Child care

Make Alabama a place to start a family.

A two-earner household in Madison County now spends more on infant child care than on the mortgage. The workers providing that care earn less than they would at a fast-food counter. Both numbers are wrong, and they're wrong because of the same broken system.

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The mechanism

A market that fails on both sides at once.

Child care in the United States, and acutely in Alabama, is the textbook case of a market that fails on both sides at once. Parents can't pay more, because the cost is already crushing. Workers can't be paid less, because they're already at or below the minimum that lets them survive. The middle is filled by quality compromises — higher ratios, less training, faster burnout, more turnover — which silently lower the floor.

The federal subsidies that historically softened this market have either expired or been diluted. The result is a service that working parents need to participate in the labor force, priced out of reach of working parents.

Who pays

  • Parents — particularly mothers, who exit the workforce when the math stops working
  • Workers — staffing facilities at wages that don't keep pace with rent
  • Children — whose earliest developmental window is shaped by the staff their family can afford
  • Employers — losing experienced employees who can no longer commute or arrange care
  • The state economy — losing labor-force participation that adds up to billions in regional GDP

What we're building

  1. A state-level child care credit for families earning under area median income, structured as a refundable credit so families that owe no state tax still benefit.
  2. A child care worker wage floor with state-level top-up funding — so providers can pay workers a living wage without doubling parent fees.
  3. Expand Alabama First Class Pre-K so it covers every four-year-old in the state. This is the single highest-ROI early-education investment available.
  4. Streamline the licensing path for in-home and small-center providers — without lowering safety standards. The current process locks out exactly the kind of small-scale, neighborhood-based providers Madison County's growing communities need.

This work runs every day of every year. Whether by passing legislation, organizing the community, or partnering with existing providers, progress will be made.