Women were pushed out of the workforce by the pandemic. Is it time for universal child care? - Milford Daily News
By Alison Bosma
With a young daughter in the MetroWest YMCA day program, Framingham mom Katie Brennan just secured a promotion at her job.
“I definitely do not think it would have been something I could do if I was working remotely at home with my kids,” said Brennan, whose other child is a seventh-grader. “Without that day care, it wouldn’t have been possible.”
In a year that bared systemic flaws in the nation's child care infrastructure, many working moms saw their careers go in the opposite direction or stall out as the pandemic pushed them out of the workforce to fill child care gaps.
“Child care has been a problem, but COVID put the spotlight right on it,” said Jill Ashton, executive director for the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women. “And it hit women, and it hit women hardest.”
An Associated Press report in September 2020 reported that 1.3 million women nationwide had left the labor force since February 2020, meaning they no longer had a job and weren’t looking for one. Women in their “prime-earning” years, the report said — between 25 and 54 years old, which are also considered prime child-rearing ages — were dropping out at a higher rate than other age groups. Women of color and lower-income women have also been affected at higher rates.
“Child care has long been failing families and disproportionately women,” said Lauren Kennedy, co-president of Boston-based Neighborhood Villages, a nonprofit advocating for accessible and high-quality early education and care. “The onset of the pandemic upended the incredibly broken child care system we had.”