三和一善 | 米国の職場における保育システム

The United States is finally paying more attention to parenting issues. In this episode of "The New Way We Work", experts and guests discussed what went wrong and how to fix it.

The childcare crisis in the United States is not new. American parents have always known that childcare services—especially from birth to kindergarten—are expensive, difficult to find, and a common source of stress.

In more than 30 states, the average cost of full-time childcare is higher than the tuition fees of colleges in the state, which means that the cost of childcare is usually higher than that of many parents. The pandemic has also made it more difficult to find childcare centers, as many childcare centers (one in four are estimated to be closed) in the past two years.

Parents are always busy looking for care for school-age children during summer vacations, school holidays, and even the three hours between school and the end of the working day. This has always been an unstable balancing act, and those with fewer funds and resources struggle the most.

But before the pandemic hit, many people regarded it as a personal issue. Once schools closed and childcare centers closed, our unsustainable childcare system finally became an urgent part of the national discussion. Now, as we explore what the future looks like, we have the opportunity to rethink and rebuild this broken system.

To break down the problem and explore solutions in the public and private sectors, I joined Wendy Chun-Poon, Director of the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor, and Elliot Paspel, an education policy expert and author of "Behind the Crawl: The Child Care Crisis in America," and how to fix it. (This episode was recorded at the Fast Company Innovation Festival earlier this fall.)

Due to labor shortages in all walks of life, Chun-Poon explained how the lack of childcare services affects mothers’ labor participation. “There are still 2.8 million women who have not returned to the labor market. Compared with before the pandemic, there are now more than 1 million fewer mothers with children under 13 in employment,” Chun-Poon said.

Paspel agreed. "Childcare is indeed infrastructure. It is an industry that supports all other industries. Before the pandemic, women with children under 6 accounted for 10% of the workforce, but during the crisis they accounted for 22% of jobs," he explain. "The ability to find quality childcare services may be a decisive factor in employment. We know that the lack of childcare services is hindering economic development, and a large part of this is because the childcare industry itself is in crisis."

Paspel said that the cause of the crisis in the childcare industry was insufficient investment for decades. The actual cost of care is so high that nurseries cannot easily raise wages to compete with other industries, which means fewer places for children, because nurseries must maintain a low ratio of children to teachers. Fewer positions means that parents have no choice but to work on their own. "Before we do anything else, we must first stabilize the childcare industry with public funds," he said.

Both Chun-Poon and Paspel agree that private sector solutions such as on-site daycare are not enough. It is difficult and expensive to establish a quality childcare service-even if it is in place, it can only serve a small number of people and a small part of the needs. Paspel believes that the same concern should not be about work-related benefits.

Both parties agree that public funding is the best solution, and that real care infrastructure goes far beyond providing childcare services for children under five. "Family and children do not exist in a vacuum. Dealing with elderly care issues or major medical needs can easily put pressure on the family. Therefore, I think sometimes our attention to children is too close to [when] it is actually around them. The family ecosystem,” Paspel said.

Listen to the full program to learn about the detailed classification of public policy solutions, including paid family leave and universal preschool, as well as explanations of the lifelong chain reaction and long-term economic impact of early childhood education.