Will We Ever Solve the Childcare Crisis? - Boston Magazine
By Mike Damiano
Across Massachusetts, the childcare system is in a state of crisis. It fails parents because it’s so expensive. It’s also not working well for childcare workers, who are scraping by on bottom-of-the-barrel wages. And it is terrible for employers, who see talent hightailing it out of the state—or refusing to move here in the first place—because of how expensive daycare and preschool programs are.
It’s been this way for a long time, of course. But when the pandemic hit and childcare centers shut down—leaving legions of parents across the state with no one to look after their kids while they reported to essential jobs or struggled to work from home—both caregivers and employers began to realize the situation couldn’t be ignored any longer. Now, an ambitious bill that would create a framework for the state to fund affordable childcare is currently wending its way through the State House…
[In early 2021, a] group of progressive activists and early-education leaders called the Common Start Coalition unveiled a bill it had been working on that would create a framework to make childcare available for all Massachusetts families at affordable rates. It was the kind of hyper-ambitious progressive proposal that, under normal circumstances, might attract some media attention before dying a quiet death on Beacon Hill. But given the dire state of affairs, the bill took off almost immediately. Within months, more than half of Massachusetts legislators had signed on as cosponsors.
More than ever before, it seems, officials in state government are listening, and the future for families here suddenly seems much brighter.