Promoting Family and Child Well-Being through Federal Childcare Policy
By Katharine B. Stevens
CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY
July 9, 2024
Testimony submitted to the Senate Finance Committee on “Examining the State of Child Care: How Federal Policy Solutions Can Support Families, Close Existing Gaps, and Strengthen Economic Growth.”
Chairman Wyden, Ranking Member Crapo, and distinguished members of this committee, thank you for inviting me to submit testimony for the Senate Finance Committee’s upcoming hearing on childcare.
My name is Katharine Stevens, and I am the founder and president of the Center on Child and Family Policy. My organization focuses on the science of early development and its implications for how policy can advance the well-being of our nation’s young children, especially children from low-income families.
It is an honor for me to submit the following testimony on this hearing’s crucial policy topic.
Why Improving Childcare Matters
Over the past several years, federal policymakers on both sides of the aisle have become increasingly focused on the importance of high-quality childcare. An expanding body of brain science has underscored the great importance of children’s earliest years, establishing that young children are continuously and rapidly learning, wherever they are and from whomever they are with — including in childcare. And childcare’s role in both economic productivity and gender equality in the workplace has also been moving to the forefront of policy debates.
Yet even as policy emphasis on childcare grows, current childcare systems are not working well for many families across the nation. In particular, children of lower-income working parents too often lack access to high-quality care, even as research is clear that it matters for exactly these children the most. This is damaging to young children. It is also greatly disempowering for lower-income parents, who care about their children’s well-being as much as any parent does.
The dominant response to this serious problem is a push for a much-increased federal role in early care and education (ECE), often promoted as “public education starting at birth." In this ever more influential vision, the federal government will fund a nationwide "infrastructure of care": a centrally-directed system of care and education programs for all children from birth to kindergarten entry.
The problem federal policymakers must address, however, is not that too many families are raising their own young children. Nor should the policy aim be to increase the number of children under age five who are in government-regulated, non-parental group care. Instead, the federal government must focus on boosting access to high-quality childcare for lower-income children, so those children have the same opportunity for healthy development that more affluent children already have.
Two principles should guide federal policymaking towards this end:
Direct resources to the children and families for whom most is at stake. Federal childcare and preschool funds should be targeted to parents who must work for economic survival, yet do not have access to high-quality providers for their young children — helping families who cannot pay, rather than those who would simply prefer not to.
Empower low-income parents. Childcare is not the "essential infrastructure" of our society. Families are. Federal policy must bolster, not diminish, parents' crucial role in their children's well-being and development.
With these ends in mind, federal policymakers should aim to: 1) Boost choice for low-income parents; 2) Shore up family childcare; 3) Break down bureaucratic silos to amplify impact of current funding; 4) Leverage a broader range of federal funds more effectively; and 5) Promote state leadership in early care and education.
See Also
Policy Brief ~ June 4, 2018
Report ~ April 8, 2021