11

The Domino Effect

The hurdles women face can sometimes feel like falling dominoes. You know that game? You place each domino on its narrow side, standing one tile after another, and make a line or a figure eight out of the tiles. Then you stand back, tap the first domino, and each falls, one after another in a wave. There’s a reason this game has survived generations. The tap on the first domino and the rush as each subsequent domino falls down can be mesmerizing.

Another reason people have been riveted by falling dominoes for decades is because the game imitates life. For example, consider the lives of the more than 80 percent of women who have children, about 40 percent of whom are unmarried when giving birth.¹ Each crisis is connected, one tapping the other. A woman has her first baby. If that woman and her infant don’t have access to health care, the health and financial costs can be crushing for years to come.

Next, if that woman doesn’t have access to paid family/medical leave after her baby arrives, she’ll need to go unpaid for a while or may have to go back to work before everyone is physically healed and breastfeeding is fully established.

Then, it’s likely that our new mom will find it difficult to afford childcare. Childcare now costs more than college in most states in the country. But childcare is essential—because parents need safe and enriching places for their children to be so they can work, as three-quarters of moms now do. Not to mention that young minds need high-quality early education so they can thrive, and childcare workers, most of whom are women, need fair pay.

We Are Failing Working Women

MacKenzie from New Hampshire knows what it’s like when the dominoes you’ve stacked begin to tip. She and husband did everything they could to prepare for the birth of their daughter, including arranging for MacKenzie’s mom to watch their daughter while MacKenzie was at work. But all their preparations went out the window when MacKenzie’s mother had a stroke. Like many families, MacKenzie and her husband needed both of their paychecks to make ends meet. A missed paycheck wasn’t an option. So when it came time for MacKenzie to go back to work, she was panicked by the cost of childcare and by the fact that none of the childcare facilities in her area accepted infants less than six weeks old. MacKenzie’s only option at that point was to take her five-week-old daughter to work with her. It was an unbelievably difficult time for MacKenzie, who had also used up all her sick days after the baby arrived since she didn’t have any paid family/medical leave. “I was not well. I was tired, stressed, and sick to my stomach worrying about my mom, money, childcare, and how my son was taking to having a brand-new sibling.”

The dominoes had fallen. MacKenzie didn’t have childcare or paid family/medical leave, yet couldn’t afford not to work. And MacKenzie isn’t alone. Most people don’t even realize that there are this many dominoes waiting to fall until they have children. We have an entire system that’s out of whack in America, and it’s hurting women in particular. And because the whole system is out of whack, no one is experiencing hardship because of just one policy area in crisis at a time. In real life, the same people who are facing unfair pay are also likely dealing with a lack of paid family/medical leave, unaffordable childcare, an absence of earned sick days, barriers to high-quality education, and more.

All in one person. Sometimes all in one day.

In short, we have an entire system that hasn’t caught up to our modern labor force and is failing women and our economy. You don’t have to take my word for it. A 2014 Washington Post headline put it simply: “The U.S. ranks last in every measure when it comes to family policy.”² Other countries have done better. We can, too.

Childcare Dominoes

The falling domino of childcare is often a big surprise. Many parents are completely shocked to discover that the cost of childcare in America will eat up a huge chunk of their paychecks. In fact, a New York Times article nearly went viral because it shared the calculation that if parents started saving for childcare the same way we save for college, parents would have to save for their future children’s childcare at only seven years old.³

Every day, I hear a story about a parent struggling to get access to affordable, high-quality early learning opportunities like childcare, pre-K, day care, home visiting, early intervention services, and more. Jodi shared that her childcare expenses are more than her mortgage. She pays $1,355 per month for her nineteen-month-old and about $500 for her six-year-old. It’s essential that her children are somewhere safe and enriching while she’s at work. “It’s incredible how our economy forces a dual income and then doesn’t provide an affordable and accessible childcare infrastructure. And when it doesn’t work, instead of looking at the system, it looks at the parents—as though we have done something wrong,” said Jodi, who also shared that the high cost of childcare is also making it impossible to pay back the more than $100,000 in student loans that she and her husband owe. “We have good incomes and we live modestly, but we have been thrown into financial insecurity—first because there is no paid leave and second because childcare expenses are astronomical. The promise that if we work hard both in education and in the workforce, then we can make a better future for our children is broken.”

Jodi isn’t the only one caught in a childcare web. For a parent with two young children, the average cost of center-based childcare exceeds the average cost of rent in every state in the country.⁴ In fact, over the past thirty years, childcare costs for working families have increased by 70 percent.⁵ Seventy percent! No wonder women and families are feeling like they have it tougher than the last generation. We do. Adding further challenge is that the overall cost of raising children is higher than most people imagine. It now costs $200,000 to raise a child from birth to age eighteen, not including college.⁶

The sky-high costs for childcare are happening at a time when a quarter of young families in our nation are living in poverty. In fact, having a baby is one of the leading causes of poverty, and it’s safe to say that the high cost of childcare is playing a role in driving women and families toward poverty. The price tag on childcare is even more troubling when you look at the impact on low-income families: On average, families making less than $1,500 a month with children under the age of five who paid for childcare spent more than half of their monthly income on childcare expenses (52.7 percent).⁷

Affordability isn’t the only hurdle. Access is a hurdle, too. Sioban started looking for childcare seven months before her son was even born. She thought she was ahead of the game, but found two-year waiting lists at some places, with many people putting themselves on the wait list before they even got pregnant. “The only day care in my neighborhood always has a wait list of over three hundred families.” Sioban eventually got a spot in an excellent day care but had to work a reduced schedule because there weren’t any full-time slots open until the next year. She shares, “We are lucky to have a good day care, but day care in our city is very expensive (average $1,900/month). If we had two children, I would have to quit my job because my entire salary would go toward day care.”

Adding to this crisis is the fact that many low-income families are more likely to live in a “childcare desert,” an area where affordable, high-quality childcare is extremely difficult to find. In fact, a recent study found that 51 percent of women and families live in an area classified as a childcare desert, with children in Latino families and rural communities impacted the most.⁸ Studies also show that living in a childcare desert can drive more women into poverty, because not having childcare makes it next to impossible for those women to work.⁹

There are three big falling dominoes that regularly hit each other when it comes to childcare: affordability, access, and quality. Quality is key. A growing body of research indicates that preschool programs need to have the right mix of high-quality educational ingredients to be truly effective. That includes a developmentally appropriate, evidence-based curriculum, as well as coaching for early learning teachers, adequate teacher pay, and engaging environments in order to best prepare every child to be ready and successful in school and life.¹⁰

Of course, in order to be a high-quality education program, all kids must be equitably educated. Done right, high-quality early learning environments decrease gaps and increase opportunity for all children. Dual language learning programs are one powerful way to help reach that goal.¹¹ Right now, there are 11.5 million children in the United States who are dual language learners and stand to benefit from dual language programs within our education system.¹² Study after study shows that dual language learning programs are one of the best ways to increase student achievement for language learners while also giving kids a big boost across the board regardless of language background.¹³

And, as all of this is happening, parents are struggling at home, too. Another key policy area to advance is home visiting after a new child arrives. A program that can link parents with trained home visitors (nurses, social workers, and educators), home visiting has been shown to help break cycles of poverty, increase self-sufficiency, get more kids into great educational situations, and save tax dollars. In fact, for every dollar invested in home visiting, as much as $5.70 is returned to the community.¹⁴

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Since the vast majority of moms work outside of the home and more than 40 percent of mothers are now the primary breadwinners for their families,¹⁵ it’s clear we need childcare/early learning opportunities that are affordable, high quality, and accessible. Yet we have a broken system.

We can’t talk about childcare without also talking about childcare workers. There are two sides to the same broken childcare coin: Parents and childcare workers are both struggling. Most parents can’t afford to pay any more for childcare, and childcare workers are among the lowest-paid workers in our nation, earning an average of $21,170 per year.¹⁶ A recent study found that nearly half of all childcare workers, many of whom are moms, have to rely on a government program (SNAP, welfare, Medicaid) just to make ends meet because their pay is too low.¹⁷ This isn’t good for anyone.

If you’re a childcare worker who is also a parent, you get hit even harder. With 95 percent of the childcare workforce composed of women, it should come as no surprise that nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of childcare workers with children report that they have to depend on public support programs to get by and often struggle themselves to afford high-quality childcare for their own families.¹⁸

Sonia is a mother of three and an early childhood educator. She told me, “I’ve seen the power of high-quality early learning from both perspectives. At home, I’ve seen my oldest daughter struggle to catch up to her peers who benefited from early learning and pre-K in a way she didn’t. I’ve seen my son, who had access to free public pre-K, enter kindergarten on a level playing field, and excel in school in a way I fear my oldest never will. I see my baby, my two-year-old, who spends his days in a high-quality early childhood education center and will soon transition into pre-K, and I know I’m already setting him up for success. Three children, three educational trajectories—and the differences are obvious.”

Working in early childhood education opened Sonia’s eyes, but it didn’t open up her financial situation. She still doesn’t make enough money to pay for high-quality early learning for her own children. She notes, “The childcare and early learning affordability crisis in our country cuts both ways—neither parents nor providers can afford the system we currently have, and sadly it is kids who suffer most when they lose out on high-quality early learning opportunities.”

We Can Fix It!

Fortunately, solutions are possible. Increasing access to high-quality, affordable early learning opportunities (like universal pre-K and childcare)—particularly for vulnerable children—doesn’t just help children and parents; it also helps our national economy. There is almost no better return on investment for taxpayers than investing in early learning. For example, for every $1 invested in early learning programs, like childcare and pre-K, the taxpayers get back $8 later due to fewer grade repetitions, fewer interactions with the criminal justice system, and more.¹⁹ Further, high-quality programs can actually help narrow the opportunity gap that is most often experienced by children in low-income families and children of color.²⁰

We have to advance education opportunities for all kids, and as we do that we can’t leave education professionals, most of whom are women, behind. Teachers and the early learning workforce, including the childcare providers who are our children’s first teachers, are key to achieving what offering a high-quality education to every child can offer our nation. Teachers and childcare workers should be paid fairly—and that means being paid enough to afford children of their own and to stay in their job so there isn’t high turnover.²¹

Fair compensation and world-class training and education opportunities so teachers are best equipped to support our learners are critical. Creating a culture that places high value on the role and importance of those caring for and teaching our future leaders is critical, too. There are models for success for parents, kids, and teachers alike, including in the U.S. military. That’s right. As I’m typing this, the Department of Defense has over 200,000 children in their incredibly successful and highly respected childcare system.²²

Popping primary colors, adorably shaped rockets, and fluffy white and blue clouds. That’s the image that comes to mind when Sarah, a military veteran, remembers going into the military childcare facility where her children went to preschool.

Her daughter loved it so much that she’d walk in, look at her mom, and abruptly say, “Okay bye, Mom.” Sarah remembers her daughter leaving and having an ironic chuckle with these words on the tip of her tongue: “Hey, why’d you leave me so easily?” Her daughter left her side so easily because she loved the space for learning and early childhood development she was entering into.

Sarah and her husband both joined the military and then had kids. Both of their kids did the preschool program on the military base. Sarah recalls, “It was a great program. And the cost was one of the main things that was a benefit to us because my husband was a lower enlisted soldier at the time, so we were on WIC and didn’t have a lot of available funds. The sliding scale of childcare payments based on income made it affordable.”

One of her fondest memories is walking into the room to pick up her daughter and finding her covered in red, blue, purple, and green paint, as she happily learned how to craft images, letters, and numbers on paper. Key features of childcare programs provided by our nation’s military that can and should be replicated for nonmilitary parents include sliding-scale costs to parents that make it affordable, high-quality care, fair compensation and training for providers, and services that are easily accessible to families.

Of the trinity of childcare needs—affordability, quality, and accessibility—the military hits the mark with all three. The Department of Defense has taken the added step of creating policies to ensure caregivers are paid similar wages to those who work for them in other jobs that require similar amounts of “training, experience, and seniority” and provide additional training opportunities.²³ The civilian childcare system, or lack thereof, on the other hand, is still behind in all three of these areas.

One of the reasons is that the military childcare system requires an investment of resources that the Department of Defense is more than happy to make because it later pays off. On the civilian side, we haven’t fully made the penny-wise and pound-foolish connection that investing in early learning, universal pre-K, and childcare pays off later… yet. But we will!

Break the School-to-Prison Pipeline

We can’t discuss early education—or education at all—without discussing the importance of stopping the school-to-prison pipeline, which is a disturbing national trend where children are funneled out of schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Here’s one glimpse of the school-to-prison pipeline: Black girls are five times more likely to be suspended from school than white girls even though they don’t have more discipline problems.²⁴ Analysis shows that part of what’s happening here is a double whammy of discrimination that starts in early education. The National Women’s Law Center reports that on top of experiencing racism, “Black girls are punished for challenging what society deems ‘feminine’ behavior, like being candid or talking back.” This punishment doesn’t just come in the form of suspensions; it also too often also means being excluded from STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) programs and other education opportunities.²⁵

What’s going on? To start, the practice and use of exclusionary discipline policies has increased over the past several decades, with the suspension rates of students of color doubling since the 1970s. That’s despite zero evidence to suggest that there are behavioral differences among all students or even that suspensions reduce student misbehavior or improve academic outcome. Rather, school suspension and expulsion result in a number of negative outcomes for both schools and students. Research shows a correlation between kids who are suspended and then later get trapped in the criminal justice system, are held back a grade, or don’t complete high school.²⁶ You read that right: Suspensions hurt, not help, kids.

To be blunt, students aren’t disciplined in equitable ways. A comprehensive analysis reported by the National Institutes of Health found that Black, Hispanic, and American Indian youth are slightly more likely than white and Asian American youth to be sent to the office and substantially (two to five times) more likely to be suspended or expelled.²⁷ This is unfair—and it’s not the fault of the children who are being punished. Studies are showing that there is a disparity in how children of color are unfairly and wrongly judged and disciplined by adults starting as young as preschool.²⁸

This is not okay.

It’s time to challenge the practices and policies that push students out of schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems, to promote social emotional development and trauma-informed care in schools, and to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline and instead advance the cradle-to-(affordable)-college pathway.

Reading what’s happening with kids, teachers, educators, and parents will get you fired up to take action. Overzealous school discipline policies have negative impacts not only on our children but also on working parents. One mom anonymously shared that her daughter, who has always been an honor student, was suspended last year for five days: “For what you ask? For something her brother said to another student in the school. She didn’t do a single thing, and the superintendent would not reconsider his decision.”

Another mom, Abby, shared that her son was suspended in fourth grade because she accidentally left a very small, bright orange plastic water gun in his backpack. “It was so small that it would fit inside my hand and not be seen. But somehow, a teacher saw it and he was suspended for three days!” Abby recalled. This led to a hardship, because she didn’t have any sick days available to be home with her son, so she had to take unpaid time off. As a widow and single mom, she had a hard time paying the bills that month. Many of the students who are pushed out of schools and into the criminal justice system could garner lifelong benefits from additional services instead of punishment.

Inequalities are clearly not yet a thing of the past in our K–12 education system and beyond when it comes to academic opportunities, either. How do we know? On the whole, while girls are doing better than boys in reading, boys are doing better than girls in the lucrative STEM studies²⁹ unless girls are in single-sex schools where gender stereotyping isn’t as ubiquitous.³⁰ The STEM problem continues through college, where only 14 percent of young women are focusing on a lucrative STEM field versus the much higher number of 39 percent of young men.

We still have some significant work to do. It’s clear that public investments in early learning programs like childcare and pre-K, as well as in the K–12 education system and college, are all key to improving education and economic security for women.

Make College Affordable

The cost of college has also skyrocketed. College is expensive, even though later earnings are significantly increased (and significantly means doubled)³¹ when you have a college degree, which, in turn, significantly improves women’s lifetime economic security.³² Even so, the rising cost of college has far outpaced inflation over time: In 2015 the average cost at a private, nonprofit, four-year university was $31,231, compared to only $1,832 (in current dollars) in 1971.³³

Everyone should be able to attend a college institution—a community college, technical institution, four-year college, or other—but the problem is that few can afford it. Right now women are getting more college degrees than men,³⁴ but they are also accumulating more debt and are graduating into a gender wage gap. They have so much more debt that Consumer Reports recently published an article about senior citizens who are “crushed” by student debt.³⁵ Incredibly, the article states, “114,000 Americans have had Social Security income seized, up 440 percent from 2002 and up 540 percent for people over 65.”³⁶ In addition, about 7 million Americans over age fifty have student loan debt.³⁷

We have to fix this.

Mary Kusler of the National Education Association notes: “We need to step up and address this issue of college affordability because it’s not just impacting our finances as adults, it’s impacting our kids for the rest of their lives. We’re setting up the next generation to be one in debt.”

I think we can all agree on the need to reduce the cost of college. It’s time to explore new policies like free college and public service loan forgiveness when people go into fields like teaching, medicine, and more.

Superheroine Change Makers

Wins are happening that move the proverbial ball down the field bit by bit. While there hasn’t been a big comprehensive package for making massive change, like building a national early learning system, including pre-K and childcare, that mirrors the best of the Department of Defense program, or making pre-K part of the public education system at the national level, or ensuring everyone has access to full-day kindergarten, or fully resourcing the K–12 education system, or demolishing the school-to-prison pipeline and advancing free college (a woman can dream!), we are making advancements.

There have even been a few touchdowns along the way. School districts, cities, and states across the nation are making changes backed up by people who are speaking out. For example, in 2016 and 2017 alone, MomsRising members played a role in increasing investments in pre-K in California, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Washington State. We also played a role in winning expansions of dual language learning, a ban on suspensions, and raise-the-age campaigns in New York, Washington State, Maryland, and North Carolina.

Access to high-quality education at all stages of life is a necessity to make our economy thrive and for young girls (and boys, too) to grow into the leaders we all need. Time and time again, the game changer in passing these policies has been legislators and leaders hearing from real people like you and me, including hearing specific stories from parents, students, and childcare providers about how these policies impact them.

Another game changer is when people step up to run for office (or to support someone running), win, and champion the policy. So share your voice in whatever way works best for you, and know you’ll have an impact. Together, we are a powerful force.

When Women Lead, America Succeeds

A group of women were sitting around a large conference table, giant windows bringing the light, rooftops, and skyscrapers of New York City into the room. One woman’s phone started getting texts. The first buzz of her phone on the tabletop was ignored, the second and third were ignored, too. But by the fourth text in what seemed like as many minutes, Pramila Jayapal started paying attention to her phone. She had traveled to New York City from Seattle for a Women’s Economic and Social Political Action Network meeting, and it was clear that something was going on at home.

That something turned out to be that Congressman Jim McDermott had just announced he was retiring from a seat he’d held since 1989 in Washington’s seventh congressional district. There was an open seat in Seattle, and all minds were on Pramila. Her phone started blowing up. The group had come together in New York City to strategize about how to build political power, and that power had come to them.

But Pramila didn’t realize at first that big time political power was knocking at her door. In fact, Pramila, who was at that time serving as a Washington state senator, thought that most people had the wrong idea. Even though she’d lived and voted in the seventh congressional district for a couple of decades, recent redistricting had her situated twenty blocks outside of the new district line. But her phone didn’t stop buzzing. And the texts started including more important info: Pramila didn’t need to live inside the district to run or to win. “Dozens of people texted me, from the heads of organizations, to people who have known my work for years, people who lived in my neighborhood and who lived far away,” Pramila recalled. “I wouldn’t have run if people hadn’t texted me. It wouldn’t even have occurred to me to run,” she continued, “because I was twenty blocks outside the district line. I wouldn’t have even thought of it. But just to see the outpouring of people who have known me and my work for so long here in Seattle and across the country meant a lot to me.”

Pramila started thinking about running.

The texts kept coming over the days she was in New York City, and the idea was planted. As she waited for the plane back home in the airport, she called her husband, Steve. “Honey, I have some news. I think we should think about me running for Congress.” He was supportive.

She got home to Seattle and started the process of thinking about running in earnest. There was a lot to consider. “It’s not just deciding if you can win,” she recalled. “That’s only part of the decision. It’s also deciding what does running mean for your family, your kid, your parents.” Pramila’s parents live in India, so running (and winning) would mean she couldn’t see them as often because she’d lose a lot of her personal freedom and flexibility. She also took time to look into herself and think about what she wants to do in her life and to separate that from the alluring title of congresswoman. Having been an organizer for a long time, she’s seen more than one person say, “I want to be a congresswoman,” without thinking much about what they want to do when they get there. Pramila wanted to make sure she was interested in running for the right reasons and to do the right things. She took time for introspection. Several weeks after texts started blowing up her phone, after thinking and talking strategy with friends and family members, Pramila decided to officially throw her hat in the ring—and she won!