Congress must support the Child Care for Working Families Act! TAKE ACTION

Dear Friend,

Raising kids is no joke. Working is no joke. Keeping a roof over your head, and trying your hardest to create the best life for yourself and your family is certainly not a joke.

But what is a joke is knowing the solutions that help families thrive, but doing nothing. So far, no real significant, comprehensive childcare policies have passed Congress!

SIGN NOW to tell Congress that child care struggles are no laughing matter, it’s time to support the Child Care for Working Families Act to expand access to affordable, high-quality early learning for children and families!

The very not funny truth is that many of us are struggling. Child care is unaffordable for too many families; some families report paying a third of their take home pay to child care (!). [1] It is truly alarming that across the country, the annual price of infant child care often exceeds the annual cost of in‑state tuition at a public four‑year university. [2] In addition to this, too many parents– mostly moms– are pushed out of the workforce due to the lack of affordable child care. [3]

The pandemic only made this situation much much worse, and our child care system hasn’t come close to recovering. The labor shortage of child care workers is very real. Early educators are some of the lowest paid workers and often do not have access to critical benefits, like healthcare. [4] Child care workers NEED to be paid family-supporting wages and so far, our country has let them down. Our economy will not be able to fully recover and thrive if moms, women and caretakers continue to be crushed by the lack of investments in the care economy. Individuals and families can’t solve the care crisis on their own. We need to treat care as a public good, which requires public policies that allow our children to have the best start in life. 

This is why it’s time for Congress to get serious about supporting working families by co-sponsoring the Child Care for Working Families Act!

Congress just re-introduced the Child Care for Working Families Act, which establishes a child care and early learning infrastructure that ensures working families can find and afford the child care they need to succeed in the workforce and children can get the early education they need to thrive. It would jumpstart our economy by creating roughly 700,000 new child care jobs, help 1.6 million parents—primarily mothers—go back to work, and lift one million families out of poverty.

The Child Care for Working Families Act:

• Makes child care more affordable for working families, by creating a federal-state partnership to provide financial assistance for working families with children ages 0-13
• Expands access to preschool programs for 3- and 4-year olds, by providing funding to states to establish and expand a mixed-delivery system of high-quality preschool programs
• Improves the quality and supply of child care for all children
• Increases wages for child care workers, by ensuring that all child care workers are paid at least a living wage and earn parity with elementary school teachers with similar credentials and experience
• Better supports for Head Start programs, by providing the funding necessary to offer full-day, full-year programming

Congress can’t keep treating our families like a punchline, tell them to ACT NOW by co-sponsoring and supporting the Child Care for Working Families Act!

Our elected leaders CANNOT say they actually care about our families if they do not support key policies that address the lack of affordable child care. 

Policymakers continue to make families and providers bear the brunt of the cost of child care, instead of making sure the wealthy and big corporations pay a fairer share of taxes and investing in the public good that we know child care is. 

Supporting the Child Care for Working Families Act and supporting efforts to prioritize addressing these challenges ensures that child care is prioritized as the true infrastructure investment needed for our nation and its families. At MomsRising we are so grateful to have one of our members, Tiffany from West Virginia, speak at the bill's reintroduction today on the importance of this piece of legislation and why it is so critical for caregivers like her around the nation.

We can unite to create a better future for all of us. Let's raise our voices together for child care!

- Nadia, Nina, Lauren, Diana, Donna, Kristin, and the whole MomsRising.org & MamásConPoder Team

References:
[1] Working Families Are Spending Big Money on Child Care
[2] New Report Finds Fewer Child Care Providers and Increased Prices, Highlighting Need for Significant Federal Investment in Child Care
[3] The Child Care Crisis Is Keeping Women Out of the Workforce
[4] Still Underpaid and Unequal

You can unsubscribe from this mailing list at any time.