Great Ideas: The Secret to Getting the Economy Going Again? Child Care.

Conversation about child care in America is usually driven by the question of how to prepare our kids for success in their education and later in life. But the last year has brought home another critical aspect of child care all too clearly: it is a critical enabler of work. Without it, parents simply can’t participate in the economy, and that is disproportionately true for America’s female workforce which bears the brunt of child care responsibility at home. As we try to recover from the pandemic-induced recession, the key to unlocking our labor force, particularly for American women, may very well lie in our ability to unlock childcare. Julie Kashen is the Director of Women’s Economic Justice at the Century Foundation and a policy expert on workforce and economic issues, and she walks through the critical connection between the economy we want and the child care that American families need.