A startling statistic scrolls across the screen: “25 million parents in the United States rely on child care in order to get to work.”
Jen Bradwell and Todd Boekelheide, husband-and-wife directors of “Make a Circle,” a new documentary about child care struggles and advocacy, say they extrapolated this estimate with the help of of Krista Olson, a researcher at The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at the University of California, Berkeley. This discovery made them feel less alone, but it also gave them pause. As the parents of two children, now 12 and 8 years old, they knew from personal experience that the cost of child care can put a dent in the family budget and even impede careers. After digging deeper and learning how widespread the challenges are, they aspired to raise public awareness of the crisis and present a more complete picture of this broken system at work.
And the system is broken, according to Anne Bauer, director of the preschool in Berkeley, California where Bradwell and Boekelheide sent their children — and one of the early learning professionals interviewed in their film. “Parents can’t afford to pay. Teachers can’t afford to stay,” Bauer says — a line attributed to Marcy Whitebook, founder and co-director of CSCCE.
Bradwell reflects on Bauer: “She has told me that most programs tend to center the children’s or the parents’ needs first. But a mentality shift is needed. We need to think about the teachers first and center their needs, so that they can then meet the needs of the kids and families.”
“Make a Circle” has been playing at film festivals over the past few months and the filmmakers have been taking part in screenings and conferences wherever advocates, educators and caregivers gather. PBS will show the film later this year, which will garner broader attention. “It’s a California story,” says Bradwell, “but it has a national lens and should feel relevant to people across the country.”
This is the couple’s first film as directors. Bradwell has edited numerous documentaries, and Boekelheide has edited picture and sound on a number of films and composed music for over a hundred documentaries.
“Make a Circle” began shooting in February of 2020, just a month before the pandemic shut everything down. “It was such a wrecking ball for the industry,” recalls Bradwell. “Initially, we had to ask ourselves if we should keep filming or not, but then it became apparent that yes, of course, this is such a big part of the story.” Shots of masked interactions between early educators and young children evoke a combination of admiration and renewed astonishment at what we endured.
Rather than telling their own family’s story, the filmmakers highlight the voices of a half dozen members of the early education workforce. That’s where providers like Patricia Moran enter the picture. Based in San Jose, California, Moran helped found Child Care Providers United, a union of early educators in California, about 20 years ago and serves on its negotiation committee today.
Moran, 65, tirelessly champions the early care and education workforce in her state, which includes a significant immigrant population (Immigrants comprise nearly half of the child care workforce in Los Angeles.) “We all come from different backgrounds. That’s how children start learning about different cultures, different language. It gives them healthy emotional development that is so important. Empathy is what the world needs right now,” Moran explains.
Bradwell marvels at Moran’s determination, saying, “She continues to fight and raise her voice despite all of these headwinds — being an immigrant, being a woman, being a non-native speaker with an accent, being someone whose profession is regarded as babysitting instead of educating. It’s an honor when people trust you with their story, and it’s something that we take really seriously as filmmakers.”
Make a Circle discussion and activity guide
As a child growing up in Bolivia, Moran recalls how she saw her father fight for the rights of indigenous people and endure prison and torture as the state tried to silence his voice. “Justice was his passion,” she says. Later, as an adult, she remembers him revealing to her that he was afraid.
Much like her father, the activist and early educator is committed to her cause. In addition to her role with the union, she works as a full-time child care provider herself. She’s faced a number of health challenges, including rheumatoid arthritis and a knee replacement, but hasn’t let that slow down her campaign. She even persisted when a scar from an old surgery started bleeding. “I don’t have time to think about the pain,” she says.
A high point in “Make a Circle” comes when the union wins a 20% wage increase for providers as well as $80 million for a retirement fund and funding for healthcare and training. “It wasn’t easy,” admits Moran, “but we did it.”
At the same time, the documentary doesn’t feel like a “Rocky” story where the underdogs emerge victorious. One beloved and talented provider leaves for a better paying role in a public school. Others contemplate leaving for jobs in the fast food and service industries.
Without becoming didactic, the film makes a powerful case for early education. Lovingly shot classroom footage highlights the skill involved in this work, reinforcing well-known data about the importance of the early years for brain development as well as the economic arguments for investing in quality child care. As pandemic-era funding dries up, U.S. policy remains a glaring exception among wealthy nations.
“Other countries pay a lot more money and attention to early education than the United States does,” says Moran. “And that’s really sad.”
At the same time, Bradwell insists that the statistic about 25 million parents should give us hope. “It’s such a massive coalition that’s just waiting there to be tapped,” she says.
Various media outlets have exposed the high costs for families and low pay for workers. This film gives the public a glimpse into the lived experiences of the early care and education workforce. A compelling documentary about a social crisis, Bradwell believes, has to do more than confront viewers with bleak statistics. She and Boekelheide shot hundreds of hours of footage in search of “the stories that stay with you.” As a filmmaker, she had to think like a caregiver. “Once a kid has a trusted connection,” she says, “that’s when they can learn anything. That relationship is so important, and storytelling is very much like that.”
Mark Swartz
Mark Swartz writes for Early Learning Nation and the Stanford Center on Early Childhood about efforts to improve early care and education. He lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, with his wife and two children.
