Quinn Chung and Jennifer Greppi of Parent Voices Share Testimony on ‘No Hope’ Child Care Waitlist and Impact on BIPOC Families in California
On Aug. 20th, Parent Voices CA was one of the expert panelists to speak at the Select Committee on Child Care Costs informational hearing at the State Capitol. Parent Leader Quinn Chung of PV San Francisco and Parent Voices CA Director of Parent Policy shared testimony on the sacrifices families make when forced to choose between child care and earning a living.
Quinn lives in San Francisco with her husband and daughter. She left her career as a nurse to become a stay-at-home parent due to the lack of affordable, quality child care options.
“It’s hard to survive on just one income in San Francisco,” said Quinn. “My family has lost out on hundreds of thousands of dollars that I could have made by working because we didn’t have child care.”
“I also worry about getting a job now. Who will hire me after so many years out of practice? I feel like I’ve lost my nursing skills. I definitely cannot pick up right where I left off. In some ways it feels like I have to start my career over again just because I had a child. I hope the Select Committee on Child Care Costs really brings some solutions for child care affordability for families like mine.”
Jennifer is a longtime advocate for dismantling barriers in state-run social services through policy reform. In 2003, her husband passed away, and she was left to raise two children on her own. That’s when she experienced firsthand the systemic discrimination faced by working parents within the CalWORKs program to find affordable, quality child care and how it disproportionately impacts Black and Brown families.
“The racist roots of child care run deep in the U.S.,” said Jennifer. “Our nation’s first child care providers were enslaved Black women and were forced to care for children of their enslavers. Domestic workers were excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. The myth of the ‘Welfare Queen’ popularized by California’s very own Ronald Reagan criminalized poor Black women for seeking benefits—a stereotype that continues to persist to this day.”
“Those of us in this room might not be responsible for the racism and sexism in our child care system. But every day, every month, every year that we refuse to put a stop to it, we are complicit in it continuing.”
Parents Voices CA is grateful to our partners Black ECE, CCPU, and the advocates who show up for child care justice at the State Capitol. Together, we look forward to build better policy that prioritizes families first with the Select Committee on Child Care Costs with co-chairs Asm. Cecilia M. Aguiar-Curry and Asm. Stephanie Nguyen.
We invite lawmakers to sign the PV Action Pledge: California Care for Our Children Pledge. To learn more, click here.
To join the Parent Voices movement, click here.
To watch the full Aug. 20th Select Cmtee. on Child Care Costs, click here.