Blog Post

Why We’re Fighting for Child Care

It’s official! We’ve launched Child Care NOW, a campaign of child care advocates and allies developed by the National Women’s Law Center.
This campaign is focused on raising awareness among policymakers and the public about the child care challenges facing America today – affordability, quality, and provider compensation. Child Care NOW offers tools and resources to help stakeholders elevate child care as a national priority. Together with leaders and allies, Child Care NOW aims to convince policymakers to make a significant investment to expand access to high-quality child care, enabling parents to work and giving children to the high-quality care they need to succeed.
You may be wondering, “What does this mean, exactly?” and “Why NOW?” Fair questions! We’ll explain.
During the 2016 presidential election, child care was one of the few issues that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump talked about on the campaign trail. Both had plans (albeit very different ones) to help more families afford what has become an incredibly expensive necessity for most working parents.
Well, it’s been eight months since Election Day and families are still struggling, so we think it’s time to get serious about improving the lives of working parents and their children.
Increasingly, there’s some consensus among liberals and conservatives that this is a serious problem facing working families. We plan to partner with allies, parents, providers, grassroots, grasstops, business leaders, and others to increase public awareness and build support for a major federal investment. New funding would focus on greatly expanding access to high-quality child care for all children who need it and raise pay for child care providers.
For one of our first major campaign efforts, we have joined forces with ZERO TO THREE’s Think Babies^TM campaign to collect real stories from parents and providers around the country.
Did you spend months and months on a wait list for infant care? Tell us.
Did you drop out of the workforce because you couldn’t afford child care? Tell us.
Are you a provider who works full time but can’t make ends meet for your own family because your wages are too low? Tell us.
Ultimately the stories that we collect will help us paint a vivid picture for our lawmakers and help the public understand what is working for families and what is not. But one thing is clear – we are long overdue for a major federal investment in child care for working families and their children.
Families need Child Care NOW.