52 Time November 2/November 9, 2020
Joy Gilbert opened her first home-based
childcare center in 2017, for her son and
the children of friends and family. “I just
set up my own space in my mom’s home,”
she says. “I didn’t really know much about
the billing process and stuff. I wouldn’t
say it was the best financially.” When the
childcare center she had been working at
before she had her son found a space for
him, she went back to work there.
“Even during regular times, it is not
easy to be a home-based childcare pro-
vider,” says Natalie Renew, director of
Home Grown. The hours are long—
a Health and Human Services sur-
vey put it at an average of 56½ hours a
week—and the pay is suboptimal, about
$30,000 a year for a licensed provider,
less for an unlicensed one like Gilbert.
The business is also precarious. Most
states allow only four infants or up to
eight children if some are over the age of
- Many take several kids from the same
family. If just one family pulls out—be-
cause of job loss, a move or countless
other life changes—the provider loses a
huge chunk of her income. All the tech-
nology in the world can’t forestall this.
MyVillage was able to raise some funds
from its investors for their providers
who lost clients in the pandemic, and
Home Grown spread $1.2 million around
12 states, but it’s like pouring a cup of
water on a forest fire.
Yet home-based care is a vital part of
the childcare infrastructure, serving more
vulnerable populations, younger children
and low-income families. Homes are also
the preferred care option of most fami-
lies of color, says Myra Jones-Taylor, chief
policy officer of early-childhood organiza-
tion Zero to Three. “There’s a vast body
of research that shows that Black boys are
being treated as menacing and deserving
of discipline at an early age,” she says. “We
already see the racial bias emerging in pre-
school.” Parents feel their sons, especially,
will be treated more fairly at home-based
care centers. “They don’t have to worry
about a cultural bias,” says Jones-Taylor.
“The women are of the community.”
Community is part of what drew Gil-
bert to the profession. After she got fur-
loughed from her day-care center at the
start of the pandemic, she answered an
ad for MyVillage: “It seemed like the
perfect fit. I could look after my children
and at the same time help other families.”
Visiting the organization’s chat room
about twice a week has helped her feel
less isolated—and understand the thicket
of compliance and training regulations
that she needs to meet to get licensed in
Colorado. “If I didn’t have MyVillage, I
probably would not have pursued licens-
ing so soon. I feel like it’s kind of a lot to
do by yourself,” she says. Gilbert watches
two children, plus her own two kids, right
now, but if she got her license and en-
rolled five, she says, she would triple the
income from her last job.While the stated aim of all the new
home-care networks has always been toincrease the supply of childcare, the sit-
uation is beginning to look a little like a
land grab of existing providers. “Some of
the other [startups] have all but stopped
supporting new providers,” says Swartz
of NeighborSchools, which is aiming for
a 50-50 mix of newbies and existing cen-
ters. “My understanding is they found it
to be laborious.” It makes sense that the
tech industry wants to work mostly with
providers who are already licensed, who
can charge enough that the percentage is
worthwhile, but it’s a little like retrofit-
ting the lifeboats on the Titanic; the vast
majority of home-based childcare provid-
ers do not fall into this category.45%
PERCENTAGE OF U.S. PARENTS WITH
CHILDREN UNDER 5 WHO WERE PAYING
FOR CHILDCARE IN JANUARY 2020
12%
SHARE OF THOSE PARENTS WHO WERE
USING A HOME-BASED CHILDCARE CENTER
30%
PORTION OF THOSE CENTERS THAT
REMAINED OPEN DURING THE PANDEMIC,
ACCORDING TO PARENTS, THE HIGHEST
OF ANY TYPE OF PROVIDER
Society
Nonprofits, foundations, state govern-
ments and local communities have been
trying to remedy the low level of licensing
for years. Jessica Sager started her non-
profit All Our Kin 20 years ago, and works
intensively with home-based caregivers in
Connecticut and New York to raise qual-
ity and put them on the path to licensure
and thus more profitability. The tech ap-
proaches are helpful, she says, but the real
work of training and helping home-care
providers is “deep, deep in-person work.”
Other childcare advocates worry that
tech companies will not build platforms
capable of reaching the families who need
the most help, those who are poor enough
that their childcare is subsidized by the
government. An investigation by the non-
profit education news service the Hech-
inger Report found that as of December
2018, only 12% of Wonderschool families
paid with government vouchers, and 30%
of WeeCare families. These days, reps
from both networks say, at least 40% of
their franchisees are working with fami-
lies who have subsidized care.
But if nothing else, the tech people
are bringing entrepreneur-level energy to
an industry that has long had very little
agency. After providers were prevented
from opening centers by some Colorado
homeowners’ associations, MyVillage
spearheaded a law that disallowed such
exclusions. When NeighborSchools had
more than 100 women stuck in a Mas-
sachusetts licensing bottleneck, Swartz
complained to the media and got a call
from the early education commissioner
that day.
Veterans of the battle for childcare
are mostly welcoming of the new re-
cruits with their shiny new tools, but
are wary of seeing them as the solution.
“I think they have a place in our system.
Do I think they’re the saving grace?” says
Linda Smith. “Nuh-uh.” After 40 years
working on the issue, including a stint in
the Obama Administration, she says the
missing piece of the childcare puzzle is
an understanding among policy makers,
business leaders and the non parent pub-
lic about how much it really costs to look
after very young human beings. The
childcare crisis will not be solved, she and
other advocates believe, until that real-
ization sinks in. But since that might be
a while, advocates say, anyone is welcome
to dig in and help.