Childcare can be terribly expensive. And, although the price tag can be more manageable for a two-income, middle-class family, it can be staggering for lower-income parents. In fact, the standard cost of care—more than $15,000 yearly for an infant in a daycare center in New York or Connecticut—can be more than a low-income family’s entire annual income.
1996 saw sweeping reform to federal welfare legislation. The major change to the law was a requirement for welfare recipients to work. This meant that women with young children at home had to find employment, but often did not have anyone to watch their children and could not afford the exorbitant expense of traditional daycare centers. Although public programs and subsidies at the state and federal levels attempt to lighten the burden of daycare costs, many families reduce expenses by making use of home-based care. Most children under the age of four are cared for in a home, either their own or someone else’s. And given this, that same model—as opposed to an expansion of larger, corporate daycare centers—might serve as a better alternative for the foundation for future childcare reforms.
Accordingly, the present study looks at one such program—All Our Kin in New Haven, Connecticut—that seeks to help keep childcare in the home by training family providers to start their own home-based daycares. It then maintains a professional network for these providers (primarily low-income, minority women) to mentor other, prospective ones and to help those who have successfully started home-based daycares grow their businesses.
With All Our Kin’s support, providers find remunerative employment and professional pride in a field they already know and love, while offering neighborhood parents a much-needed affordable and nurturing childcare arrangement. The All Our Kin story is one that could, with training programs and policies to help pave the way, be replicated in virtually any American community. The great promise of its success comes from tapping into a richly valuable and too-often overlooked resource that exists everywhere.
