Why Are Young Children Not in Childcare?
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Childcarecanada.org has published a study by K.J. Lavergne exploring typologies of child care non-use amongst Canadian children under six years prior to the government funding arrangements introduced in 2021.
The study, released in February 2025, examines child care non-use prior to the 2021-2025 Canada-wide early learning and child care agreements between the federal and provincial and territorial governments, using the 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2020 (mid-pandemic) Statistics Canada Survey on Early Learning and Child Care Arrangements.
The author notes that “the success of the [Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care] CWELCC plan rests in part on getting parents who would otherwise not use regulated child care or who do not have access to all the child care they need to uptake new affordable regulated child care spaces so they can increase their labour market participation. However, some parents may prefer to stay home to care for their young children instead of joining the labour market or working more hours even if child care were more accessible and affordable (Beaujot, Ravanera, and Du 2010; Gray, Baxter, and Alexander 2008), so it remains unclear how many parents and children need or want child care. Arguably the most fruitful avenue for increasing parental labour market participation via the CWELCC agreements is to satisfy the unmet demand of parents who are not using child care but would use it if it better met their family’s needs.”
The findings of the study indicate that “some parents did not choose to place their children in child care (e.g. volitional stay-at-home parents, parents accommodated by school, employed parents on leave, out-of-work parents),” whilst others “appeared to have unmet child care demand due to affordability barriers or pandemic constraints”.
The Statistics Canada surveys indicate that, in 2019, children under six not in child care represented 40%, and in 2021 48% , of the total child population in that age bracket. The author of the study estimates unmet demand in 2019 of 9% (equivalent to 201,858 children under six years old) and 17% in 2020 (equivalent to 394,881 children under six years old.). “The two cohorts were mostly similar but there were a few notable differences. Compared to the 2019 pre-pandemic population, the 2020 mid-pandemic population of children not in child care was more likely to (a) have a responding parent who had worked in the past three months, (b) be from an immigrant household, and (c) have used child care arrangements previously. They were also less likely to live in a household with multiple children.”
Amongst those families within the 2019 and 2020 surveys who were not accessing childcare, the groupings in both surveys distributed into the following six categories, plus an additional category in the 2020 survey for “pandemic-constrained parents”:
Vocational stay-at-home parents
Continuously employed parents on leave
Cost averse parents
Parents accommodated by school
Parents with alternative reasons
Out-of-work parents
Having analyzed the data, the report then collected these into two larger groupings, with the following findings:
Typologies with no immediate demand:
Both volitional stay-at-home parents and out-of-work parents seemed to have no prior or current need for child care; they appeared equally likely to have never used child care for their child nor to have undertaken any steps to find child care.
Volitional stay-at-home parents…were highly likely to have selected “a parent has decided to stay home to care for the child” as their sole reason for not using child care and to have a second parent and multiple young children in the household….Previous research suggests that parent who chooses parental at-home care do so mainly to spend more time and bond with their children, with most reporting they would not use child care even if money were no object (Ferguson et al. 2020).
Children with out-of-work parents seemed to be of lower socioeconomic status than were children of volitional stay-at-home parents (although most comparisons were not significant). They were also significantly more likely to be from a one-parent household, meaning that fewer out-of-work parents had a second parent in the household with whom to share child care responsibilities and expenses. Like cost-averse parents, out-of-work parents seemed compelled to stay at home, however their decision seemed primarily due to employment barriers rather than due to child care barriers per se….When the labour market is unfavourable, out-of-work parents may have little desire or incentive to seek out child care arrangements.
The analysis also revealed a typology of parents likely to have used child care in the past but who seemed to no longer have a need for it or who were able to manage without it because the child was attending school when child care was needed. Some parents accommodated by school appeared able to manage their child’s out-of-school care needs by adjusting their work or study schedules, such as “off-shifting” with a second parent or an older child in the household (Lero et al 2019). Many of these parents had already joined or rejoined the labour market.
Finally…there was a typology of very young children of higher socioeconomic status with a well-educated parent (mostly mothers) on parental leave who did not appear to have immediate needs for child care. Previous research suggests that approximately nine in ten employed mothers on leave would likely return to work and need child care within 12 or 18 months (Choi 2023) and would likely find themselves competing for relatively scarce licensed child care spaces available for children under 18 months (Macdonald and Friendly 2023).
The report notes: One unintended consequence of expanding child care provision when there is a shortage of child care spaces to meet demand, however, is that the new spaces tend to be taken up disproportionately by well-off families rather than by less advantaged families (Pavolini and Van Lancker 2018). Out-of-work parents may therefore benefit most from targeted interventions that seek to prioritize their access to child care (Dhuey 2024). The authors of the report further comment: Finding ways to increase uptake of regulated child care by these parents would be a desirable outcome because children of lower socioeconomic status are particularly likely to derive developmental benefits from exposure to universal ELCC (van Huizen and Planting 2018). For these parents, having improved access to affordable regulated child care could potentially have a large impact on both their children’s development and their own ability to join or rejoin the labour market (Michalopoulos and Robins 2002).
Typologies with apparent unmet demand:
Cost-averse parents, who were identified in both cohorts [2019 and 2020] and pandemic-constrained parents, who were unique to the 2020 mid-pandemic cohort, seemed likely to have used child care in the past and to have looked for arrangements but reported difficulty in finding them.
Most cost-averse parents had looked for child care but encountered difficulties finding arrangements, while others had seemingly found arrangements that were too expensive or otherwise unsuitable - or had previously used arrangements that they could no longer afford…..Finding ways to increase access to affordable child care for these parents could have a sizeable impact on parental labour market participation rates since about three-quarters of the children assigned to this typology had a non-working parent. The authors of the report notes that only a minority of these families would qualify for income-tested child care subsidies, commenting, “This typology of parents may therefore benefit most from fixed-fee models that bring down regulated child care fees for all children, regardless of household income.”
Many pandemic-constrained parents seemed to be prevented from using or taking up child care either because of health and safety concerns for the child or because of public health restrictions (I.e. closures) imposed on schools, businesses, and service providers (Hacioglu et al. 2024) - particularly in areas that would normally have easy access to services. The overall pattern of results seems consistent with research showing a growing gender gap in employment and hours worked in Canada during the pandemic. This phenomenon was concentrated among immigrants, particularly immigrant mothers of young children (Qin et al. 2022)….
The authors of the report note: Prior to the CWELCC agreements, there were approximately 201, 858 children (9 percent of Canadian children under six years of age) before the pandemic in 2019 and 394, 881 children (17 percent) during the pandemic in 2020-2021 assigned to typologies of parents with apparent unmet demand for child care (I.e. cost-averse parents, pandemic-constrained parents). This is likely a conservative estimate, however, since the potential child care demand of parents with alternative reasons for not using child care is difficult to assess based on available information. Assuming that some or all parents with alternative reasons wanted child care, a more liberal estimate of unmet demand may be as high as 273, 879 children (12 percent) in 2019 and 489, 237 children (21 percent) in 2020-2021. However, without additional data about the type or amount of child care that parents would need or want, or how much they would be willing to pay for it, these estimates of potential unmet demand for child care may not be equivalent to the number of new affordable and regulated child care spaces needed under the CWELCC agreements to meet this demand. For example, it is unclear if C$10 per day, per space (child) on average would be affordable for all families, particularly those who do not qualify for means-tested subsidies or who have multiple young children. In addition, the above estimates do not account for children in unregulated arrangements whose parents might prefer to use regulated arrangements for them if these were more accessible, affordable, flexible, and inclusive.
Finally, the authors of the report note the critical role of affordability: Compared to affordability, barriers to child care access, flexibility, quality, and inclusivity appeared less critical in parental decisions to forego child care. In 2019 and 2020, the average price of child care in Canada was relatively high across all types of regulated and unregulated arrangements - with the exception of subsidized child care in Quebec, and child care provided by relatives (Fisher and Thomas 2022; Statistics Canada 2023a). In this landscape, parents who needed child care but were not willing or able to pay the high market price may have decided to forego child care without thoroughly researching available options, making them less attuned to other types of barriers. Barriers and opportunities related to ELCC access, flexibility, inclusivity, and quality (in addition to relative affordability) may take on more importance once parents have decided to use child care and are faced with the task of selecting a child care arrangement among multiple options - with some changing their minds if the encounter multiple barriers…..However, barriers related to access (availability of regulated child care spaces) will likely become more prominent as regulated ELCC services continue to become more affordable, especially if shortages of qualified early childhood educators persist….the increased demand for subsidized, non-profit child care in Quebec following the 1997 reform combined with the end of the moratorium on the creation of new for-profit child care spaces and increased child care tax credits for families using unsubsidized child care led to an eleven-fold increase ini the number of for-profit licensed child care spaces from 4,538 spaces in 2007 to 51, 843 spaces ini 2015 (Couturier and Hurteau 2016). Despite the rapid growth in the for-profit child care sector, there continues to be barriers to access in Quebec, as evidenced by long waitlists for child care services. Notably, many parents using for-profit child care continue to have unmet demand for child care; approximately 14,000 children attending for-profit child care arrangements were on waitlists for a different arrangement - with 9,000 of them on waitlists exclusively for subsidized spaces (Quebec, 2020).