Childcare workers say JD Vance’s idea to have family help out more with kids isn’t feasible: ‘Grandparents should not be the fallback’

“One of the ways that you might be able to relieve a little bit of pressure on people who are paying so much for daycare is, maybe grandma or grandpa wants to help out a little bit more, or maybe there’s an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more,” Vance told Kirk. “If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources that we’re spending on daycare.”

Vance went on to argue that states should also loosen their regulations on training and certification requirements for childcare workers in order to lower costs for providers and their clients.

Many longtime childcare workers think more needs to be done — while family support and ease of access into the field are helpful, they say, it’s not enough to fight off a cycle of low pay and thin margins.

Vance has previously said that he’s opposed to just one model of childcare and wants a policy that’s “good for all families.”

“Senator Vance, who was raised largely by his own grandmother, knows firsthand the great sacrifice many grandparents, aunts and uncles and other relatives make when they care for a child who isn’t their own,” Taylor Van Kirk, a Vance spokeswoman, told BI. “Senator Vance believes in addressing kinship care with federally supported initiatives so that these families are relieved of an enormous, oftentimes unseen, financial burden and have the necessary resources to care for these kids.”

Debbie Drew, the administrator at a nonprofit child development center in Portage, Wisconsin, hadn’t yet seen Vance’s comments when multiple parents at her center sent them to her. After the third parent approached her about his remarks, she decided to take a look. She wasn’t pleased. Many parents just don’t have the luxury of relying on family to provide childcare, Drew said, and they shouldn’t have to.

Drew argued that politicians like Vance don’t support sufficient direct funding for day care centers because they don’t respect the importance of early childhood education. “Birth to five are the most important years of a child’s development,” she said. “Saying that anybody can do this job is absolutely ridiculous. It’s not babysitting.”

Few parents who send their kids to Drew’s center have family they can rely on, she added, something Drew can relate to, having moved around as a member of the US military while raising a family. “My mother or my father or my husband’s mother and father were nowhere in sight,” she said. “And a lot of parents, a lot of families, are like that now.”

And as a grandparent herself, she doesn’t think it’s her job to raise her granddaughter. “I can tell you, I’m 63 and I do not want to watch my granddaughter or teach her. I want her in a program like this,” Drew said.

Problems and solutions in childcare

Childcare centers are notoriously expensive to operate — and providers often barely make a profit. Babies and young kids require lots of supervision, and many centers are also burdened by costly regulations. For a growing number of parents, day care is simply unaffordable. Centers also struggle to attract high-quality workers, given the low wages they’re paid. Drew said her center is barely breaking even — and she’ll have to close its doors if she loses another teacher.

“A lot of them can’t stay in the field when you’re making $14 an hour and no insurance,” Drew said of her employees. “You can go to any gas station or McDonald’s and make more money than you can make here. Not just in my program. Any program.”

Wendi Schell, 48, has been working in childcare for 27 years. She said turnover is high — partly because teachers leave over the stress and low wages.

“They will go to the retail industry or even fast food, almost any other entry-level job, and they get paid the same — or possibly more,” she said. Teachers in her area have to attend a 30-hour childcare class and are often encouraged to get an associate’s degree; all of those are seen as important for the role, “and yet it doesn’t really affect their pay grade for being much more than minimum wage.”

Schell thinks that more government or county-level funding to go directly towards employee wages could help address the issues the industry is facing. It would help reduce teacher stress — no more concerns about having to pick up extra work when someone leaves for higher pay — and it also means that centers could open up more spots.

Schell said that grandparents have actually stepped in to help provide childcare for some parents, especially during the pandemic. That means a lot of those grandparents are already burned out on childcare, she said.

“We do have some grandparents that have watched the kids and they’re like, can we enroll for two days a week just to have a break?” she said.

Spending on childcare is a bipartisan concern: Across the board, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents are in relative agreement that national spending on assistance for childcare is too low.

Renee Bock, 57, has worked in the childcare industry for over a decade, and she said Vance’s comments don’t “acknowledge the reality of Americans today.”

Bock has directed schools since 2010 and currently serves as an early childhood director in the Bronx, working with the New York Department of Education. She said she has seen firsthand the challenges older adults face when it comes to providing childcare.

“When you ask your typical grandparent, great aunt to basically take on the caregiving responsibilities for a very young child, you’re not even acknowledging that they may not have the physical or mental capacity to safely handle a child, right? They may not have the financial resources to handle a child,” Bock said.

“Grandparents should not be the fallback for childcare,” she added.

Bock also noted that at a time when future Social Security benefits are in question, it places an even greater strain on grandparents who have to figure out how to support themselves along with supporting a child.

An easy fix to make the childcare system run more effectively: increase wages, Bock said.

“Really putting money into the early childhood programs, and colleges giving financial aid to the kids to incentivize them to do these programs that get young people interested and invested in the field, and then offering incentives like student loan forgiveness or salaries when they graduate so they take these positions in especially high needs areas, would really go a long way,” she said.

Bock said that it would be helpful to find a way to pay grandparents for childcare responsibilities. Elliot Haspel, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan family policy think tank Capita, previously told BI that having federal support for family, friends, or neighbor caregivers would bolster the childcare system and make it more sustainable for older adults. “If better support of grandparents and other FFN caregivers was part of a comprehensive approach to childcare, then it can be really effective at making sure that American families have access to the options for care that they need,” he said.

But without that extra support, handing childcare over to grandparents isn’t feasible.

“We can’t rely on grandparents as an unpaid resource of national labor,” Bock said. “It’s just not fair, it’s not realistic, and it’s not going to work.”