Sara Mauskopf
Sara Mauskopf is the co-founder and CEO of Winnie. She’s also the mom of three young children and vocal advocate for high quality child care and early education for all.
I met with a venture capital investor the other day who told me they invest in the future of work. Video conferencing apps, tools to increase employee efficiency and communication platforms were among some of their firm’s big investments. I told this investor that there was one tool—one piece of infrastructure—that could keep at least half our population engaged and productive in the labor force. The investor took my bait and asked “what” and when I responded “child care” they laughed.
But I was not being glib. Since the pandemic began, millions of women have been driven out of the labor force due to lack of child care. Well before the pandemic, one third of employees in the U.S. had left a job due to caregiving responsibility. This is not a new problem. Without high quality and affordable child care, parents are unable to work.
Who is motivated to solve this problem for working parents, especially mothers who disproportionately bear the burden of lack of child care? Certainly the private sector plays a role. Winnie, as a marketplace for child care, has hundreds of thousands of parents per month using our platform to search for care so they can return to work or stay in their jobs. But this is not enough. Parents still struggle to afford the care offered by many providers on our platform, spots at coveted daycares are limited, and it’s difficult for parents to assess quality.
Other companies are also working to improve the child care industry, but it’s an uphill battle. Most daunting challenge is the nationwide staffing shortage impacting the child care industry. According to a recent NAEYC survey, 8 in 10 child care providers are experiencing difficulty hiring and retaining qualified staff. Without enough qualified providers, capacity is even further reduced in child care centers. The child care industry is currently operating at only 88% of its pre-pandemic capacity.
The good news is we can fix this. President Biden’s Build Back Better plan invests in affordable, high-quality child care for American families. The President’s plan would provide additional funding to middle and low income families to pay for child care and support the cost of high quality care by providing living wages for early education teachers. Child care centers will be able to pay teachers more so they can retain dedicated employees and attract new top talent to the field. The quality of care will go up and with more caregivers, there will be more spaces available for parents.
And there’s more. In addition to public investment in child care and universal pre-k for three and four year olds, the Build Back Better Agenda would invest in teachers and schools to better prepare our children for the challenges that their generation will be faced with solving, be it climate change or the next global pandemic.
It’s time to start acting. According to Time’s Up President Biden’s full caregiving package “would create at least 1.6 million new jobs for women and enable at least 3 million women to join the labor force” – and this impact only compounds over time. An analysis by McKinsey & Company found that implementing policies like universal child care could add $2.4 trillion to the GDP, not to mention bring gender equality to the workforce. If lawmakers want the future of work to include everyone – men and women, parents and non-parents – call on Congress to enact President Biden’s Build Back Better package today.
