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MOST PARENTS DON’T HAVE ANY FORMAL CHILD CARE ARRANGEMENTS






MOST PARENTS DON’T HAVE ANY FORMAL CHILD CARE ARRANGEMENTS



   //
 * Census.gov /
 * America Counts: Stories /
 * Most Parents Don’t Have Any Formal Child Care Arrangements


ABOUT 1 IN 5 PARENTS RELIED ON A RELATIVE FOR CHILD CARE

November 29, 2023
Written by:
Casey Eggleston, Yeris H Mayol Garcia, Mikelyn Meyers, and Yazmin Garcia Trejo

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the lives of the nation’s estimated 62.7 million
parents with children under age 18 as access to paid, unpaid or subsidized child
care and school supervision ended for many. The recent end of pandemic relief
funds may continue the disruptions for some households, potentially affecting
availability of child care for years to come.

Interestingly, most parents regardless of their kids’ ages, said they didn’t
have any type of child care arrangement, including 35% of those with children
under age 5 and more than half (54%) with children ages 5 to 11.

Now that the pandemic emergency has ended, schools have reopened and child care
services are more widely available again, how are parents — especially the 50.7
million parents in the labor force — handling the care of their children?

When asked in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey (HPS) from
September to December 2022, roughly 61% of parents living with at least one
child age 17 or younger said they did not have any formal child care
arrangements. The survey shows that:

 * About 1 in 5 (21.8%) reported child care was provided by a relative other
   than a parent.
 * Around 8.4% reported using a day care center.
 * About 5% reported using one of the following options: nonrelative care
   (5.4%); nursery or preschool (5.4%); or before/after school care (5.1%).
 * About 3% used a family day care.
 * Only 1% reported participating in the Head Start program.


HPS AND CHILD CARE

In September of 2022, the HPS introduced new questions about types and costs of
child care arrangements (Table 1).

In this article we focus on child care arrangements by the ages of children,
employment of parents and household income.

Respondents were asked which child care arrangements they had used in the past
seven days to look after the children in the household. Parents could select all
the options applicable to them.

If they chose “none of these,” they were prevented from selecting any of the
substantive categories of types of care. As Table 1 shows, 61.2% selected
“none.” The remaining 38.8% were enabled to select “all that apply” among the
substantive categories (thus, overall percentages add to more than 100).




TYPES OF CHILD CARE AND NO CHILD CARE

Types of child care arrangements used by parents varied according to the age of
the children (Figure 1).

Parents who reported not having any type of child care arrangement may have
selected this response to describe a variety of circumstances, such as having a
stay-at-home parent care for children, being unable to access care for their
young children or having children old enough to care for themselves.

Interestingly, most parents regardless of their kids’ ages, said they didn’t
have any type of child care arrangement, including 35% of those with children
under age 5 and more than half (54%) with children ages 5 to 11.

Parents might be caring for children while also working or in school given the
difficulties of finding affordable child care and the shift to remote work. In
addition, many households made the difficult choice of having one parent,
usually women, drop out of the labor force and stay home to care for children.




CHILD CARE ARRANGEMENTS AND EMPLOYMENT

Lack of child care impacted parents’ employment (Figure 2).

Around 15% of parents who had not worked in the last seven days reported they
were unemployed in order to provide care to their children who weren’t in school
or day care. This trend was particularly pronounced among parents of young
children, with more than a third (35%) reporting they didn’t work because they
needed to care for them.

The responsibility of providing care for these children was overwhelmingly borne
by mothers: nearly 9 out of 10 parents (87%) who did not work to care for
children were women.




CHILD CARE ARRANGEMENTS AND INCOME

Income also had a notable impact on the type of child care arrangement families
used (Figure 3).

Lower income households were most likely not to have any type of child care
arrangement: 67% with annual household incomes under $50,000 reported not having
child care compared to 52% of households earning more than $200,000 a year.

Approximately one-fifth of parents relied on a relative for child care,
regardless of household income, but as household income increased so did use of
daycare centers, preschools, and before and aftercare.




THE TRADE OFF: CHILD CARE AND EMPLOYMENT

Parents of young children must weigh factors like cost and availability of child
care when determining whether to work outside the home. Lower income families
may struggle to access quality child care and in some cases, the cost of such
care may exceed the income generated by the working parent. When one parent is
unable to work due to child care needs, the responsibility tends to fall on
women.

While these struggles predate the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic likely
exacerbated the challenges that families with young children face when arranging
for child care. Although schools and day care centers have reopened, lack of
child care disproportionally affects employment opportunities for parents of
young children, particularly women.


ABOUT THE HOUSEHOLD PULSE SURVEY

The HPS provides near real-time data on the impact of social and economic
factors like employment status, food security, and housing security on
Americans’ lives. Information on the methodology and reliability of these
estimates can be found in the source and accuracy statements for each data
release.

Data users interested in state-level sample sizes, the number of respondents,
weighted response rates and occupied housing unit coverage ratios can consult
the quality measures file available at the same location.

These data were collected over five weeks in 2022 from September 14 to December
19 of the survey, which was sent to more than 1 million adults in households
each month (Table 2).



Casey Eggleston is a survey methodologist in the Census Bureau’s Center for
Behavioral Science Methods.

Yerís H. Mayol-García is a sociologist and demographer in the Census Bureau’s
Fertility and Family Statistics Branch.

Mikelyn Meyers is the Senior coordinator for decennial research in the Census
Bureau’s Center for Behavioral Science Methods.

Yazmin Garcia Trejo is chief of the Response and Measurement Branch in the
Census Bureau's Decennial Statistics Studies Division.

This article was filed under:

Child Care
 
Children
 
Employment
 
Families and Living Arrangements
 
Income and Poverty
 


RELATED STATISTICS

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Stats for Stories
National Child's Day: November 20, 2023
November 20, 2023
In 2021, the majority (71%) of America’s 72.3M children under 18 lived with two
parents and the next largest share (20.9%) lived with their mothers only.

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Stats for Stories
National Family Caregivers Month: November 2023
November 2023
In 2022, there were 764,521 U.S. personal care aides, 391,950 child care workers
and 261,817 home health aides, according to the American Community Survey.

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America Counts: Stories about Families & Living Arrangements



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Child Care

Information collected on child care has evolved over the years to include
comprehensive data on child care use, cost, and receipt of government
assistance.

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Household Pulse Survey (COVID-19)

The new Household Pulse Survey is designed to deploy quickly, and efficiently
collect data on how people’s lives have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

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RELATED AMERICA COUNTS STORIES

Families and Living Arrangements
Several Generations Under One Roof
Multigenerational households and those with children living with grandparents
increased from 2010 to 2020.


Education
Significant Declines in Preschool Enrollment During COVID-19 Pandemic
There were about 950,000 fewer children ages 3 to 6 enrolled in preschool in
2021 than in 2019.


Income and Poverty
Nearly a Third of Parents Spent Child Tax Credit on School Expenses
Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey shows that many parents spent the first
three Child Tax Credit advance payments on child care or school expenses.



MORE STORIES

Families and Living Arrangements
Most Parents Don’t Have Any Formal Child Care Arrangements
The Household Pulse Survey shows that 1 in 5 parents relied on a relative for
child care.


Business and Economy
How Many U.S. Businesses Use Artificial Intelligence?
The Business Trends and Outlook Survey shows that only 3.8% of businesses use AI
to produce goods and services but use varies by sector.


Population
About 8.2 Million People Moved Between States in 2022
The number of people who moved between states went up from nearly 7.9 million in
2021 to about 8.2 million in 2022, making up 19.9% of all movers.


Education
3- and 4-Year-Old School Enrollment Rebounds From Pandemic Low
There were some racial and ethnic differences in enrollment of 3- and
4-year-olds from 2018 to 2022.



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