Universal Public Childcare
Building a Vision for Universal Public Childcare: Principles for a Childcare System That Works for Workers and Families
07. 23. 2025
Parents, providers, and organizers come together to name core tenets of a universal public childcare system
Looking Beyond a Broken System
The U.S. childcare system is broken. In many parts of the country, average annual childcare costs exceed those of transportation, food, health care, and housing, putting formal care out of reach for families. Even beyond its costs, childcare remains inaccessible to many. Half of all U.S. families live in a childcare desert and providers are insufficiently compensated as a workforce, limiting the care available. Furthermore, the field faces a number of troubling trends, including a growing share of the market represented by private equity, which means children’s care and wellbeing is too often tied to a corporation’s bottom line. At the same time, in some states we’re seeing a push toward deregulation, which means less oversight over corporate actors.
Envisioning a Path Forward
Accessible, affordable, high-quality childcare is essential to a healthy economy and foundational for positive childhood development and wellbeing. The U.S. needs a universal public childcare system that is affordable, accessible, and equitable to effectively meet families’ needs.
In partnership with Economic Security Project, Roosevelt Institute and Community Change held a series of conversations with parents, childcare providers, and grassroots organizers over the course of a year to foreground a path to a public infrastructure of care that is sustainable, affordable, high-quality, and universal. Our findings culminated in Building a Vision for Universal Public Childcare: Principles for a Childcare System that Works for Workers and Families. Read the full report here.
“People tell us a lack of childcare is why they aren’t working… They can’t even think about buying a house because they pay for childcare.”
– ECE community organizer
Pillars of a Successful Universal Public Childcare System
Following our yearlong discussion series with advocates, parents and providers, we found that a public, universal childcare system must provide safe, nurturing learning opportunities for all children, and be affordable, safe, high-quality, inclusive, and culturally competent. In order to be successful, it must be:
- Affordable: Accompanied by a significant federal investment to make childcare affordable (if not free) and expand access by encouraging providers to join or stay in the industry
- Universal: Universally accessible, with childcare as a legal right to all children with an affirmative obligation to ensure sufficient spots exist.
- Coordinated and Streamlined: Upheld by coordinated, non-fragmented governance structures; Federally administered through state and/or regional infrastructure to support implementation and expansion.
- Support a Thriving, Diverse Workforce: Offer thriving wages and benefits to a valued and well-resourced workforce, as well as support workers’ right to organize and collective bargaining.
- Inclusive and Culturally Competent: Provide culturally and linguistically competent care, options of expanded hours outside of the school day, and universally accessible services for early intervention and services for children with disabilities.
- Safe and High-Quality: Child-centered safety and quality with strong and consistent guidelines built with parent, family, and worker input.
- Built with a “Just Transition”: A universal system must be built through a process that includes a just transition for the current workforce.
Creating a universal public childcare system of this kind will require:
- Significant, sustained, bold public investments,
- A sufficient workforce that is:
- inclusive of the existing workforce and empowers independent providers to make the transition to a new system, and is
- strengthened by a massive expansion of the field, specifically, more providers
- An economic system that invites people to work in childcare by making its jobs “good jobs” with collective bargaining rights, family-sustaining wages and benefits at parity with K-12 educators,
- The support of a broader care system that, ideally, includes up to one year of paid parental leave and universal preschool for all.
What’s Next
We hope this report will drive conversations that lead to a shared vision for universal public childcare, mobilize people to action, and offer an ambitious vision in place of a broken system that’s failing millions of families.