Tell Congress to RISE to the occasion and co-sponsor the Child Care for
Working Families Act to support breadwinners!
[ [link removed] ]Take Action Now
[ [link removed] ]TAKE ACTION
Dear Friend,
Quarantining during this pandemic brought out a myriad of hobbies for many
of us, such as binging on streaming tv shows, trying your hand at whipped
coffee, TikTok dance sessions, impersonating your favorite work of art,
and bread baking. Oh there was so much bread baking.
Though pandemic baking was awesome (and tasty), the sad truth is that many
of our actual breadwinners haven’t been able to bring home the dough for
their families. According to the Census Bureau, just past January some 1.6
million fewer mothers living with school-age children were actively
working compared with a year before.[ [link removed] ] That’s a lot of breadwinners
pushed out of much-needed jobs.
[1]The Child Care for Working Families Act is a recipe to ensure moms
aren’t pushed out of the workforce. Tell Congress to Act now!
Women, particularly women and moms of color, have borne the brunt of this
pandemic, with millions of women having been forced to leave the workforce
(and much-needed jobs) often to take on caretaking roles. The White House
itself has noted that 2.3 million women have been forced out of the labor
force. [ [link removed] ]
This is unacceptable. While some were waiting for pandemic bread to rise,
the labor force of moms and caregivers fell. Unfortunately, this is NOT a
new problem. Decades of underinvestment made this pandemic disastrous for
moms and families. 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.” [ [link removed] ]
[2]Urge your members of Congress to co-sponsor and support the Child Care
for Working Families Act to expand access to affordable, high-quality
early learning for families!
The lack of support for caretakers may have been crumb-y, but thankfully,
there is a solution that would help address this ongoing childcare crisis!
Today, Congress will be re-introducing 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
[3]Tell Congress to cosponsor the Child Care for Working Families Act to
help our breadwinners bring home the dough!
One in three women of childbearing age cited child care as the reason for
being pushed out of their jobs.[ [link removed] ] And research has also shown that about
one-third of essential workers have a child at home.[ [link removed] ] Moms, families,
early educators, and caregivers need a long term investment in a care
infrastructure. Too often politicians think of childcare as a “personal
issue” - as in our own personal problem to solve. But the pandemic has
laid the truth we already knew bare. The crisis working families are
facing is not due to personal failings, but is a larger problem that needs
larger solutions. Prioritizing child care can improve the well-being of
our children, our own peace of mind and productivity at work, the care
workforce, and our communities!
Like yeast to bread, supporting child care will help our economy rise,
especially as we move forward towards recovery. Right now, the U.S. loses
$57 billion each year in economic productivity and revenue losses due to
child care—roughly the cost of legislation pending in Congress that would
result in major funding and reforms to our current child care system. [ [link removed] ]
We must create a child care system that meets the needs of children,
families, communities and child care providers.
High quality, affordable child care benefits everyone. We as a country
want to ensure that all children, families, and communities can thrive—and
we have the ability to do that by coming together to invest in a bright
future for all of us.
*The more of us who raise our voices on this issue, the more noise we’ll
make and the more powerful we’ll be! After you take action, send this link
to your friends and family so they can sign on
too: [4][link removed]
If you’re like most parents and caregivers, you’ve spent over a year
providing childcare for the children in your home. As we move into
pandemic recovery, we must ensure that child care is prioritized as the
true infrastructure investment is for our nation and its families.
Together, we can make a difference. Let’s bake our bread and eat it too by
raising our voices for childcare!
- Nadia, Nina, Donna, Kristin, and the whole MomsRising.org/MamásConPoder
Team
References:
[1] [5]Tracking Job Losses for Mothers of School-Age Children During a
Health Crisis
[2] [6]The Employment Situation in February
[3] [ [link removed] ]How COVID-19 Sent Women’s Workforce Progress Backward
[4] [ [link removed] ]Working Moms Bear Brunt of Home Schooling While Working During
COVID-19
[5] [ [link removed] ]A Basic Demographic Profile of Workers in Frontline Industries
[6] [ [link removed] ]Want to Grow the Economy? Fix the Child Care Crisis.
[7] [ [link removed] ]Garcia, Heckman, Leaf, and Prados: The Lifecycle Benefits of an
Influential Early Childhood Program, 2016
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