Media Spotlight on Child Care, Finally

Child care is an everyday concern for families, but on most days it is overlooked by the media. In the past few months, though, that's started to change, as the New York Times, AP, and CNN have all done stories about the child care funding cuts occurring across the country. These stories, which include quotes from NWLC's Director of Leadership and Public Policy, Helen Blank, and data from NWLC's October 2011 report on state child care assistance policies, examine child care cuts and the resulting hardships for low-income families unable to receive help paying for child care.

In addition, the New York Times wrote about child care for parents working evenings, nights, and early morning hours, and the Huffington Post published a column on the decline in the availability of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds for child care.

The recent media coverage has given parents a long overdue opportunity to tell their stories, about how they are doing everything they can to keep their jobs, make ends meet, and give their children the best possible chance to succeed, and how child care assistance is essential to help them to manage it all. NWLC heard similar stories from parents across the country interviewed in 2004 about child care cuts taking place at that time (PDF). These stories are important for the media to cover and for the public to hear, because they are about the important role child care assistance can play in enabling parents to work and allowing children to receive the nurturing early care they need for a strong start on the path to a successful future — and, as a result, its role in strengthening our nation's current and future workforce. Child care may not always seem like a top story, but it should be on top of the nation's priority list if we want our country to prosper.