Elliot’s Provocations

While the U.S. is busy debating whether or not to finally invest in our failing child care system, Canada is busy doing it.

Last year, I wrote a column on five trends to look for in 2023 (which I think in retrospect were mostly apt, though the answer to ‘is bipartisanship possible’ seems to have been ‘outlook not so good’), and thought it would be worthwhile to do it again as the calendar gets ready to turn.

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

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 fall, I received an email from a distraught mother.

Back in May, I had the privilege to present the closing keynote address at the Child Care Services Association annual conference in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. One point that several attendees told me resonated was when I showed that you can make many different arguments for child care, although advocates tend to focus primarily on only a few.

For my last column of the year, I want to touch on a less-discussed but not-unimportant question: what in the heck should we call the care and education of children during the first five years of their life?