Childcare, Where It’s Been, Where It’s Going

Gloria Riviera’s mom took a job to support the family while her husband worked on his degree. It was the 1960s, and she’d never heard the word “daycare,” so she knocked on doors in her neighborhood. Eventually, her grandmother came for a visit and stayed for three years, Riviera said in “Birth of a Broken System” on the podcast No One is Coming to Save Us.

The series tackles the problem of childcare for parents and in this early episode, the hosts chronicle the history of a broken system for working parents and their kids. For women in the U.S., shame once surrounded them for working rather than staying home and caregiving for children. For fathers who stay home to care for children, there’s a mixed response. “What a dad!” say some. Doctors’ office staff, teachers, friends and strangers exclaim their praise for fathers who step up, bringing the kids to appointments, showing up at parent-teacher conferences (alone, more so), the grocery and church.

When we talk about daycare / childcare, the default perception focuses on women and their children. It makes a strong assumption that women should stay home, a narrative that has overlooked all manner of household configurations, especially those with low- or climbing- incomes.  Farm households. Manufacturing, domestic workers, teachers.

During World War 2, childcare was “transformed into an issue of national security,” says Riviera. “When women’s work is valued, childcare miracles magically happen. And so with funding from the Lanham Act of 1941 . . . the federal government, the actual federal government, got into the universal childcare business for the first time in American history.”

This law allowed women to go to work, contributing to economy and workforce. As the war ended, the funds dried up and as men returned to the workforce, women appealed to unions. The unions put their support behind the men, not yet seeing how women in the workforce benefited companies, households, women and unions alike.

Since then, federal government progress on childcare has stalled. Fortunately for us, we have the Montgomery County Early Childhood Coalition. MCECC is tackling childcare for families in our county. Thanks to Early Learning Director Lisa Walther, we have detailed information about the progress our local leaders are making to help families.

“The mission of the Montgomery County Early Childhood Coalition, a leadership initiative of the (Montgomery County Community Foundation), is to create a collaborative and high-quality early childhood education system that supports the development and early education of Montgomery County children ages 0-5. Our top priorities are as follows:

1.            Increase Community and Parent Education

2.            Improve Accessibility

3.            Increase Program Quality

4.            Improve Affordability

5.            Strengthen Program Supports

               “One of our major projects to help improve accessibility, affordability and program quality is building the Montgomery County Early Learning Center,” she continued. “The MC-ELC will be designated as a licensed child care center here in Montgomery County and will accept both state vouchers – CCDF and On My Way Pre-K. We will participate in Paths To Quality and plan to achieve PTQ-Level 4 and national accreditation through NAEYC by year 2. This center will increase capacity by 124 seats. 84 of those seats are dedicated to children ages six weeks to 30 months, and we will also have two classrooms – 20 seats per classroom – dedicated to serving children ages 3 to 5.” Learn more about the center here-https://www.mccf-in.org/elcgroundbreaking

               “Our county is classified as a childcare desert. There are more than three times the amount of children in need of care versus the amount of seats we have to serve our children. Infant care is even harder to find; which is a big reason why MCCF dedicated three classrooms – 24 seats total – to infant-aged children.

“Infant care is costly and requires more staff per classroom compared to other age groups. The few community programs that do accept infant children in our community are almost always full, and each classroom has a long waiting list. Caring for eight infant children every day is adaunting task, and it is hard to find qualified caregivers for that age range.

“In my role as the early learning director,” Walther goes on. “I am available to help programs with on-site technical assistance, operational expertise, and I have been able to connect all of our providers with our regional and state agencies that can also offer business and teaching supports for each child care program in our community.

               “The Early Childhood Coalition (MC-ECC) spends a large majority of time focusing on increasing the quality of the community’s existing childcare providers and providing many professional development opportunities for the local workforce.

“We are currently in our third year of our professional learning series; a series, in which we host a free workshop for our teachers, cater dinner, and send home free books and supplies for every teacher’s classroom. Our workshop topics are developed through direct feedback from our teachers and staff. We see an average of 50 teachers at each session and registration often fills within a few hours. We are so happy to be able to provide this resource for our teachers!

“Camp Milligan is another project co-hosted through the MC-ECC and the Crawfordsville Parks and Rec Department. School-age and summer care is also extremely difficult to find in our community. Camp Milligan offers 10 full weeks of care during the summer, educational experiences, field trips, and is supported through many community partners. It serves 40-45 children each summer.  The summer of 2025 will be the fourth summer of camp. MC-ECC also offers a week-long program over winter break for families in need of child care during the school winter break.

“We have great potential and need to expand but that requires additional staff and space. I also offer technical assistance to our childcare programs that want to create their own school-age programs. In fact, New Hope Christian Preschool has now offered two full summers of school-age care at their program. This new opportunity has helped them retain full-time staff that would have otherwise been off without pay over the summer and has also opened up 15 additional seats for care.

“Operating a child care program is a very complicated and, at times, stressful job. Early childhood educators already know and understand the INCREDIBLE outcomes for children who attend a high-quality childcare program; after all, the human brain is 85 to 90 percent developed within the first five years of life! We know this work is important, we know it is critical to employers and for future economic growth, we know it is a major part of quality of life, yet our federal government has just not been able to catch up to this yet. We have seen some slow movement, but we need to see child care equitably addressed in legislation or more and more programs will continue to close.

“Parents are struggling to afford childcare costs, but if programs don’t raise their rates, then their teachers and staff will eventually leave and there will be no childcare. In our community, you can work at any fast-food restaurant and make more money and receive better benefits than our childcare employees.

“Finding and being able to afford quality child care is a national problem and in rural communities, we are presented with even more struggles to find and retain staff. We are working together as a community to help combat these issues but until there is major legislation change we will need to continue to work, collaborate, and take action as a community. I am so proud of Montgomery County for seeing this huge need many years ago and for truly taking action and putting work in place to allow me to serve in this role each day! We have made great progress but we still have a lot of work to go and I’m confident that with the ongoing support from the Montgomery County Community Foundation, Mayor Barton, our county government, and our community members that we will be able see more progress on our critical needs in the future,” said Walther.

The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan, multi-issue political organization which encourages informed and active participation in government. For information about the League, visit the website www.lwvmontcoin.org; or, visit the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County, Indiana Facebook page.