‘You have to push it—who's gonna raise your kids?’: situating child care and child care subsidy use in the daily routines of lower income families

Abstract

We use qualitative and quantitative data from a multi-year study of low-income families included in New Hope, an experimental anti-poverty intervention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to understand why low-income families’ use of program-based child care as well as subsidies offered to pay for such care is often low and/or episodic. Ethnographic analyses from 38 families in experimental and control groups suggest that child care choices and subsidy use must fit into the family daily routines and with the beliefs people have about child care. Both ecocultural theory and parents’ own reports of child care decisions suggest four themes accounting for child care choice: material and social resources; conflicts in the family; values and beliefs about parenting and child development; and predictability and stability of child care. Child care subsidy programs can be more effective if they offer greater flexibility and a range of options that better fit into the varied daily routines of the low-income families they are intended to serve.