As we enter 2025, we’re taking a moment to reflect on the stories we published over the past year that resonated most with readers.
Among the 2024 themes that emerged as critical: The cost of child care and how the system is funded; the working conditions of early educators; the mental and emotional health of young children; the challenges facing working parents and families; and why child care is a bipartisan issue.
Here are the 10 most widely read stories we published last year.
“The End User Is a Dollar Sign, It’s Not a Child”: How Private Equity and Shareholders Are Reshaping American Child Care
By Elliot Haspel
“Cast in America as a pay-to-play system with limited public funding, child care has long struggled with issues like difficult budgetary math, low educator pay, and highly variable quality,” writes Elliot Haspel, a child care policy expert who has been researching the role of private equity in child care. This six-part deep dive tells the story of a sector which Haspel writes is “increasingly captured by excessive profit-seeking behavior and systemic vulnerabilities that can come at a human cost to one of the most vulnerable populations imaginable: young children who often have, literally, no ability to speak up for themselves.”
Drawing on interviews with employees of child care chains and child care experts, reviews of scholarly research, and analysis of financial and legal records, Haspel offers a look at how the growing influence of private equity is shaping American child care. Dive into the six sections here.
Private Equity Is Coming for Child Care. What Does That Mean? A Q+A with Elliot Haspel on How Private Equity and Shareholders Are Reshaping American Child Care
By Rebecca Gale
More coverage has emerged in recent years about the role of investors — particularly private equity firms — in child care. In April 2024, Elliot Haspel published a six-part story on the implications of private equity in child care (see our top story above). In this Q&A, Rebecca Gale catches up with Haspel about his findings as well as his thoughts for the road ahead. Read the Q&A here.
The Ensemble Effort that Pays Big Dividends in Babies’ Language Development
By K.C. Compton
The way parents interact socially with their infants — which often entails infant-directed speech, eye contact, smiles and other positive reactions to their babies’ actions — contributes to the foundation for language development. A group of research scientists at the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning & Brain Science (I-LABS) wanted to learn more about the influence of these interactions on development.
Researchers monitored the brains of a group of 5-month-olds during social and nonsocial interactions with an adult, then followed up with the toddlers at 18, 21, 24, 27 and 30 months.
“What they found was not only that the babies’ brains ‘lit up’ during these interactions, but that the degree to which individual babies responded to social interactions predicted the child’s language growth beyond 2 ½ years of age,” writes K.C. Compton, who interviewed Patricia Kuhl, co-director of I-LABS, to learn more about the research findings. Read more here.
Au Pairs Are Supposed to be Cultural Exchange Visitors. In Reality, They Provide Child Care for $4.35 an Hour.
Bryce Covert
The U.S. au pair program was founded as a cultural exchange for people from other countries. Today the program facilitates about 20,000 young people, mostly women, traveling from other countries to the United States to live with host families and provide child care for their children.
“What was supposed to be a way for foreigners to learn English and get exposure to American culture has become almost entirely about providing cheap child care,” writes Bryce Covert, who explains problems au pairs face like long hours and low wages, adding that there have been many reports of abuse suffered by au pairs.
In response to these problems, the Department of State, which oversees J-1 visas and regulates the program proposed new rules to improve conditions for au pairs, but advocates who fight for au pairs’ rights say those rules fall short and would perpetuate some of these exploitative practices. Covert takes a look at the experiences of au pairs, the rules laid out by the Department of State and what advocates suggest as a path forward for putting protections in place for these workers. Read the story here.
Why is Child Care So Expensive? What We Can Do About It.
By Rebecca Gale & Dianne Kirsch
Child care is in great demand, but it’s hard to find. And while the cost of child care is high for families, the wages for child care workers is low. In this visual explainer, Rebecca Gale teamed up with illustrator Dianne Kirsch to dive into why child care is so expensive, why federal investment is critical and what can be done to improve the American child care system. Learn more from the visual story here.
Green Spaces: A Vital Key to Young Children’s Mental Well-Being
By K.C. Compton
Studies have shown that time in nature and exposure to green space is associated with mental health, but most of the research has focused on older children, adolescents and adults. Two recent studies consider how exposure to green space relates to mental health outcomes for young children. In interviews with two researchers involved with these studies, K.C. Compton highlights that “not only can exposure to green spaces positively affect young children’s mental health, but that early childhood may be an especially critical time for such exposure.” Both studies suggest that exposure to green space during the early years may have long-lasting implications for mental health. Dive into the research here.
Stress Hormones In Preschoolers Improve With Emotional Knowledge, Study Indicates
By K.C. Compton
Emotional intelligence is key to building a foundation for learning and can help a child be successful in school, in their relationships and in their future work lives. Developing the ability to recognize, label and understand emotions is a prerequisite for emotional regulation, which involves effective communication and listening, the ability to change one’s emotional state and even to manage stress, writes K.C. Compton. “To be able to regulate their emotional responses, a child has to be able to accurately decipher a situation and know what an appropriate response would be,” she writes.
While some prior studies have examined the relationship between emotional intelligence and stress in adults and adolescents, none have looked at the relationship in young children until recently. A study published in the journal Early Education and Development, looked at the association between emotional knowledge and levels of cortisol, a marker for stress, in young children. Compton interviewed Eleanor Brown, a professor of psychology at West Chester University and the lead author on the study to understand what led to the study and what the researchers learned. Read more here.
The Child Care Stakes for 2024’s Election Just Went Up
By Elliot Haspel
“I have been more bullish than many about the prospects for bipartisan child care reform… Two pieces of news over the past few weeks are causing me to update my prediction and become far more concerned about the coming years,” Elliot Haspel wrote in this commentary published in January 2024.
The first piece of news: In response to concerns about child care across South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem dismissed the idea that government has much of a role to play. The second: The early learning bullets from the “Project 2025” handbook, which had recently been made public at the time.
Haspel offers examples of efforts to guide the child care conversation back to a middle ground, urging leaders across party lines to consider alternatives that will best serve young children and their families. These efforts, he says, “will be easier if child care is positioned not as an isolated issue, but as one service among many needed within a framework of family flourishing and freedom,” adding, “There is no reason for child care needs to fall prey to rank partisanship.” Read Haspel’s commentary here.
How the Enduring Belief About Child Care – I Don’t Want Someone Else Raising My Kid – Hurts Us All
By Hayley Swenson
“I don’t want someone else raising my kids.” It’s a statement Hayley Swenson has heard before. But when she heard it most recently from a local parent she’d met, at a moment when her own baby was in a child care setting, it really stung.
In this personal essay, Swenson reflects on the idea that sending a child to be cared for by a child care provider means “someone else” is raising them. “How many hours in child care did a child need to spend per week, before they were being raised by someone else? 40 hours? 30 hours? There are 168 hours in a week. Where was the line between socializing with and being cared for by trained early educators, and being raised by them,” Swenson wonders.
Swenson explores why “antiquated thinking about child care” exists, despite the modern reality that most parents must work for pay — and why some families are afraid of letting others care for their children. “I don’t want someone raising my child for me either,” she writes. “But I am so glad my family and millions of others have found trusted providers to raise them with us.” Read Swenson’s essay here.
Recent Study: There’s a Strong ROI for Employers That Support Parents
By Bruno Navarro
Business leaders might look at child care if they want to boost their return on investment, writes Bruno Navarro, who shares findings from a report, which found nearly $18 in benefits for every $1 organizations spent on support to support employees with children. The study, conducted by Vivvi and The Fifth Trimester, builds on an existing body of research that indicates benefits for employers and caregivers.
The findings — which were rooted in interviews with parents and a survey of more than 300 people — offer evidence that parent-friendly policies and practices foster an inclusive culture that improves employee retention and increases productivity. Navarro dives into these findings here.
Marisa Busch
Marisa Busch is a senior editor steering both news coverage and analysis of early education issues, childhood development, family engagement and post-COVID learning recovery.
