This report presents analyses of 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) data showing associations between the professionalization of infant and toddler early care and education (ECE) and families’ perceptions and use of infant and toddler ECE.

Why This Matters

Those providing ECE to infants and toddlers play an important role supporting young children’s growth and development. Research has shown that for children under 3, participating in high-quality ECE can have positive lifelong outcomes. In response, federal, state, and local governments have invested in professionalizing the ECE workforce. But these efforts may affect the availability, affordability, and types of care families can access. Despite its importance, little research has examined how workforce professionalization relates to parents’ perceptions and use of infant and toddler ECE. More evidence is needed to understand how to align professionalization efforts with families’ needs and to inform effective funding and policy decisions.

What We Found

• Higher levels of professionalization in a type of ECE care in a local ECE market are associated with less favorable perceptions and less use of that care and greater reliance on alternative, more informal, arrangements for families with infants and toddlers.
• Yet families using child care subsidies to offset the costs of infant and toddler ECE are more likely to have positive perceptions of and use professionalized center and home-based ECE. This suggests that subsidies help families overcome the costs of infant and toddler ECE and translate ECE workforce investments into meaningful access for families.
• Together, these findings indicate that professionalization alone is insufficient to expand access to high-quality infant and toddler ECE. Instead, workforce investments need to be aligned with adequate public funding so families can benefit from ECE provided by more qualified educators.

How We Did It

We analyzed data from the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education to answer questions about the relationship between ECE professionalization and parents’ preferences for and use of infant and toddler ECE. We performed descriptive and regression analysis of this nationally representative sample of data about the ECE workforce. Our main sample includes 5,192 center- and listed home-based early childhood educators who provide ECE for and educate children under 3 and a sample of 8,576 households in which these children live. These respondents represented 1,360,000 early educators and over 16,300,000 households with young children nationwide in 2019.