The history of day care is like the history of oysters: once for poor people, now a luxury commodity.
When my toddler’s day care started turning parents away at the door due to staffing shortages, I learned it was owned by private equity — which maximizes enrollment to squeeze profit out of childcare and now owns eight of the 11 largest US day care companies.
A few months ago, I was chatting with the mom of a toddler who is the same age as my daughter. As a toddler who is the same age as my daughter. As tends to happen when parents of young kids get together, the subject of childcare came up. She relayed that she was happy with their current situation — a nanny share with a few other families — and that it was a welcome change from the day care center they had used previously. One day at their former day care, they showed up at the door and were told to leave: the day care center didn’t have enough staff for the day and was at capacity with kids.
My mouth fell open. “You were turned away at the door? For services you paid for? On a day you were supposed to be at work?”
“Yup, that’s exactly what happened,” she said. I relayed that while there were problems with our day care situation — it was expensive, of course, among other things — thankfully nothing like that had occurred in the nine months we’d been there.
I went home later feeling like we had dodged a bullet. My partner and I had looked at that same day care her family had used, even putting in an application, but we ultimately chose a different one. I may have been patting myself on the back a bit, thinking that our intuition about that place had been right. Turns out the joke was on us.
It wasn’t until the 1970s, when more middle-class and upper-class women began entering the workforce, that momentum began to build around creating universal, nationally funded childcare programs through the Comprehensive Child Development Act. Richard Nixon vetoed that bill in 1972, stopping the effort in its tracks.
Republicans fucking up the country as per usual.
Bad stuff. Private equity is the embodiment of enshittification. The reverse Midas touch.
It’s especially shitty because daycare doesn’t need private equity. The barriers to entry are manageable without six-figure up-front investments, but the leeches have forced their way into every industry, and it’s only going to get worse.
Yeah, they have so much money they can apply leverage to force people to sell.
Like, “oh, look at that, our real estate division bought the property you’re renting for your daycare, and your rent tripled. What’s that? You’ll sell to us now?”
It’s mafia behavior.
And your parent’s nursing home. Same thing.
People need to start becoming a lot more comfortable with arson.
I don’t know him, who is your son?
our son
it’s a communist thingYou mean like in a nannyshare?
In Soviet Russia, son has you!
Johnny - when they play together it’s time to watch Johnny Arson…
The fact that no Wendy’s burned on the day they announced surge pricing… very grim
I hope you make sure the kids are out before you burn down the day care.
I mean, that should be obvious. The goal is to destroy the wealth of a soulless private equity monster, not hurt actual human beings.
PE recently finally got the wheel at SW airlines; all the things that made it different for the last 70 years are gone. Seatback power that has been promised for years is still absent yet strangely, paid assigned seating was quickly rolled out in just months. Any number of public companies tell the same story. They rip any meat off the bone and , as the articles note, walk away from the ashes.
Failed retailers, hospitals, daycares, they cannot and do not care due to their charter and no regulations have limited the danger and chaos they foist upon those with no options but to deal with them.
So many things that were available to previous generations are turning into luxuries. Housing, affordable childcare, education…
Even simple therapy services are going to end up being a luxury for the rich once Medicaid is cut.
Every new thing just deepens the despair.
Yeah, we need to build mutual aid networks
Nice m dash you got in your AI article there
Jacobin probably employs someone who can write English professionally, but if punctuation threatens the mind palace then there wasn’t much hope for the article to convey anything begin with.
Normalize em dash
Alt 0151
Realistically, how can you tell a business is owned by private equity? It’s not like most places advertise that.
What happens if you get kids eating lead paint because it’s cheaper than using real food.
What daycare company?
