Linda Smith senses that the United States is at another pivotal moment in the history of child care—and it’s time for early childhood allies to seize the opportunity to influence major policy shifts.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is once again momentum for fixing America’s broken child care system.
“I absolutely think it’s an inflection point,” Smith said. “If we miss this opportunity, we’re going to miss it for a very long period of time. The country recognizes the problem.”
That’s why Smith, a national early childhood leader, will make the case for building a wider circle of early childhood supporters during her keynote address at the 2024 Thriving Children, Families, and Communities Conference on Sept. 17 in Kearney, Neb. She previously spoke at the event in 2020.
The free Thriving Children conference focuses on the connections between early childhood education and community and economic vitality. The event attracts local, state, and national leaders from business, education, health care, economic development, and more. Learn more about the conference and register here.
Smith points out that the country has arrived at similar flash points before, with mixed results. In the 1940s, the Lanham Act provided federal funds for child care centers so mothers could continue working defense jobs to support the war effort. Another attempt at progress was thwarted in 1971 when President Richard Nixon vetoed a bill to establish a national child care system.
Now, she believes early educators and early childhood organizations must adopt a “big tent” strategy to convince policymakers to make meaningful—not piecemeal—changes that will benefit both families paying the equivalent of a mortgage payment for child care and a workforce that experiences low pay and high rates of turnover.
“We as early childhood advocates, we can be talking about it, talking about it, and not be heard,” she said. “I do think we’ve got to open up and invite more people into this conversation and get a broader base of support. Let’s hear from the business community, the faith community, parents, health care.”
Smith herself is a known bipartisan consensus-builder.
Linda SmithCurrently the director of policy at the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska, she started her career in early childhood on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in her native state of Montana.
Smith pivoted to military child care at a time when defense policies changed, allowing mothers to serve instead of being forced out.
After working with both the U. S. Air Force and the U.S. Army she went on to the Secretary of Defense’s office where she helped build what would become a robust military child care system that is widely recognized as a national model. She helped shepherd the passage of the federal Military Child Care Act of 1989 and led the implementation of that law.
“There are a lot of lessons learned in the military system,” she said. “It’s the one place besides Head Start that we’ve actually taken a program to scale successfully in the United States.”
Smith took on more high-level roles and responsibilities: director of the Office of Family Policy for the Secretary of Defense, deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and most recently, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Early Childhood Development Initiative.
She’s worked with teachers, families, and policymakers in states like South Dakota, Washington, and Montana to improve and expand early childhood and learned some hard-fought lessons about explaining the importance of child care to communities and policymakers and asking for public investments. At Thriving, she’ll share those experiences with Nebraskans looking for examples of what’s worked elsewhere.
“The challenge is we have yet to put concrete solutions on the table,” she said. “One of the questions we were asked at the Department of Defense is what do you need and what is the cost? And we cannot yet say in this country what we need and what is the cost.”
Then there’s the tendency to propose overly simplistic solutions to complex problems, Smith said.
Take child care compensation. In 2023, the median pay for U.S. child care workers was a paltry $14.60 an hour. Many have lobbied for higher pay and better benefits.
“OK, I think everyone agrees on that, but where is the money coming from to pay the teachers? Parents simply cannot afford to pay more so who’s going to pay for that? What’s the bill?” Smith said. “We have to figure out how we’re going to answer that basic question and then get enough people outside of early childhood on our bandwagon.”
Smith said better policies could look like a combination of paid parental leave, which would relieve the need for high cost- and labor-intensive infant care, fixing the child care business model by providing more direct public support to both providers and parents, and family-friendly tax policies.
Finding solutions is a key feature of the Thriving Children conference. Rural and urban leaders come from Nebraska and beyond to share child care challenges and success stories—with the understanding that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for different communities.
“I would say the more people we have in the room, the better, from all walks of life, all sectors,” Smith said. “I think that’s what you get at this event, and that’s great.”
Erin Duffy is the managing editor at the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska and writes about early childhood issues that affect children, families, educators, and communities. Previously, she spent more than a decade covering education stories and more for daily newspapers.