Mom Congress Issues Child Care & Paid Leave Recommendations to Congress

The Mom Congress advocacy team submitted the following letter to the Federal House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee who sought feedback on how to shape their proposed bill to address childcare and paid leave post-COVID.

June 24th, 2021

Re: Discussion Draft - Paid Family Leave and Access to Child Care

Dear Chairman Neal and Ranking Member Brady,

Mom Congress is the U.S. mother’s rights membership organization that is addressing the most pressing policy issues of motherhood. Our members firmly believe that paid family leave and access to child care must be guaranteed for the United States to support the workforce as well as the physical and emotional health of U.S. families.

We are writing to thank you for your work on the Building an Economy for Families Act to reshape the American economy through universal paid family and medical leave, guaranteed access to child care, and permanently extending worker and family-related refundable tax credits from the American Rescue Plan.

Paid Personal and Family Medical Leave

Mom Congress agrees both as a small employer and as representatives of mothers that it is time for universal and job protected paid personal and family medical leave. This year, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated and highlighted the need and importance of Paid Family Leave. Now more than ever, Americans, especially mothers, need to be able to access leave to care for themselves and their families without risking their economic security. Equitable access to job-protected leave benefits families, businesses, and our economy, fostering prosperity for future generations, and promoting racial and gender equity.

Further, in May 2021 the Agency for Health Care Quality and Research also documented significant disparities in overall access to paid leave¹, further displaying the need for a new required “floor” allowing employers or states who wish to provide additional benefits to do so.

■ Paid sick leave benefits were strongly associated with educational attainment. (Only 30 percent of workers with less than a high school degree held jobs with paid sick leave benefits (compared to 88.5 percent for professional degree graduates).

■ Lower-wage workers had lower rates of paid sick leave compared to higher-wage workers (24.4 percent compared to 74.4 percent).

■ Paid sick leave rates varied substantially by industry and occupation; for example, only 43.1 percent of service workers had access to paid sick leave compared to 87.6 percent of managers.

■ Workers who lived in non-metro areas were less likely to have paid sick leave compared to their more urban counterparts (57.2 percent compared to 67.5 percent, respectively).²

But caregivers need more than paid time off. Eighteen percent of family caregivers have had to reduce their work hours — or quit their jobs entirely — because of caregiving, according to the 2020 Embracing Carers survey³. Caregivers also need employers to provide flexible schedules, telecommute options, and access to affordable long-term care insurance.

To this end we believe employers should be required to develop, report publically / disclose their plans and rates of offering flexibility, telecommuter options, and affordable long-term care insurance - and that such data should include how many women and non-white caregivers hold such jobs and have purchased the company’s long term care insurance and the annual employee premium costs of these insurance policies.

Additionally those taking paid leave must also have job protections. California, the first state in the nation to offer universal paid leave, found unsurprisingly that low-wage workers are less likely to have their jobs protected and have lower take-up rates of paid family leave⁴.

Finally, we wish to emphasize the link to maternal mortality and morbidity. The CDC reports that one in three pregnancy-related deaths occur one week to one year post birth⁵. The health of families depends on physically and mentally healthy moms - and family leave provides mothers with the time to care for their babies and themselves after birth.

Childcare

We firmly believe that child care is critical infrastructure and that all children, including those from working families, need early childhood stimulation and engagement with other children and trained/engaging child care providers.

We believe affordable in-home childcare should be available to all families in need of care, a solution that rural families are particularly in need of.

We strongly encourage the Ways and Means Committee to consider the women who lost their jobs in 2020/2021 being provided an opportunity to complete free job training to become child care workers through the community college network, and existing child care centers employ these workers to be deployed into homes to work.

Even prior to COVID, research conducted by the BiPartisan Policy Center suggested only 25% of families preferred childcare facilities for their children aged five and under.⁶

Specifically we propose:

Affordable, in-home childcare workers (we refer to as “Nommies” - used in place of “Nannies,” as Nannies have historically been accessible only to upper to upper-middle-class families).
Grants provided to states for community colleges to train mothers (prioritizing those who were displaced from the workforce due to COVID) to become childcare workers. Training shall include training on the nuances related to providing in-home childcare (i.e. becoming a “Nommy”).
Incentivizing childcare centers to hire trained workers to supervise, pay, and deploy “Nommies” into in-home care settings.
That women be offered the opportunity for low interest rate business loans to create new childcare centers (including in-home centers)
Providing larger incentives for those in rural or other “Childcare Deserts”⁷
Creating a framework for moms/parents caring for medically fragile children to become trained as CNAs, employed by CNA agencies, and be reimbursed by medicaid.

We appreciate your strong consideration and will be here to engage organizations and grassroots advocates.

Sincerely,