Child Care at Core of Women’s Slow Post-Pandemic Return to Work

By Katie Kindelan

In 1971, Congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, legislation that would have established a network of nationally funded, comprehensive child care centers.

But President Richard Nixon vetoed the legislation, and Congress has not passed anything similar in the five decades since.

Now 50 years later, President Joe Biden has proposed an ambitious legislative proposal — his “American Families Plan” — that would, among other things, create universal pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds, cap how much low- and middle-income Americans must spend on child care, extend Affordable Care Act tax credits and expand paid leave.

Amid the global coronavirus pandemic that has put the nation’s child care crisis in the spotlight and pushed more than 2 million women out of the workforce, advocates of child care reform say they remain cautiously optimistic that this will be a time for real change for parents, and especially moms, in the United States.

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