Fixing the U.S. Child Care Crisis Starts with Investing in Care Journalism

During the COVID pandemic, news coverage of child care in the United States surged, spotlighting the issue of our broken care system like never before. For the first time in modern history, child care became a front-page story. Historic investments came flooding in to support our country’s lacking child care system — first through the American Rescue Plan and then as many states and localities came up with funding solutions to stabilize the industry and provide workers a livable wage.

Child care was at an inflection point, and, as the “care crisis” made headlines, this provided an opportunity not only to spotlight the industry’s fractures, but also document what success might look like.

We know storytelling efforts that focus on success and solutions — also called “solutions journalism” — work to influence readers and drive change. But this kind of deep-level reporting requires an understanding of the economic and pragmatic forces that govern access to child care. Why is it so costly for families? Why are there not federal funds allocated to care for and educate children aged 0 to 5 years the way we support children in grades K to 12 in public schools? Why, if it is expensive, are the staff so underpaid and jobs going unfilled? And, why is child care not considered a major economic priority for our country, even as it consistently remains one of the top barriers for people — especially women — to access paid work?

A deep understanding of the context surrounding policy issues like care comes with the time and skill honed during “beat reporting,” a nearly extinct form of journalism in which a reporter covers a narrow topic and covers it well (think: education beat, labor beat). It still exists at some of the larger, more traditional outlets, but in a time of frugality and cuts to local newsrooms, many media organizations instead prioritize of-the-moment viral stories that will generate traffic and ad revenue.

At the Better Life Lab, we believe that storytelling is a powerful tool to shift mindsets, open up new possibilities, and spark action. Part of the way we can do that is through journalism — both in traditional media outlets and creative ways, such as through shareable visual graphics. In the case of child care, we found many reporters willing to write on the topic, but few were being compensated well for their efforts. Time is money, and that deep understanding of a complicated system that impacts the lives of so many — children and families, the care workers and providers they rely on, and the business owners that depend on a stable workforce — takes time.

In 2022, when our team at Better Life Lab decided to cast a wide net to map and better understand various innovative solutions in child care across the U.S., we realized we had only skimmed the surface. We decided to offer grants to reporters for two reasons: (1) to continue to deepen and broaden the coverage on issues impacting child care, and (2) to support and develop a cohort of journalists who specialized in care issues (or “child care beat” journalists).

Through these reporting grants, the Better Life Lab created opportunities for 10 reporters to tell the story of child care and its pivotal role in our economy, communities, businesses, and families. These stories allowed reporters to highlight the long-term solutions toward high-quality, affordable, accessible universal child care that local communities were forging in the face of federal inaction.

By providing editorial support, we were able to experiment with different mediums and ways to engage audiences, including graphics and visuals, audio stories, and a short documentary film. We showcased that child care problems exist across the country, in every region, whether urban, suburban, or rural, and at every socioeconomic level — though the lack of child care disproportionately harms the most marginalized and least-resourced populations — and the solutions required must be responsive to the needs of diverse communities across the United States.

Key takeaways from our stories include:

1. There is no substitute for federal funding for high-quality, universal, equitable child care, but more and more workplaces and state and local governments recognize the need for stable child care infrastructure and are attempting to fill the gap.
2. Culturally competent, diverse types of child care arrangements — including home-based care and flexible family, friend, and neighbor care — can better serve under-resourced and lower-income populations, including those in rural areas, immigrant families, and families of color.
3. Educators who receive adequate compensation, training, and support for their role as child care providers are able to do a better job, stay in their positions longer, and experience less burnout and turnover than those operating in the current system where many child care centers pay poverty wages.
4. The ripple effects of a broken system need to be better understood to help build public support for sustained federal investment in a robust, universal child care infrastructure for all families.

By supporting independent writers and content creators, the Better Life Lab played a crucial role in keeping the child care crisis, the narrative that care is vital infrastructure, and the need for solutions at the forefront of the national conversation. We look forward to continuing this conversation with our next round of child care reporting grants, this time concentrating on the impact the funds from the American Rescue Plan has had for child care infrastructure, and how the subsequent cutoff threatens to undermine the stability of the industry.

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