Jennifer DeCastro, Clopper Mill Elementary School’s community liaison, welcomes parent volunteer Karina Artiga-Morales, a day care provider, in this file photo from 2022. (Photo by Rosanne Skirble for Maryland Matters)
By reframing child care from a commodity into a human right, we can shift the conversation away from whether or not child care is possible to being beneficial to families, housing stabilization and sustaining the precarious transition to independent adulthood.
Based on international principles like the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the widespread belief that every child has a right to care that is nurturing, safe, and supportive, this is not some radical transformation – it should be commonplace…