Who Cares about Child Care?
By Kate Bezanson and Sarah Kaplan
A Canada-wide system of high-quality early childhood education and child care ticks almost all the boxes: it’s good for kids, it more than pays for itself, it generates increased revenues for governments, it creates jobs, it fosters gender equality, it’s an anti-poverty measure, and it massively assists parents, especially women, in remaining in the workforce. Despite this, Canada remains an international laggard in child care, with varying quality, long waiting lists, high fees, and, in most of the country, a patchwork rather than a system. In spite of the clear and broad social benefits, polls of voters suggest that child-care policy hasn’t seemed to rank very high. While a recent poll suggested that an overwhelming majority of Canadian parents support greater government investment in child care, historically, they only connected this to voting intentions while their kids were in need of it, but haven’t prioritized it once their kids were older. Politicians have interpreted this to mean that it is not worth the political and fiscal expense for the potential return in votes in the next election.
This interpretation was wrong before the pandemic, and all the more so now as we begin to rebuild from it. When policymakers worry about how investments in child care might correlate with voter intentions, it leads to three kinds of policy errors. First, it underestimates women and their solidarity with one another, among families and between generations, especially grandparents. Second, it asks people to rank a policy option that most didn’t have the benefit of experiencing and can’t fully imagine—regulated child care is only available for 27 per cent of Canadian kids, and its quality and cost vary widely. Third, as Canadians, we tend to undervalue, under-resource and under-recognize care. Unpaid care work is not counted in the GDP, and paid care work is poorly compensated.
More than anything, the political focus on polling ignores the real benefits of accessible early childhood learning and care. Evidence shows that investing equivalent amounts of money in the social infrastructure of child care vs. physical infrastructure and construction creates more jobs for men and women throughout the economy. Our Canadian experiment with universal child care in Québec has shown that investments paid back dividends to both the provincial and federal governments. And higher quality early childhood learning contributes to better educational outcomes, higher wealth creation, and decreased social spending in other areas.
Yet, the resistance to funding child care is changing. During the pandemic, the whole country has seen exactly how fundamental care work is. The last year has shifted our understanding of care work and has shown how the lack of an adequate care system is holding back our economy, our kids, our families, and especially mothers.
Read the rest of the op-ed at The Hill Times: Who Cares about Child Care?