Honoring Black Women’s Labor in the Child Care Sector
By Alyssa Fortner and Shira Small
This year’s Black History Month theme, “African Americans and Labor,” provides an important opportunity to uplift and reflect on the ways Black women have shaped America’s child care system. This reflection is particularly critical one month into a new administration that has demonstrated disregard for the contributions of diverse workforces today and throughout history. To change the future of child care, it is important to understand the past, both to acknowledge how injustice shapes the sector and ensure a fairer and more equitable future for those who sustain and utilize the child care system.
In the time of chattel slavery, enslaved Black women were forced to take care of white children, while not being allowed to take care of their own. In the post-emancipation period, low-paid domestic work was one of the only industries available to Black women. And throughout the 1900s policy choices and both proposed and enacted laws further marginalized and harmed those in the child care workforce and the families that relied on them. CLASP’s more detailed timeline of this history and impact can be found here.
Though the U.S. child care system has changed over the course of history, the labor of Black women continues to be underpaid and undervalued. While 18 percent of child care workers are Black, Black people only compose 13 percent of the overall U.S. workforce. Despite their overrepresentation in the child care workforce, Black women earn less on average than their white counterparts in a field that is already woefully underpaid, with the average worker earning $30,370 in 2023. For center-based providers, the wage gap between white and Black workers amounts to an average of more than $8,000 per year. Workers in home-based child care programs, which Black providers operate in higher numbers, earn even less.
On top of low wages, the workforce’s limited access to health insurance, retirement savings, and other benefits demonstrate the continued devaluation of Black women’s labor, harming the entire sector. Creating an economically sustainable profession that supports the well-being of all providers is not only a necessary step in creating a stronger child care system, but in working to repair the history of exploiting Black women’s work.
Anti-Black racism, discrimination, and a refusal to chart a new path for child care to disconnect it from its unjust roots keeps child care workers underpaid and keeps care unaffordable. At CLASP, we are committed to helping transform the child care system by outlining its history, changing narratives around the system and workforce, and putting forth policy solutions that support those who have been undervalued or overlooked.
As too many communities in this country face increasing threats to their economic and personal well-being, CLASP remains steadfast in its mission to advance racial and economic equity—especially in moments when progress and justice feel fragile. We are committed to working at the intersection of advancing equity and improving policy, which are inextricably linked. To that end, below are CLASP resources that center racial equity to expand access to child care and support for the child care workforce. These resources seek to understand the impacts of anti-Blackness and racism in the child care sector, because recognizing injustice is the first step in eradicating it.
Understanding and Improving Equity in ECE Settings
Centering Black Families: Equitable Discipline through Improved Data Policies in Child Care
This report documents the history of inequitable disciplinary practices that disproportionately impact Black children in child care and early education and how data can be used to create meaningful solutions that address the harms.
This blog discusses ways in which the legacy of white supremacy in the child care sector can be dismantled.
Child Care Assistance Landscape: Inequities in Federal and State Eligibility and Access
This report analyzes variations in eligibility and access to Child Care and Development Block Grant subsidies in 2020, disaggregated by race and ethnicity.
Advancing Equity for the Child Care Workforce
The Racist History Behind Why Black Childcare Workers Are Underpaid
This 2022 op-ed examines the history of black labor in the child care sector and how it underpins the workforce’s severe underpayment.
Expanding Access to Child Care Assistance: Opportunities in the Child Care and Development Fund
This report and its fact sheets explain how the child care workforce can be better supported and diversified to provide more culturally responsive child care options for families and provides strategies for states to expand access to care.
Community Engagement as an Anti-Racist Strategy
This report examines how community engagement strategies can help create more equitable policies on the road to dismantling systemic racism.
Parent and Provider Experience Should Inform Child Care Policy
CLASP partnered with parent leaders from the United Parent Leaders Action Network in this blog to highlight the importance of community engagement as a tool to advance equity, just as it is a tool for creating effective policy.
