Guess What Private Equity is Doing to Childcare

Most of us encounter steep learning curves as well as wobbly balancing acts as parents, but in recent decades, parents have been left to face those challenges with heavier career responsibilities and fewer support systems. Families with dual incomes and single-working parents are on the rise, mothers are the fastest growing segment of the workforce... See more

Most essentially, it’s about treating child and elder care as infrastructure: absolutely essential to the health of society, and deserving of holistic reforms that treat it as such.

“Child care is a textbook example of a broken market,” said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, a mother herself. She pointed out that families spend, on average, 13 percent of their income on child care for young kids, yet day-care workers earn so little they rank in the bottom 2 percent of all professions.

Experts estimate there’s a 3:1 ratio of kids needing care to kids in care. The highest quality options often have waitlists of a year or more. This lack of supply primarily impacts women, and specifically those with low incomes, single parents, and people of color.