When I heard you utter the words “affordable, quality child care for all families” at the Republican convention last summer, I literally stood up and cheered in the middle of my living room. It’s one of the many, and arguably one of the most important, issues facing working families. These are the families that I care deeply about and have been fighting for over the last decade.
Quality child care is high-quality early childhood education and one of the best investments we can make as a society. Research shows that for every dollar spent on early childhood education the economy will see upwards of $13 in return. Child care has always been a nonpartisan issue, and has seen its fair share of changes — from World War II when universal child care was available to the reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 2014.
Fortunately, what we have not seen is many substantive changes for working families in need of child care. We know that more than 11 million children under age 5 are in child care right now. That means that for working families, child care is required. And yet child care is unaffordable and completely out of reach for families in 49 out of 50 states!
Read Michelle's full article on Medium.
