How to Make Universal Child Care a Reality with Mamdani’s Child Care Czar
Today’s soaring cost of living and staggering wealth inequality cast a spotlight on the longstanding need for universal child care. Too many families find themselves in an impossible bind: They can’t afford to lose the wages they need to make ends meet, but they also can’t afford to pay for the child care that allows them to go to work.
On this episode, we speak with Emmy Liss, Mayor Mamdani’s head of the Office of Child Care. She is at the forefront of the city’s efforts to make the dream of universal child care a reality. We also talk to two NYCLU experts who explain why universal child care is both a gender and racial justice issue. And they also break down another issue – paid medical leave – which is intimately tied to who can and can’t afford to raise a family in New York.
Editor’s note: We recorded this podcast before this year’s New York State legislative session ended. The State Assembly failed to pass paid medical leave reform, but you should still contact your state legislators and urge them to pass it next year.
Please download, rate, review and subscribe to Rights This Way. It will help more people find this podcast.
Resources
Our universal child care and paid medical leave blog: Why Universal Child Care is a Gender and Racial Justice Issue
To find licensed child care providers in New York City: nyc.gov/childcare
To apply for a child care seat: Myschools.nyc
NY State universal child care coalition: New York State Child Care for All
Transcript
Emmy: [00:00:00] In New York City, for childcare to be considered affordable to a parent, that parent has to earn over three hundred thousand dollars. When you stare enough at the numbers, you walk away and realize there is no solution here other than public investment because it is just a fundamental market failure between the costs and the inputs.
Simon: This is Rights This Way, a podcast from the New York Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of New York State. I’m Simon McCormack, editorial manager at the NYCLU and your host for this podcast, your best listen for the civil rights and liberties issues that impact New Yorkers most.
Today’s soaring cost of living and staggering wealth inequality cast a spotlight on the longstanding need for universal childcare. Too many families find themselves in an impossible bind. They can’t afford to lose the wages they need to make ends meet, but they also can’t afford to pay for the [00:01:00] childcare that allows them to go to work.
On this episode, we’ll speak with Emmy Liss, Mayor Mamdani’s head of the Office of Child Care. She’s at the forefront of the city’s efforts to make the dream of universal childcare a reality. We’ll also talk to two NYCLU experts who will explain why universal childcare is both a gender and racial justice issue, and they’ll also break down another issue: paid medical leave, which is intimately tied to who can and can’t afford to raise a family in New York. We’ll get to all this in just a moment, but first I’d like to ask you to please download, rate, review, and subscribe to Rights This Way.
It will help more people find this podcast. And now I’m joined by Emmy Liss, Executive Director of New York City’s Office of Child Care. Emmy, welcome to Rights This Way.
Emmy: Thank you so much for having me.
Simon: Of course. So I think just before, not to make this sound like a job interview, but I guess if you could just, you know, give [00:02:00] us a bit of your background and how you came to the Office of Child Care.
Emmy: Absolutely. So I’m coming to this work as a parent, as a, you know, experienced bureaucrat, and just a deep, deep believer in the importance of early care and education as a public investment. I spent a number of years working at New York City’s Department of Education. I went there initially not focused on early education, but this was early in the de Blasio administration, as the city was scaling up access to free pre-K.
And I was really drawn to the work because I’ve always been interested in education policy really as a broader anti-poverty lever, recognizing that education is one of the many tools we have to think about lifting children and families out of poverty. Early childhood, I think, that’s more true of than any other part of the education space.
When we invest in early education, we’re investing in a child and their potential [00:03:00] and putting them on a stronger path, but we’re also investing in the whole family, giving them the opportunity to economically thrive, participate in the workforce, know that their children are safe and cared for. And so I worked in the Division of Early Childhood at Department of Education as we were finishing out the pre-K expansion and beginning to launch free preschool for three-year-olds.
And it was a really powerful experience recognizing what happens when government commits to delivering for families. In a matter of just a few years, we transformed pre-K and preschool education from a luxury good into something that was available to every family in New York City. I think that really solidified some of my political views and just views on what it means to deliver for citizens.
After working at the Department of Education on that effort, I spent the last four years prior to joining the Mamdani administration, working on childcare policy more broadly. So was working with a number of policy and advocacy [00:04:00] organizations here in New York City, looking at how childcare investments impact parents, impact the childcare workforce, the role that business plays in pursuing childcare as a public investment, and worked as well with about a dozen cities and counties across the country who had similarly been expanding their own early childhood programs with public dollars.
As the, as the now mayor was running on a platform of affordability and started to center childcare as part of that agenda, the possibility of working again on this issue and being able to help drive towards a city where every family has access to free high-quality care no matter where they live, their zip code, their parents’ occupation, and the fact that this is a mayor who really recognizes childcare as a public good, I mean, what an unbelievable once in a sort of generation opportunity for our city. So I joined the administration on January 1st to lead the Mayor’s Office of Childcare and Early Childhood Education. And it’s been quite a first six [00:05:00] months.
Simon: Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like a good match between you two. Tell us a bit about what needs to happen to make universal childcare a reality in New York City. So, you know, we understand the concept of like “means every child who needs childcare can get it,” but what does that actually involve?
Emmy: Sure.
So I’ll start just by defining what we mean when we talk about universal childcare, which you got at a little bit there. But universal childcare means every child under five has access to free, high-quality early care and education provided in a range of different care settings that are culturally competent with caregivers who are trained, respected, and appropriately paid for the work that they do.
Universal childcare is a system that is easy for families and seamless for childcare providers, and we have to invest in both sides of that equation. So on just day eight of the Mamdani administration, the governor and the mayor stood [00:06:00] together, and the governor committed over a billion dollars in new funding for New York City to allow us to really get on that path towards universal childcare.
So most immediately, we are building upon the foundation of the city’s free preschool program for three- and four-year-olds, by ensuring this fall that every family has access to a 3-K and pre-K seat that works for them, really filling a gap that had existed over the last couple years.
And we are launching 2-K, the city’s free first ever sort of at-scale universal program for two-year-olds, which will serve about 2,000 kids this fall. But this is just the start. We are serving 2,000 kids this fall, 12,000 in 2027, and the goal is to reach every two-year-old by the end of the mayor’s first term.
Those are the big, you know, public milestones in terms of what it means for families from an access perspective. But delivering universal childcare means we have to invest in the infrastructure around this. We have to be thinking [00:07:00] about workforce development and how we support the educators and caregivers who are working in this field and growing that workforce so that we have a sufficient number of quality trained educators to work with children and families.
We have to be thinking about infrastructure, making sure that we have a sufficient number of safe, developmentally appropriate spaces for childcare in the city. And we need stronger systems. We need to make it easier for families to find care. We need to make it easier for providers to navigate all of the city’s bureaucracy.
So we are making those investments alongside the work to expand access. And just to make it a little bit more tangible, you know, earlier this year, we launched two new web platforms. One is a family website, nyc.gov/childcare, which for the first time ever puts every licensed childcare program in the city on a simple map so that families can find childcare in their neighborhood with filters to help [00:08:00] them assess different types of programming, programming that might be free or subsidized, and what kind of ages they serve.
Before, a parent interested in childcare, and I say this as a parent of young children, like, the most reliable way to find childcare providers in your neighborhood was to just ask random people in your apartment building, to initiate a Google search to search four different public government websites.
So we’re solving, trying to solve some of these systems issues. And then for childcare providers, we have to make it easier for them to open, operate, and sustain their businesses. The majority of the city’s childcare providers are women of color who own and operate small businesses in their communities that are a pillar of the community.
They support children, they support families, and we need to make it easier for them to operate and to spend their time working with children and families, not navigating bureaucracy. So we launched the first ever online permitting portal for providers. Not to go too, [00:09:00] too wonky on the details, but to operate a childcare program in the city, you have to be permitted.
You have to go through a really lengthy process to prove that your program is healthy and safe, which is important, and we will never compromise on the health and safety of programs. But it has to be easier for providers to get through that process. So our new website allows providers to actually apply for their permit online and upload all of their documents, schedule an inspection.
Historically, all of those things were done over emails. Dozens of emails to schedule a health inspection versus a single click of a button. Same for uploading your dozens of documents. So those are emblematic of the kinds of infrastructure investments we want to make.
Simon: Okay, great. And I should say that this is a wonk-friendly podcast.
Emmy: Great. Then-
Simon: You can wonk out.
Emmy: I feel very invited now.
Simon: Yeah. Absolutely. So what are some of the, the biggest challenges to making this happen? Like, what sort of roadblocks are you hitting as you start to build out that infrastructure you’re [00:10:00] talking about?
Emmy: You know, I think the scale and diversity of New York City is a blessing, and it makes everything just a little bit trickier.
You know, we have over 10,000 licensed childcare providers in the city. They come in all different shapes and sizes, and building a system that works for all of our childcare providers it’s complex, it’s fragmented. It takes a lot to make sure we are getting out and hearing from those providers and understanding the system they need and what they, how they can participate in it.
And then similarly on the family side, families have such a wide range of childcare needs and preferences, and we’re really committed to building a system that reflects that diversity of needs and preferences. But that just creates, again, it’s complexity. It’s thinking about sort of systems design at scale, but then what that means on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, and how families can access care, and how providers can participate in these systems.
Simon: And we are talking about this in [00:11:00] our other segment during this episode, but I’m curious if I could get your answer to what are the racial and gender justice aspects of universal childcare for you?
Emmy: Childcare is by definition sort of a racial issue and a gender-based issue. When we think about formal childcare, it is predominantly women of color who work in childcare programs.
This is a field that has been historically deeply under-invested in, and that has its roots, you know, all the way back to slavery, frankly, and an era when women of color were directed to care for the children of others, either for very little or no pay at all. And over time, you know, obviously, we’ve seen progress certainly from there, but we do still see tremendous gaps in terms of the recognition for childcare providers and educators, the compensation.
And so we are really focused in what we are doing first in just naming and recognizing these [00:12:00] issues and trying to lift up childcare educators as the professionals that they are. We’re doing that in ways that are symbolic but important. We declared the month of May is Childcare Educator Appreciation Month.
We hosted a dinner at Gracie Mansion with childcare educators really just to give visibility to who they are and the work they do, and have had senior leaders in the administration out, in the month of May visiting childcare programs just, again, to recognize and give visibility to the work that they do every day.
We also have to meet that recognition with real policy change as well, and take a hard look at the wage inequity that exists in this field, take a hard look at how we make it easier for these women to operate their businesses, to support themselves, to support their families.
They are infrastructure. They are economic mobility. Without them, we would not have parents in the workforce, and we have to really recognize childcare workers and educators as the essential professionals that they [00:13:00] are.
Simon: Yeah. And a bit on that, like I am curious why… So childcare is very expensive. It’s also, as you’d said, the workers are some of the lowest paid workers, and it doesn’t seem like… Usually when those two components are there, you can point to like a big corporate entity or there’s, you know, someone is sucking up all of that money and they’re, you know, there’s some sort of monopoly issue or something.
But, like, in this case, as you’re saying, it’s, like, small business. It’s people who are running these childcare centers and, you know, many of them are closing. I mean, you know, it seems very precariously situated there. So I guess my question to put it simply is, like, where is that money going?
What is happening that makes those three things true?
Emmy: Yeah. I mean, childcare is, and I think many economists have said this, it’s sort of the fundamental definition of a market failure. The [00:14:00] family fees will never be enough to sustain childcare programs, and that’s why we need public investment and intervention.
But just to break it down. So in a childcare program, you have high, you know, adult-to-child ratios. You have to have only a small number of children per adult. It varies based on the age of the children. As low as three to four children per adult for our smallest and youngest, up to, you know, in a preschool classroom you have two teachers and 18 children.
And it’s really important that we have those small ratios. It’s important for health and safety. You need to have a line of supervision, line of sight supervision into what the children are doing, and it’s also really important developmentally. The single biggest variable in a child’s early development in an early education program is their interactions with the adults in their life and in the classroom.
And so we need those particular adult-to-child ratios to ensure that kids are safe and healthy and to ensure they’re actually learning and thriving in these environments. [00:15:00] But that means childcare is labor-intensive work. You have childcare programs that are caring for kids for eight, 10 hours a day, so you need to have…
Let’s take your average toddler classroom, where you’ve got 10 or 12 kids. You have two adults in that classroom. If you’re running a program for 10 hours, you have to have more than two adults because you have to have other folks who are shifting in based on their work schedules. You add in the other support site if you’re talking about the childcare center where you’ve got a center director.
You’ve got to feed the kids two to three meals a day plus snacks, so you probably have somebody in the kitchen. You’ve got somebody cleaning the program. All of a sudden 70, 80% of your bills are personnel costs. It’s going towards salaries. Many of these folks don’t even have real benefit programs, but so, you know, salaries and associated fringe costs, that’s 70 to 80%.
Then you’ve got rent, which we’re in one of the highest rent places in the country, in the world. Childcare providers don’t get any special exemption or benefit here, so they’re paying market rent. [00:16:00] Insurance, which is a huge cost driver for providers because there are only a small number of insurance companies who will underwrite childcare providers.
Costs have gone up tremendously in recent years. And then that’s it. You know, food, supplies, materials. And so we’ve seen the cost of childcare for parents has gone up tremendously over the last five years. At this point in New York City, for childcare to be considered affordable to a parent, that parent has to earn over $300,000.
And affordability is, you know, it’s a very specifically contrived metric of you shouldn’t be spending more than 7% of your income on childcare. Most families at this point are spending 20, 30% of their income on childcare, and it’s worst, of course, for our lowest income families. And then even with those per-child costs on the parent side, the providers are earning just enough to pay their staff, you know, in many cases, just above a minimum wage.
And I do want to [00:17:00] touch on the economics in particular for home-based childcare providers. So the largest number of childcare providers in the city are what are called family childcare providers. So these are predominantly women running childcare programs out of their home. They’re licensed, regulated, but it’s in a residential setting.
If you walk around, as soon as you know about family childcare, you will notice it everywhere on the ground floor of brownstones, in walk-up buildings, in standalone houses in some of the outer boroughs. There are about 6,000 family childcare providers in the city. So you’ve got a single person who is the owner, the operator, the teacher, the cook, the cleaner.
She’s doing everything. If you have more than six kids in a family childcare home, there’s a second adult there. And when all is said and done, when these women pay their rent, they pay their bills, what’s left over to pay themselves amounts to meaningfully less than minimum wage. And that’s even with them charging sort of the families in their community as much as they can afford to charge them.
[00:18:00] So all of that, when you stare enough at the numbers, you walk away and realize there is no solution here other than public investment, because it is just a fundamental market failure between the costs and the inputs.
Simon: Okay. That makes sense. Thank you for breaking that down. So we touched on the funding at the state level.
Can you talk about what’s in, like, the New York City budget and what you’re doing on a city level to invest?
Emmy: Yeah. So in the mayor’s executive budget, which was just recently announced, we are doubling down further and building on what’s already in our plans through the state’s investments this year.
So we are increasing our investment in our contracted childcare providers, the folks who offer 3-K and pre-K services, soon to be 2-K. And so we’re investing about $40 million to increase their contract rates to try and meet the rising costs. We are continuing to invest in outreach to make sure that families know about and can access childcare services.
And we are, [00:19:00] you know, making other investments to make sure that, some of our most vulnerable families can continue to access childcare benefits. It’s a start. We have a lot more work to do over the course of this administration, and we’re committed to deepening our partnership with the state and ultimately delivering childcare for every child and family.
Simon: Okay. And I guess my last question is, you know, what’s next? And also, I’m curious, what’s something that maybe we haven’t touched on about universal childcare that people might not know?
Emmy: I mean, in terms of what’s next, you know, we’ve got a big couple of months ahead of us. We are really looking forward to the launch of 2-K this fall with our first 2,000 two-year-olds.
So that application period for families who live in the communities where we’re starting with 2-K this year is open from June 2nd to June 26th. Families can go to myschools.nyc to apply. We are also thrilled to be increasing access to 3-K this fall. So earlier this year, the mayor [00:20:00] committed that we would be adding over 1,000 3-K seats in the parts of the city where we’ve seen supply and demand not historically matching up.
So families were being offered a 3-K seat, but being asked to travel really far with their young child. And then, in, in May, we announced that we are actually adding over 2,000 3-K seats because we really saw the demand, and we’ve worked to make sure that every family ultimately gets a 3-K offer that works for them.
So those are kind of our nearest term milestones, and then it’s really pivoting our attention to “How do we build on that? How do we make sure we’re ready for the next 10,000 2-K seats, and ultimately to expand the system to every child?”
Simon: Awesome. Well, Emmy, thank you so much for coming on Rights This Way.
Emmy: Thanks for having me.
Simon: We’ll get back to the show in just a moment, but first, if you’ve been enjoying the podcast and want to support our work, check out our merch store at shop.nyclu.org. We have a great selection of items perfect for listeners like you. Our store line lets you [00:21:00] tell the world what you think and who you support, whether you’re marching in the streets or arguing about politics with your extended family.
And right now, you can get 20% off your order with promo code PODCAST20. That’s 20% off with promo code PODCAST20 at shop.nyclu.org. Thanks, and now back to the show And now I’m joined by two guests. Jenna Lauter is a policy counsel at the NYCLU, and Allie Bohm is a NYCLU senior policy counsel. Jenna, Allie, welcome back to Rights This Way.
Jenna: Pleasure to meet you, Simon. Thanks for having us.
Simon: I’ll start with you, Jenna. Can you just start by telling us what universal childcare is and why it’s important?
Jenna: Yeah. So, I mean, simply put, universal childcare means free childcare for all. It means treating childcare as a public good instead of a private burden that falls on families.
[00:22:00] It means that, you know, everybody can access free, high-quality childcare regardless of income, regardless of immigration status, disability status, or where you live. I think also it’s critical to foreground that universal childcare also demands paying childcare educators a thriving wage that reflects the value of their work and the true cost of providing care.
So why is it important? I mean, I think, you know, it goes without saying that the cost of living right now is staggering, and we are experiencing skyrocket income inequality. Most parents need to work in order to make ends meet, and it’s childcare that makes that possible. At the same time, the costs of childcare are astronomical.
In New York, on average, childcare costs $15,000 annually. That’s about 17% of the state median income. And all that means that 80% of New York families [00:23:00] cannot afford unsubsidized childcare. Although the state does provide sort of a patchwork of support for childcare, it’s woefully insufficient to actually meet communities’ needs.
You know, the gap in perspective, more than half of counties in New York have had to close enrollment in the state’s childcare assistance program, which offers vouchers for some of the state’s lowest income families to access childcare, because they’ve run out of funds. In New York City alone, there’s over 17,000 children that are on a wait list to be able to access care.
So what the state is doing, you know, through this sort of not universal patchwork just isn’t enough, and it means that there are thousands and thousands of New York families who can’t access the care they need and are faced then with this impossible dilemma of, how can I go to work and support my family while making sure that my children are also well cared for?
And I think I just want to also add, you know, the system is [00:24:00] failing childcare providers and childcare educators as well. Childcare educators are some of the lowest paid workers in the state. And childcare providers are, you know, often struggling to stay afloat. There are many areas of the state that are called childcare deserts, where there just is no access to childcare.
And so, you know, the current system where the burden falls on families to pay out of pocket if they can, or on the state to sort of come in with these, you know, half measures, it’s just not enough to build the capacity that we need in order to make sure that every family can access the childcare that they need.
So that’s at least a start-
Simon: Yes.
Jenna: on unpacking this very large topic.
Simon: That’s a great little encapsulation. Thank you. Allie, I’ll turn to you. Tell us what paid medical leave is, and also how it’s related to childcare.
Allie: Sure. Thanks, Simon. So paid medical leave is the leave [00:25:00] that workers in New York can take if they need to take time off from work to care for their own non-workplace injury or illness, their own health.
In some ways, it’s a historic program. We were the first state in the nation to pass such a program. We passed it, I believe, in the ’40s. However, the wage replacement rate for that program has stagnated at $170 a week since 1989. I don’t need to tell anybody here that you are not paying rent, you are not paying for groceries, you’re not paying your medical bills on $170 a week.
Worse still, it does not include job protection or continuity of health insurance, so if you have a medical crisis, losing your health insurance is a real big problem. So how does it relate to childcare? So it relates in two ways. The first one is it relates to families’ ability to have children in the first place.
So paid medical leave, or what we call TDI, temporary disability insurance, that’s the technical name for the program, [00:26:00] is the leave that people can take off if they have a complicated pregnancy, say they need bed rest in order to have a healthy pregnancy. If they need that time off, that’s the leave they can take.
You can also take TDI within the last month of your pregnancy just by virtue of being pregnant. It is also the leave that people take to recover from pregnancy loss, and it is the leave that people can take to recover from childbirth. And so if we had a functioning program, people could actually take that time to recover themselves and then have paid family leave, which is a much more generous program, to bond with their new baby.
So there’s that piece of it. The other piece, I named that this is not a program that anyone can live on, is that if someone is having a health crisis, say it’s a cancer diagnosis, say it’s a broken leg, say it’s a pregnancy for a later child that’s complicated, right? [00:27:00] All of that puts pressure on a family.
And so the moment that someone is sick and suddenly has to make choices of, “Am I gonna feed my children or am I gonna get treatment?” Let’s say treatment for cancer. “Am I going to take time off of work to recover myself, or am I gonna pay rent in order to keep a roof over my children’s head?” That both, I mean, can actually funnel children into the family regulation system, right, if they’re not being provided for because the parent can’t afford it because they are reliant on this inadequate program, but also can cause all sorts of family stress that can cause other problems for families.
Simon: And so I think that is the answer to my next question, what you’ve just said. But I want to give you just an opportunity in case there’s anything else that you want to mention for why we need to strengthen paid medical leave.
Allie: As it turns out, there are other things I want to say, [00:28:00] so I’m glad you asked.
So strengthening paid medical leave is a gender and racial justice imperative. The United States faces a maternal health crisis that disproportionately impacts Black women. In fact, here in New York, we have seen a quadrupling of the maternal mortality rate within the last decade, specifically for Black women.
That’s unconscionable. Modernizing our paid medical leave program will ensure that pregnant New Yorkers can afford to take time off to take care of themselves, to keep their pregnancies healthy without risking economic insecurity. As I named before, if a person experiences pregnancy loss, they can use paid medical leave to recover, and a modernized program will ensure that that leave is job-protected and includes a sustainable wage replacement rate and continuity of health insurance.
But I want to take a step further. The program that we are supportive of [00:29:00] would allow what’s called intermittent leave, so it would allow people to use their leave in daily increments if that’s what they need. This type of leave is already available for caregivers who receive paid family leave and is much needed for people with complicated pregnancies who need bed rest, say, more than once in a pregnancy.
But I also want to name that bringing our state’s paid medical leave program into the 21st century is not just a gender and racial justice imperative. It is a disability justice imperative, and it’s also an economic justice imperative. So people undergoing cancer treatment or dialysis, people recovering from major out-of-work injuries, people going through mental health or substance abuse treatment, people with conditions that impact their energy levels like long COVID or ME/CFS, among many others, all need intermittent leave.
They need a sustainable wage replacement rate. They need continuity of health insurance. They need a program they can rely on. [00:30:00] And in the face of the Trump administration’s assault on working families, whether that’s about layoffs of federal workers, whether that’s tariffs that have sent our economy spinning, whether that is the assault on the social safety net at the federal level, updating our paid medical leave program is a way that New York lawmakers, and frankly supporting childcare as well, are two ways that our lawmakers can show up for working New Yorkers and their families, and in the case of paid medical leave, can do so at very little cost to the state.
Simon: And we’ll get into those details in a second. And also glad I asked. Okay, Jenna, speaking of gender and racial justice, we mentioned that universal childcare is a gender and racial justice issue. Can you talk about why?
Jenna: Yeah, absolutely. The lack of universal childcare or accessible childcare continues to fall hardest and be the [00:31:00] most harmful to women, and especially women of color.
And that is not by accident. So, you know, as probably most listeners know, for centuries, childcare responsibilities have been divided along gender lines. Women have overwhelmingly borne the responsibility for the unpaid labor of tending to children and the home while, you know, men do paid work in fields, factories, offices.
And the undervaluing of caregiving work is both a symptom and a reflection and an intentional choice designed around who is responsible for doing that work. So one good example, I think, is that in 1971, Congress actually passed bipartisan legislation that would take steps towards a universal childcare program.
Then President Nixon vetoed that legislation, [00:32:00] explicitly to really cement traditional family structures as the cornerstone of our country. And I think it’s really telling that there were anti-feminist activists behind that veto, advocating for that veto, specifically because they thought that by providing support for childcare, it would undermine women’s, as they framed it, right to not work. So you can see there the logic that by not providing support for this role, this obligation, this very necessary function that’s traditionally been the responsibility of women, it keeps women locked into providing that function and unable to participate in society in other ways.
And so now, although, you know, you have basically, you know, equal numbers of men and women participating in the workforce at similar rates, it’s still women who are more likely than men to leave their job or reduce their work hours or turn down a [00:33:00] promotion in order to accommodate childcare responsibilities.
So, you know, the lack of support for childcare and accessible support just continues to mean that women are not able to fully participate in the economy, in society, and to, you know, fully realize their, you know, aspirations and sense of identity in the world. It’s a major burden. And I want to actually go back to that idea of sort of childcare undermining a woman’s right not to work, because I think that also helps to really articulate the hypocrisy and racial justice implications of childcare.
Obviously, not all women could ever afford to not work. And also for centuries it has been Black women, immigrant women, and women of color who have been called in to support affluent white women in their childcare responsibilities. Again, this is partly [00:34:00] a symptom and partly a cause of why and how this work has continued to be so undervalued.
It is still Black and Brown women who disproportionately make up the childcare workforce and who are paid poverty wages to do work that I think we all agree is extraordinarily important in trusting, you know, our children to someone’s care. I think, you know, Allie mentioned the family regulation system earlier and, you know, that’s another way that society has sort of used childcare as a wedge to punish and fray Black families and communities.
So not only does the lack of affordable childcare create this sort of catch-22 for families, families of color largely who have to work and can’t afford childcare, they’re confronted with this question of “What do you do with your children when you have to go to work?” And the family regulation system, you know, [00:35:00] traditionally often called the child welfare system, but which, hopefully our listeners already know, does very little to actually improve child and family wellbeing is a very punitive system that overwhelmingly targets Black and Brown families for surveillance, punishment, and separation.
Leaving one’s children unattended because you can’t afford childcare could be a basis for the family regulation system to step in and investigate, and potentially even separate, a child from their family. You know, as you can see from that example, this is a system that often punishes poverty. And so you also have childcare educators who are paid poverty wages to care for other people’s children and then are then more vulnerable to being investigated by the system, accused of neglecting their own families simply because we are so undervaluing the work of caregiving.
So yes, I mean, childcare, the lack of [00:36:00] universal childcare, it really cuts to sort of the heart of these intersectional racial and gender justice inequities that have been intentionally perpetuated in society for centuries.
Simon: You’ve touched on a lot of the intermingling between childcare and the family regulation system. I’m curious if you can talk about, like, specifically the way that, you know, the same systems are often in charge of administering childcare that are also doing the investigative and the punitive work within the regulation.
Jenna: Yeah. So sort of to add insult to injury in a way, it is the same agencies that are responsible for carrying out and administering the family regulation system that are also responsible for funding and administering childcare support for some of New York’s lowest income families.
And so you can just imagine [00:37:00] sort of the psychology of being threatened on the one hand, and let’s be clear, you know, communities that are really heavily impacted by the family regulation system, they know to fear these agencies. They live in fear of a knock on the door from whether it’s New York City, the Administration for Children’s Services, or Child Protective Services in other parts of the state.
And so asking those families to then turn to those same agencies to say, “Well, I need support with childcare,” I mean, it’s sort of an untenable position to put families in. And so I mentioned earlier that, you know, what the state is doing in terms of this patchwork of subsidies and vouchers and tax breaks isn’t enough.
Well, as we build out a universal childcare system, it’s so vital that the state intentionally disentangle a dedicated system that is built to support universal access to [00:38:00] childcare completely separate from any systems of surveillance or family separation.
Simon: Okay. Thank you for that, and I think it’s solutions time.
Let’s move to that. What do we need? I’ll start with you, Allie. What are we calling for with regard to strengthening paid medical leave?
Allie: So this is perhaps the most baseline thing in the world. So I named that we have a paid family leave program here in New York. It’s a very popular program.
It is a program that allows a worker who needs to take time off from work to take care of a loved one or to bond with a new baby or a new child in their family. It gives them 67% of their average weekly wage. It gives them job protection. It gives them continuity of health insurance, and it can be used intermittently, meaning if you’re taking care of, say, a loved one who’s going through cancer, you can [00:39:00] take off whenever they need chemotherapy and then go back to work, and then three weeks later when they need chemotherapy again, you can take off to take care of them.
That’s what happens if you have paid family leave. If you have paid medical leave, so you’re the one who is going through those cancer treatments, or you’re the one who is going through a complicated pregnancy, or you’re the one who broke your leg, you get $170 a week. You have no job protection. You have no continuity of health insurance, and you have to use that time in one block of time.
So if you need bed rest twice in a pregnancy, too bad. If you are going through chemo, well, you can take off for that first treatment, but when you need the follow-up, what are you gonna do? I hope you’ve got sick time. It’s not a program that works. It’s not a usable program, and in fact, many employers subsidize that program to make it usable for their workers.
So what we are asking for is really baseline. It is to bring those two [00:40:00] programs in line with each other. We are trying to bring paid medical leave up so that if you yourself are the one who is going through the medical situation, you can get 67% of your wage. You have job protection. You have continuity of health insurance because, oh my gosh, that’s when you need it the most.
And you can use that leave intermittently. I want to name that, you know, we were historic when we put in place paid medical leave in the ’40s And we let that program ossify and become useless. And other states that have followed our example have put in place usable programs. So we are so scared that New Yorkers are gonna move to New Jersey and we’re gonna lose our tax base.
If you need paid medical leave in New Jersey, your weekly wage replacement rate is capped at $1,119. In Connecticut, $1,016.40. In Massachusetts, it’s [00:41:00] $1,230.39. And if you’re looking for some state that is even close to us at that $170, the closest you can find is if you go to Hawaii, and their wage replacement rate is 871.
So it is a full $701 more than ours is. We are one of the richest states in the country. We should be looking out for our workers.
Simon: That’s a good pitch. Yeah, I think, yeah, $170 is quite low. I, okay, want to turn to you, Jenna. What are we calling for in terms of universal childcare, both on the state and local level?
Jenna: Yeah. So I mean, first and foremost, I think we just need to be calling on our lawmakers and our leaders to be visionary. Yes, [00:42:00] there are interim steps that we need to take to improve conditions for New York’s families, and I will speak to those, but really the call is to be bold and to take the necessary steps, make the necessary investments to build towards a truly universal childcare system, like I described at the top of the podcast.
I think in the interim, we need to be centering the lowest income families, the most marginalized families, and making sure that they can access childcare. And so that means fully funding the state’s childcare assistance program. I mentioned earlier that, you know, New York State has wait lists to access care, has closed enrollment in many of its counties.
Although right now New York is, you know, still at the tail end of negotiating its budget, and we’re anticipating, you know, historic levels of investment in this childcare assistance program, the funding levels that we’re expecting are still not enough to [00:43:00] actually meet demand. So lawmakers need to fully fund these programs because no child who lawmakers have already decided should be eligible to have this childcare assistance should just be waiting for, you know, an indefinite period of time to be able to have the care that their family needs.
We also need to pay the childcare workforce a thriving wage. So New York absolutely, as a matter both of justice in terms of, you know, not continuing to expect disproportionately women of color to be performing caregiving work for poverty wages, need to pay them what they deserve. And in terms of practicality, we cannot achieve a universal childcare system without investing in the workforce to build capacity.
So that’s number two. Number three, a lot of these programs that we’ve talked about, this childcare assistance program, in particular, comes with strings attached. [00:44:00] So some of those strings include, parents only being eligible for childcare assistance for the exact hours that they’re working.
And that can be hugely burdensome, especially for people who are working non-traditional hours, gig work, you know, varying shift schedules. And so lawmakers really need to decouple childcare eligibility from parents’ exact hours of work. Second, there are minimum earnings requirements, perversely, to be eligible for childcare assistance, so it’s actually possible to earn too little to make you ineligible.
And that, you know, again, we’ve talked so much about the catch-22 that families are in. A family that is seeking stable employment can’t actually accept that employment until they know that they will have childcare in place, and yet you can’t know that you can count on childcare until you have that income.
And so lawmakers absolutely need to do away with that as well. [00:45:00] And so these are really, you know, interim but absolutely urgent, vital, common sense steps that New York can be taking to make childcare more accessible for more people who need it. And then I think lastly, you know, to address this question of the odd intermingling between the family regulation system and those policing functions and the childcare system, which is supposed to be supportive.
Both the state and localities should be taking steps to intentionally disentangle those systems and making sure that we’re not asking parents to interface with the system that frightens them, that they might be legitimately traumatized by, in order to access the support that they need.
Simon: Yeah.
That sounds… That’s a comprehensive program. Yeah, that sounds great, and I really appreciate you emphasizing the universal part of universal childcare.
Jenna: Follow our work at NYCLU on the child care issue at our website. And if you want, there’s also a really robust [00:46:00] coalition in New York State advocating for universal child care, the Empire State Campaign for Child Care, ESCCC.
And so for folks who want to get even more involved, you know, that’s another place where you can plug in with advocacy opportunities.
Simon: Awesome. Well, with that, Allie, Jenna, thank you so much for coming on Rights This Way.
Allie: Thank you.
Jenna: Thanks for having us.
Simon: Thank you for listening. You can find more on everything we talked about in this episode by visiting nyclu.org.
And you can follow us at NYCLU on YouTube, Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook. Until next time, I’m Simon McCormack. Thank you for fighting with us to deliver more liberty and justice to all New Yorkers.
