National ECE News & Reports
Who's Paying Now? The Explicit and Implicit Costs of the Current Early Care and Education System
The chronic underfunding of early care and education is compromising the well-being of educators and the children they teach while threatening the economic security of millions of families in the U.S. The current system demands large contributions from the parents of young children, both through payments for services and through forgone income when parents drop out of or reduce their participation in paid labor markets to provide care on their own. Investments from federal, state, and local governments have provided some relief for parents, but those investments have generally been far too small.
Click here to read the full report from the Economic Policy Institute.
Why the U.S. Has Resisted Universal Child Care
Most Americans say it’s not ideal for a child to be raised by two working parents. Yet in two-thirds of American families, both parents work.
This disconnect between ideals and reality helps explain why the United States has been so resistant to universal public child care. Even as child care is setting up to be an issue in the presidential campaign, a more basic question has recently resurfaced: whether mothers should work in the first place.
Click here to read the story on the New York Times website.
