Elliot’s Provocations

Happy New Year! As 2023 kicks off, I wanted to highlight five early learning trends to be watching this year.

Amid major union actions in the auto and entertainment industries and a historic looming strike by health care workers, I want to talk about the role of unions in child care.

Elliot’s Provocations unpacks current events in the early learning world and explores how we can chart a path to a...

If you’ve been following my work at all, you know I bristle at many “incremental” solutions to child care challenges.

Welcome to the first edition of my new monthly column, “Elliot’s Provocations.” The goal of this column is to unpack...

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.

I dislike the economic case for child care. I’m not talking about my take on the role of employers, but the near-constant way lawmakers and advocates of both parties rest their case for supporting child care on its function as an economic driver.

Elliot’s Provocations unpacks current events in the early learning world and explores how we can chart a path to a...

If you’ve been following my work for the past year, you know I am deeply concerned about how unprepared our child- and family-serving systems are for this new reality. I’m not the only one. A new report puts a fine point on why early care & education stakeholders need to have a climate strategy, and why public officials need to have ECE in their climate strategy: a staggering number of child care programs are under threat.

Last month, I wrote about how child care’s lack of salience in the public imagination is holding back its political opportunities. The absence of mass public pressure is one piece of the puzzle. Another piece is that by and large, child care lacks a strong inside game.

If caregiving is labor, if caregiving supports child development, if caregiving boosts the economy, if caregiving enables family flourishing, then how can we say only institutional programs belong within child care policy?