Brenda is a mom living with her three children in a cramped apartment. The kids end up playing near the busy street since there is no yard to play in. Brenda has been on the waitlist for Section 8 housing for a long time.
Elizabeth and her husband live in a two-bedroom apartment in San Diego with their two children. They don’t have extended family in San Diego and their children attend day care while they work. The family pays a little over $2,000 for childcare for both kids, and $2,500 for rent. Even though both of those are very reasonable prices for the area, the costs account for a huge chunk of their monthly income. Elizabeth’s hours were recently switched, so she struggles to pick her kids up in the afternoon.
Maria is a single mother who works as a cashier in a grocery store and has two children. After many years of waiting, her son recently received an official ADHD diagnosis and Maria is working with his school to make sure he gets the support he needs. Both of her kids go to the free aftercare program at their school. Maria knows that the aftercare staff are trying their best, but she is sometimes frustrated that they don’t seem to know how to support neurodiverse kids.
These are all fictional characters, but the stories resonate with many San Diego families. And a family resilience study used these stories to study childcare.
"What would the story look like if their childcare center was a source of support? Imagine a world where people are getting everything they need and childcare is really at the center of that," said Rebecca Fielding-Miller, the lead researcher with the School of Public Health for UCSD.
She said the study began weighing how parents were feeling after the height of the pandemic.
"We worked with the California Department of Public Health and said, 'You know, we really want to explore what's going on with parent burnout,'" she said. "In particular, we're interested in the connection between burnout and childcare."
The study found parents with young kids juggling work and childcare were experiencing higher levels of burn out.
Things like car troubles, changes in work schedules and family illnesses can impact income and schedules — causing stress and burn out.
Childcare was one of the factors weighing heavy on parents. Fielding-Miller said she wanted to create a scenario where childcare helped parents instead.
"We were really curious if childcare could potentially be a source of resilience and support rather than one more thing to be juggling," she said. "Imagine a world ... where the YMCA was piloting shuttles and the kids could get a ride home from aftercare ... What if there were drop-in resource navigators where you pick your kid up from school, and somebody can also help you navigate CalFresh at the same time. And they're just always there and you can ask them."
Along with the San Diego YMCA and San Diego for Every Child, Fielding-Miller presented the findings to policy makers. They asked what it would take to make something happen.
Policymakers responded with a list of ideas.
"So workforce rate reform, universal basic income, increased state support for child care," Fielding-Miller said. "Mixed delivery universal pre-K. Better parental leave. Provider guaranteed income. Municipal funding and staff training and support for inclusive care."
Childcare reform hasn’t happened yet. But Fielding-Miller thinks her findings could play an important role in deciding policies one day.
