Child care providers are essential to meeting young children’s social, emotional, and development needs. To ensure that all families and children can access high-quality, reliable care, and that all child care providers can truly thrive, we need sustained investments in child care.

The next few years are critical to assuring reduced carbon emissions and improvements in the environments where children live and grow.

Our policies reinforce parents’ lack of resources during early childhood, instead of counteracting it during this critical period. Let’s do more to support families.

The topics and trends that RAPID has followed for the past two years provide a living record of the pandemic. However, these issues didn’t begin in 2020 and the challenges will remain in the lives of our survey families well after the pandemic has faded into history.

From July to December 2021, millions of American families received monthly payments through an expanded Child Tax Credit. We look back at these stories to explore families’ experiences.

1971 was the year I started my first job. It was the year that featured movies like Clockwork Orange and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It was the year the first e-mail was sent, the year Elon Musk was born and the year President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, setting public financing of child care in the United States back for years to come.

This Sunday we all need to take a minute to acknowledge how hard mothers have been hit by the pandemic.Nearly four times more women than men have lost jobs since the beginning of pandemic and data suggest that it’s been worse still for working mothers.

What We’ve Learned Listening to Family Voices

Due to the pandemic, families with children who have special needs are experiencing interruptions in healthcare and decreased social support.

American Families are struggling to afford food and being forced to decide which basic needs they can afford and which they will go without this holiday season.

Many single parents are lonely and overwhelmed as they face the challenges of balancing work and raising families — alone.

The gradual return of young children to non-parental care highlights the fragility of the United States’ child care infrastructure.

Higher Income Isn’t Protecting Black And Latinx Families From Financial And Material Hardship During The Pandemic

Parents face an untenable set of demands as schools and child care providers begin a new academic year.

Hearing the stories of RAPID survey respondents

Caregiver distress tracks with state infection rates

Financial difficulties are stressing families’ and young children’s wellbeing during the pandemic, and it could get a lot worse

Structural inequalities exist based on income and race/ethnicity among households with young children during the pandemic