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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Brian today. To end the show, we turn to childcare, specifically childcare for US families in the summer, and how hard it is to find and fund it. We're coming to the end of that summer break. That's almost two months with no place for kids to go and no guarantee of paid time off for working adults, parents, and guardians. If the summer childcare scramble is something you can relate to, we want to hear from you.

Joining me to discuss how we got here and what's happening on a legislative level to try and fix it is Elliot Haspel, senior fellow at Capita, a nonpartisan think tank focused on childcare policy, a contributor to The Atlantic, and the author of Crawling Behind: America's Child Care Crisis & How to Fix It. Elliot, welcome to WNYC.

Elliot Haspel: Thank you so much for having me.

Brigid Bergin: I hope you have the answers to all this for us. It's a lot that we're going to be looking for in this segment.

Elliot Haspel: We'll do it again.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, we're going to open up the phones right away for you on this. Parents, and caregivers, what specific childcare challenges do you experience in the summer? Are there any programs or resources that have really helped you make it work or what patchwork of camps and activities or maybe extra time with family or babysitters did you knit together for your kids this summer? For those of you who work as childcare workers, what does this season bring for you, is there more demand? Are you able to meet it, or is there anything else you want to share? Call us now. The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can also text that number.

Elliot, you write about how a recent Gallup poll found that nearly half of parents with school-age children, "Wished their children would have participated in summer programs or participated more than they did. Did the poll give any indication of what some of the biggest hurdles are for families?

Elliot Haspel: It did. The biggest hurdle is cost. I have two school-age children myself. It is not cheap to try to find these summer care programs. The second problem was finding programs that matched with parents' work schedules. Some programs can be great, but if they're working for a half day and you need to work a full day or if you're working a shift that's at awkward hours, then there just aren't that many options. This really goes back to the lack of summer care infrastructure and broadly, the lack of childcare infrastructure in the country, whether you have young children or school-age children.

Brigid Bergin: That feels very familiar to what I have just gone through for the past two months. You also write about how the United States summer childcare nightmare can be traced to 1971 and President Richard Nixon's veto of the Comprehensive Child Development Act. Can you walk us through that bill and how far it actually got?

Elliot Haspel: Yes. This bill, and we have to remember 1971, the country was starting to make a turn towards a lot more mothers entering the workforce. The one-income family, which never held total sway, was really starting to go away in 1971. There was this big push for the government to get involved in helping support families through child corruption. The Comprehensive Child Development Act would have put several billion dollars into starting to create a federally funded, locally run network of childcare programs, which, again, both for younger children, those not yet in school, and for after school and for summer. It actually passed Congress with bipartisan support. It had a 63 to 17 vote in the Senate, and shows up on Nixon's desk.

Reporting tells us Nixon really kind of hems and haws about what to do with it. Eventually, he vetoes it. It's with very, very strong language. The veto statement was written by Pat Buchanan, the very conservative advisor. He calls that bill a long leap into the dark. He says, essentially, it's going to commit the moral authority of the federal government over and against the authority of the family. It suggests this sort of philosophical missile strike, saying that government shouldn't be anywhere near childcare. We never recovered in the decades to follow from that failure because it really became this article of culture war faith that childcare should not be something that is supported by the government.

You instead get these two tracks. On one hand, you get an effort to help low-income families with young children, with some childcare support, essentially as a form of welfare. Then you get this concern around after-school care. This issue of latchkey children starts to come up in the 1980s, and after-school care becomes part of the K-12 education reform agenda, and summer care falls through the cracks. It doesn't exist anywhere. Even in the pieces of policy that come up to address low-income families, childcare, and to address after-school care, neither of them really focuses on summer care. They're in two different departments. Even now, today, in 2024, there is no one person in the federal government whose job it is to make summer care work for families.

Brigid Bergin: Ooh, wow. Well, I think that parents and caregivers probably feel and know that. Just want to invite those parents and caregivers who have made it through this summer. What were the specific childcare challenges that you had to negotiate? Many of you may be on your way to pick up for a camp that only went half day, or maybe you found other programs and resources that helped. Do you have neighbors, friends, or family that you had to lean on? Because, as my guest Elliot Haspel just pointed out, there is no real infrastructure for summer care for kids so how did you make it work? The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. We're looking for your stories of how you survived this summer and found childcare for your kids and also for childcare workers. What's your perspective on all of this? Are you finding even more demand in the summer and are you able to meet it or do you have crowding because suddenly you have more kids who need to come to your space than you have during the school year?

Again, that number, 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. You can call or text. Elliot, as you mentioned, no single entity is responsible for making summer care work so how does the government divide up which departments are in charge of which program, and why is that part of this problem?

Elliot Haspel: As you mentioned, there are two main ways that the federal government supports child care writ large. One is called the Child Care and Development Block Grant, which basically is funding that flows from the federal government to the states to administer low-income families subsidy programs. In New York, it's called, I think, the Child Care Assistance Program. That's administered by the Department of Health and Human Services. Then there's this other program called the 21st Century Community Learning Centers, which started in the late '90s, that's why it's called that, which provides funds to school districts to be able to provide more after-school care. That's the department of education. Now, some of those funds can be used for summer care in both situations, but not most of them. Most of the funds go to after-school or they go to children during school hours. Again, there's no one focusing on summer care.

It also goes to the fact that we have this sort of oddly piecemeal childcare system. We've never stepped back as a country and said, "What would it look like to have a comprehensive system that says from the time you have a child, you're going to need some form of early care and education? Then once they hit school age, you're going to need after-school and summer care, and let's make this accessible, affordable," I would argue, ideally free for everyone. Sort of odd that we do offer seven hours of free care and education if your kid is 5 to 18 for some part of the year. Then we treat these hours and months outside of the school year and school day and the years outside of the school years as sort of off limits to government. That's somewhere where parents just have to figure it out on their own. I think it's actually a bigger sea change, there's a bigger mindset shift that needs to happen, that's going to solve summer care along with the other kinds of care needs that families have.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to the phones. Jesse in South Orange, New Jersey. Jessie, thanks for calling. WNYC.

Jesse: Hi, thanks for having me on. I actually decided to leave my job for the summer. I have three kids, all under the age of 12, and my entire summer salary generally goes to childcare. I was considering a job change anyway, so I decided actually to not work for the summer since it would be a financial wash anyway to make that childcare work.

Brigid Bergin: Wow. Was it just you and the kids or did you find any other resources in your community? How did you make this union successful?

Jesse: It was mostly me and the kids trying to find what friends were around to kind of trade-off with and keep them company and happy since most of their friends are in camp and childcare for the summer. It worked out because I was able to take that time off for the summer and figure out what my next job step was. I would never have taken the summer off if it weren't going to be completely financially awash anyway.

Brigid Bergin: Jesse, thanks so much for your call.

Jesse: Sure.

Brigid Bergin: A listener wrote via text, "I was a childcare provider for many years. What I hear from friends in this industry is that the schedules required are inconsistent and some jobs require travel to summer homes, which causes a loss of one's private time. I also know people who are well-qualified teachers and would love to work in the summer, but the pay after taxes is very discouraging." Elliot, two different sides of this same problem in those responses from our listeners. Jesse, with lucking into a moment of transition and then a listener who's from the childcare side, basically speaking to how hard it is to actually do this work. Any reaction to either of those listeners?

Elliot Haspel: Yes. I appreciate them both sharing their stories. They're both actually getting at this core fundamental problem, which is that we treat childcare in America as if it's a private market good and not this social good, akin to public education, libraries, parks, roads, fire departments, things like that. What I sometimes ask people to envision is, that in New York, you spend over $25,000 a year in public money for every child in K-12 education. Now imagine if tomorrow the state of New York stopped doing that and said, "If you want to send your kid to the third grade, you've got to figure out to come up with $25,000." What that would do for parents' ability to work, what that would do for family stress? Also, how would you pay teachers? Well, public school teachers should always be paid better probably than they are but compared to childcare workers, who nationally make a median of about $14.50, they're getting paid on par with dog walkers and parking lot attendants and they are taking care of our youngest children, and they're taking care of children during the formative summer months. All of this goes down to the fact that there's just not enough public money in the system when it comes to childcare.

When you raise public money, and there are some proposals to do that that are finally coming online, you can solve both sides of this equation. You can make it affordable, so it's not taking up a parent's entire salary during the summer and forcing them into these choices of leaving work or not. Not because they want to, but because they feel forced to, and you can make sure that all these amazing educators and staff members that are working with the children are getting paid the type of compensation that they deserve for doing very difficult, skillful work and to make sure that they themselves have stable and healthy family lives because that actually really affects the way they show up with children as well. A lot of this comes down to the lack of public funding and the way that we treat childcare is less than in this country.

Brigid Bergin: I want to go to one more caller, Andrew in Huntington, Long Island. Andrew, we have about 30 seconds for you, but we want to hear about your summer childcare struggle.

Andrew: Childcare is really challenging. During the year, it's $7,000 a year for beforecare in aftercare. In summer, it's another $9,000-ish. I have two kids, and we found the least expensive program, go YMCA. It's impossible. We save up half the year to pay for camp.

Brigid Bergin: Andrew, thank you so much for that call and for that really real perspective. I know that camps are important, but they are not cheap. Thank you for that. Elliot, in just the last 30 seconds that I have you, there's a big election, the stakes are huge. How does childcare figure into this election and the stakes for it?

Elliot Haspel: It's very high stakes. Again, we're at this inflection point. We need to have more public money. There are some places where both parties agree that there's actually a problem here, but I will say, like Project 2025 calls for eliminating Head Start, that 750,000 lower-income kids would lose their childcare. It would eliminate the Department of Education, which has this 21st Century community childcare funds in it. I think really, there are very high stakes for what the future of this country is going to look like but I do think my note of hope is that sometimes we have seen both members of both parties and leaders of both parties say childcare isn't working right now and we do need to do something. I do think at least we can find some common ground at the problem level if not the solution level.

Brigid Bergin: Thank you so much. My guest has been Elliot Haspel, a childcare policy expert and the author of Crawling Behind: America's Child Care Crisis & How to Fix It. Thanks so much for coming on.

Elliot Haspel: Thanks for having me.

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Brigid Bergin: I'm Brigid Bergin, and this is The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Stay tuned for All Of It.

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