A popular song once asked – “What’s love got to do with it?” For those of us who are working to make sure that our youngest children have what they need, we need to ask a similar question:  What’s adults got to do with it?

Last week, Senator Mikulski (D-MD), Senator Burr (R-NC), Senator Harkin (D-IA), and Senator Alexander (R-TN) introduced a bill to reauthorize the Child Care and Development Block Grant, the primary federal grant program that provides child care assistance for families and funds child care quality initiative.  Child Care Aware® of America announced its support for the “Child Care Development and Block Grant Act of 2013” introduced today, which would reauthorize the program for the first time in over 17 years.

Each week, nearly 11 million children under age 5 are in some type of child care setting for an average of 35 hours. It’s a statistic that gets mentioned often in conversations about the importance of child care in every community across the United States, and with good reason. Working families understand the need to not only have their children in a child care setting that will keep them safe and out of harm’s way, but also to ensure that in the years where the most critical development occurs that they are in a setting that promotes early learning.

With so many families looking for safe, but affordable child care, one thing is certain; Families need effective and efficient policies that work for working families.