A caring crisis

For women, in particular, hopes of climbing back out of this recession will hinge on one key, lingering question: What happens to the future of childcare?

The realities of the lopsided division of care inside American households has been on full display since work left the office and entered the home — for those who kept their jobs, anyway. Women in 2020 still take on the overwhelming majority of child care responsibilities, spending 40 percent more time watching their children than fathers in couples in which the parents are married and working full time, according to a study by economists at Northwestern University.

Then child care facilities started closing by the thousands. Since January, 1 in 4 child care providers have lost their jobs and as many as half of all child care slots could be lost with centers closing, according to a study by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.

During a regular recession, women may have entered the labor force to supplement their partners’ lost hours; in this recession, with the child care safety net gone, that option is not even available.

When the layoffs started, Diana Niermann remembers some parents cried telling her they were out of a job and would have to pull their kids from daycare. Her Portland, Ore. facility, called the Kozy Kids Enrichment Center, closed on Friday the 13th in March — a bad omen if she ever saw one, she thought then.

An infusion of nearly $160,000 in a loan from the Paycheck Protection Program helped keep her from shutting down permanently, but the money was drained quickly to pay her staff, rent and to bring her facility to coronavirus regulation standards so she could reopen in June.

Of the 92 children Kozy Kids served pre-coronavirus, 17 came back. Much of Niermann’s staff, discouraged by future prospects in the child care industry, didn’t return either. Her director quit on re-opening day.

“I kept thinking in the beginning I was like, ‘Well maybe I’m not supposed to do this,’ but I’ve been through so much that I was like, ‘I’m not giving up, this is what I’ve done my whole life. This is what I believe in: good, quality care,’” Niermann said. “Child care doesn’t pay very much. We need to switch that.”

So much of the reason behind that are policies that have often overlooked the needs of working women, said Heather McCulloch founder and executive director of Closing the Women’s Wealth Gap, an initiative working to advance policies that build women’s wealth.

“We don’t recognize women’s roles and so we never ask, ‘Do women benefit?’ McCulloch said. “We completely ignore or undervalue the role that women are playing, not just in their own families as breadwinners, but also as economic drivers of the economy. If women don’t benefit, the policies need to change because we’re all going to lose.”