First in a series
BY DEBORAH E. LANS
GHENT–Two studies issued recently both document and underscore the worsening state of childcare, and especially infant and toddler care, in the county, region and state as a whole.
The infant and toddler years are both the most important and the “most under-resourced time in the human life span” according to a study conducted by New York University and Urban Institute Scholars. An infant’s brain doubles in size in the first year and grows to about 80% of adult size by age three. These are the years when critical neural connections (synapses) form. Either the connections needed for motivation, self-regulation, problem-solving and communication are formed, or they are not.
In turn, a young child’s daily experiences determine which brain connections are formed, and the most important influences are an infant’s or toddler’s loving, stable and reliable relationships with the adults in her life, both parents and caregivers.
As Columbia Memorial Hospital pediatrician Maria Covington puts it, children learn by copying and interacting. “Serve and return” interactions — talking, singing, playing and reading in ways that are a responsive give and take — are fundamental to the wiring of the brain.
A Columbia County parent seeking child care for his infant (0-18 months) or toddler (18-36 months) will be hard pressed to find it, however. One expert in the field described the situation like this: “at any given moment there are no slots available in the county. The advice we give is to call every day in hopes that someone may have just left the center. And a spot will fall open.”
In other words, finding day care is like trying to be the 15th caller to the radio station to win a prize, except that day care is a not a gift but a major expense for many families (often more than housing and double what in-state tuition at a state university costs) and a parent’s ability to work may depend on finding day care.
Pattern for Progress issued a report, “Childcare in the Hudson Valley” on February 26, with the telling subtitle “Childcare is essential to support our workforce and educate our kids. Why is this service steadily dwindling in the Hudson Valley?”
The statistics gathered by Pattern are daunting. Since 2007, the number of providers in Columbia County has shrunk by a staggering 63.9% (compared to a statewide average of 22% and a Hudson Valley average of 27%) — to a degree that far outstrips the decline in the birthrate and the out-migration of young families. (In Columbia County the birthrate declined 20.6% from 2007-2020.) Those numbers mask the reality, moreover, that there are no slots actually available. Yet further, the only care available in the county is for weekdays with no programs offering weekend or “shift” (late or overnight) care.
The Pattern report cites a number of causes of the decline in capacity: the high cost of running a day care facility, whether home-based or independent, and the low profit margins; the daunting regulations imposed by the state; and the lack of available staff.
Perhaps the most surprising cause, according to Pattern’s President Adam Bosch, is the unintended impact that universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) has had on child care for those under age 3. UPK is, as Mr. Bosch notes, an “awesome” offering, crucial to child development. However, its initiation has been enormously detrimental to child care for those children aged three and younger, for several reasons.
The first concerns the costs of operating a child care facility and the fact that, at best, profit margins are thin. Both the state-mandated staff-to-child ratios and the physical setting safety requirements are (appropriately) higher for infant and toddler settings than for care facilities serving older children. As a result, the former are more expensive to establish and run, especially with wages comprising 80-90% of the operating expenses of a child care facility.
Pattern found that “childcare businesses make roughly twice the revenue from each 4-year old compared to each infant, making the older kids an especially important source of revenue” for child care businesses. UPK, a free service, has drawn most four year olds out of the daycare system, eliminating the more “profitable” sector.
Second, the regulations for operating a facility for infants and toddlers are dense and daunting, deterring businesses from opening their own in-house centers and educators from entering the field.
Third, staffing is, to put it mildly, challenging. Because UPK and other educators are far better paid than infant and toddler workers, UPK has drawn staff away from child care. Moreover, child care workers’ wages are lower than those of workers at fast-food restaurants, Walmart, Target and the like, making the field unattractive and resulting in substantial staff turn-over. Indeed, child care has one of the highest turnover rates of any industry.
In March 2024 Cornell University’s ILR Buffalo Co-Lab issued a report on “The Status of Child Care in New York State.” Among its finding was that “compared to the median of all New York workers, $54,300, those who work in child care earn about 39% less on a yearly basis. 12% of all child care workers in New York State fall below the poverty line.” The nation so devalues the work that 98-99% of all U.S. job categories are better paid than child care workers.
In sum, as a county (and state and country) the care of beings in their most crucial life stage, the infant and toddler years, is entrusted to the lowest paid workers, with the predictable result that maintaining a stable, qualified workforce is nearly impossible; inadequate support is given to providers who are weighted down with poor profit-margins and stacks of regulations; with the result that the availability of care is declining and costly; with the result that parents must stay out of the workforce to care for their children, exacerbating an already acute workforce shortage; and taxing those lucky enough to find care with what may be the family’s single largest cost.
That cluster has made a crisis.
The child care system is complex. Ensuing articles will look at infant and toddler care from the perspective of providers, parents and employers; causes and consequences; and possible solutions.
