Day-care slots for babies are vanishing. - Washington Post
There is a child-care shortage for the youngest Americans. There have always been more limited openings at centers for the smallest kids — because babies are more expensive to care for than older children — but the pandemic has exacerbated the problem. That means that some of those hurting the worst from today’s shortage are the families of the littlest and most vulnerable children.
The day-care situation was precarious long before the pandemic arrived, yet now it’s a crisis, especially for the youngest cohort. According to an August 2020 Center for America Progress report, based on data collected between December 2019 and March 2020, “licensed childcare is more than three times as scarce for children ages 0 to 2 than it is for those ages 3 to 5” — a situation the center terms “dire.” While the demand is always great — there are roughly 23 million children under 5 in this country, and more than half rely on child care — even in good times running centers is a low-margin business, and there’s an incentive to give preference to older children.
The precise numbers vary by state, but the legally allowed ratio of babies to caregivers ranges from 3 to 1 to 6 to 1, says Elliot Haspel, child-care expert and author of “Crawling Behind: America’s Childcare Crisis and How to Fix It.” Meanwhile, the ratio of caregivers to 4- or 5-year-olds is much more permissive: One trained adult is allowed to care for 10 or even 20 preschoolers, depending on the state (although federal recommendations suggest one adult for 6 to 10 children), and for children 5 and over, the ratio is even higher.
Myra Jones-Taylor, the chief policy officer at the organization Zero to Three, a nonprofit group that advocates for babies and toddlers’ well-being, says 18 percent of child-care centers have closed since March. Without support, more closures may well become permanent: Two in five centers say they are at risk of closing now without additional assistance, according to a survey by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, an industry organization.