percent of the 7.5 million children who attend center-based care every day. Their density is higher in many urban and suburban areas. With a mixture of franchising and company-run sites, they are also growing and consolidating rapidly. While there are tens of thousands of small childcare outposts that happen to be organized as for-profits but in practice barely break even, these chains are a different breed: They ultimately answer to investors or shareholders first, parents second.