When work goes beyond 9 to 5, what happens to childcare?

For many North Carolina parents, the workday doesn’t begin at 9 a.m. and end at 5 p.m. It may start before sunrise at a hospital, stretch late into the evening at a restaurant, or include an overnight shift at a manufacturing plant. For others, work hours may change from one week to the next. Finding childcare that matches those work schedules is often a challenge of its own.

According to a press release published by the North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation (NCECF), there is a disconnect between when parents are expected to work and when childcare is available. The full report examines several interconnected challenges facing North Carolina:

• Access to affordable childcare
• Workforce participation
• Employee recruitment and retention
• Economic stability for working families

Together, they raise an important question: What happens when our economy operates around the clock, but much of our childcare system does not?

A childcare system built around a traditional workday

Parents who work outside traditional weekday hours or whose schedules change from week to week can face significant barriers to finding reliable, affordable childcare. The challenge can be even greater for lower-wage workers and single-parent families, according to the release. 

Consider a parent whose shift begins at 6 a.m. A childcare center that opens at 7 a.m. doesn’t serve that parent’s need. Neither does a center that closes at 6 p.m. for a parent whose restaurant, manufacturing, public safety, or service-sector shift continues into the evening. 

A parent who regularly works evenings may know exactly when care is needed but struggle to find a provider open during those hours. A parent whose schedule changes from week to week faces a different challenge: finding childcare that can change with a work schedule while still providing consistency for the child. For some families, that means relying on more than one childcare arrangement. 

Among low-income families with children under age 5, about one-third of mothers working nontraditional schedules use multiple care arrangements, compared with 17% to 24% of mothers working standard schedules. The issue, then, isn’t solely whether North Carolina has enough childcare. It’s also whether the childcare available matches the realities of today’s workforce.

Childcare and workplace practices are connected

The NCECF report looks beyond the childcare system itself. Workplace scheduling also matters. Research highlighted in the report found that 75% of workers surveyed at large retail and food-service companies wanted more stable and predictable schedules. Family Forward NC® benchmarking data also shows that 81% of working adults consider flexible hours and schedules a top workplace priority. And 40% of North Carolina parents say they have left a job because it lacked flexibility. 

The timing of those schedules matters, too. Among retail and food-service workers surveyed, 70% experienced at least one change to the timing of a shift during the previous month.

Addressing the childcare challenge may require looking beyond childcare alone. North Carolina can consider how to make childcare available when families need it. Employers can consider how work schedules affect employees’ ability to arrange that care in the first place. 

The effects reach beyond parents

When childcare arrangements repeatedly change because a parent’s work schedule changes, the impact does not stop with the adult. Unpredictable schedules can disrupt children’s routines and care arrangements. Employers feel the effects, too.

When an employee’s shift starts but childcare doesn’t, or a provider closes before the employee’s shift ends, parents may be late, miss work, or ultimately decide the job is no longer sustainable.

Research cited in the report connects inconsistent work schedules with employee lateness and absenteeism. Another analysis found that 30 days of significant schedule changes over the course of a year increased the likelihood of an employee quitting that year by 20%. The childcare challenge is also a workforce challenge and, ultimately, an economic one.

What could North Carolina do differently?

The report identifies several potential solutions involving employers, childcare providers, policymakers, and communities. These include more predictable employee scheduling and greater workplace flexibility, increased support for home-based childcare providers, and financial incentives for providers willing to offer care during nontraditional hours.

Expanding access to affordable evening, overnight, and weekend care could also help close the gap. But no single solution is likely to work for every family, employer, or community.

A rural manufacturing worker beginning a shift before dawn may need something very different from a restaurant employee working until midnight or a nurse working three 12-hour shifts each week.

The needs are different, which means the solutions may need to be different, too. Addressing those needs will require collaboration among North Carolina’s early childhood, business, and policy communities.

Building a system around how families actually live

For decades, many of the systems surrounding working families have been built around an assumption: Parents work relatively predictable hours during the traditional work week. For a significant portion of today’s workforce, that assumption no longer holds true. 

The NCECF report provides an opportunity to think differently about what it means to build a childcare system that supports them.

Perhaps the question isn’t simply whether North Carolina has enough childcare. It is whether North Carolina has the right childcare in the right places, at the right times, to meet the needs of the families and the economy that depend on it.