Spring is finally here. Flowers are blooming, birds are chirping and if you’re a parent your child is probably breaking something right now, or yelling at you while you’re in the bathroom, or asking you for a snack. Wait, not that snack. Okay, THAT snack but can you please cut off the crust?

It’s been a year of snack-giving and non-stop question answering. And as much as we LOVE spending 24 hours a day with our children and dependents, 7 days a week, for an entire year, the truth is we need a break and NOT just a temporary one. The truth is, things were tough when it came to childcare way before the pandemic, and if this year has proven anything (besides the fact that we really need to pat ourselves on the back for not collectively pulling out our hair and running screaming into the woods) it’s that we need UNIVERSAL CHILD CARE. And we have an opportunity RIGHT NOW to demand it by calling for an investment in care infrastructure that will truly lead our country to the road of recovery.

The Biden-Harris administration recently introduced a new recovery plan called the American Jobs Plan which gives $2 trillion dollars to infrastructure--focusing on rebuilding bridges, upgrading ports, and a much needed $25 billion for child care facilities;[1] and coming soon is the American Family Plan.

Though we understand and value the importance of uplifting physical infrastructure, there MUST also be investment into our care infrastructure in these packages. Just like we need to build bridges to drive on to go to work, we need to build a care infrastructure so parents can go to work, children can get early education and thrive, and childcare and care workers are paid living wages!.

Want proof that childcare is part of our basic infrastructure that gets us to work just as much as bridges and roads? A full 32% of all women between the ages of 25 and 44 were just pushed entirely out of the labor force, losing much-needed jobs, due to a lack of childcare this past year, including women who are childcare workers.[2] These are job losses which have disproportionately impacted Black, indigenous women of color due to structural racism.

Building a care infrastructure is both job creating and job sustaining. Good care jobs are created and parents can go to work. We simply cannot recover without prioritizing childcare. We need to enable our breadwinners to get back to work to support their families and we also need to enable childcare and care workers to earn living wages!

Women, particularly women and moms of color, have borne the brunt of this pandemic, with child care workers and millions of women having been forced to leave the workforce. The White House itself has noted that 2.3 million women have been forced out of the labor force. In January alone, 1.4 million fewer mothers of school-aged children were working for pay than had been in the previous year. [3] Of those who lost their jobs —over 600,000 are Black and 618,000 are Latina. [4]

Investment in care is LONG overdue. Tell your member of Congress that childcare MUST be included in the next recovery package!

The pandemic has laid bare the devastating economic and personal costs of our country’s failure to invest in care or have a care infrastructure. And women and moms, especially women and moms of color, have taken the most responsibility for caring for our kids, our sick family members, our aging relatives and neighbors and supporting the people in our lives with disabilities; all while sacrificing our own careers and wellbeing in the process.

What exactly are we asking for to be included in this next recovery package? A comprehensive, federally funded child care system that ensures all families have access to high-quality, affordable child care that is available when and where they need it and invests in the education and compensation of a diverse workforce such as the Child Care for Working Families Act.

Any reduction in a commitment to this would be a devastating loss for families, our labor force, and our economy. Decades of underinvestment is what made the pandemic so disastrous for our communities. And it’s costly not only for women, moms, and disproportionately women of color and their families, but costly for our economy overall. For example, “the risk of mothers leaving the labor force and reducing work hours in order to assume caretaking responsibilities amounts to $64.5 billion per year in lost wages and economic activity.”[5]

In the face of a historic crisis, we have a historic opportunity, to finally implement the care infrastructure our families have needed for so long. We cannot let this moment pass us by. Women, moms, children and families should not be forced to carry the burden of caretaking and job loss any longer. Let’s build a vibrant future where childcare is a structural investment for our nation. We know that with your help now, we can make this future a reality.

- Nadia, Nina, Kristin, Donna, Elyssa, and the whole MomsRising.org/MamásConPoder Team

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