Most Home-Based Child Care Is Run by People Over 50. Who Is Going to Replace Them?

For more than two decades, Sylvia Crews has dedicated her professional life to early childhood education, spending the last ten years operating her own independent, home-based center. After purchasing a home in Washington, D.C., in 2015, she wasted little time establishing the LTH Infants and Toddlers Center—an acronym standing for "loving, tender home." Licensed to care for up to nine children ranging in age from six weeks to three and a half years old, Crews oversees a small staff of four employees who help manage the daily operations of the bustling household.

Crews says she hopes to continue working "as long as the Lord will allow me to," but she shares a profound and growing anxiety felt across her industry regarding the severe lack of younger workers entering the sector.

"At a point, I know I’ll have to stop," said Crews, who is now 67 years old. Looking toward the future of the profession, she asks a pressing question: "As for the next generation, how do we get them involved? We need to bring them in."

Crews is far from alone in her concerns. More than half of all licensed or registered home-based child care providers in the United States are over the age of 50, according to federal survey data tracking the early childhood educator workforce. In stark contrast, a mere 4 percent of these home-based operators are 29 years old or younger.

The demographic breakdown looks quite different in other corners of the child care landscape. At larger, institutional child care centers, roughly a third of the employed workforce consists of individuals aged 29 or younger. Meanwhile, the numbers are more evenly balanced in home-based settings that operate without a state license or registration. Among these so-called "unlisted" providers, about 30 percent are over the age of 50, and a roughly comparable percentage are 29 or younger.

Education experts warn that this looming generational cliff threatens to destabilize an already fragile network of early learning options.

"The aging part of the story, on its own, is not the problem," said Katharine Sadowski, an assistant professor of education at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. "But when you combine it with all the other pieces, about the composition of the workforce, of who we’ve relied on, it spells trouble."

Child care centers—a category that encompasses traditional preschools, Head Start programs, and state-funded prekindergarten—remain the most frequently utilized option for nonparental child care in the United States. Comprehensive federal surveys indicate that roughly 66 percent of children in nonparental care attend such institutional programs. By comparison, only about 17 percent of children in structured child care arrangements are enrolled in home-based environments.

Yet, for millions of working families, home-based care serves as an indispensable and vital alternative. Providers operating out of residential spaces routinely offer significantly more flexible hours than their larger, institutional counterparts. According to federal data, only 8 percent of larger child care centers offer care during non-traditional working hours, such as evenings, overnights, or weekends. In contrast, more than a third of licensed home-based child care providers accommodate these demanding schedules.

In addition to schedule flexibility, smaller home-based centers frequently fulfill specialized family needs in other unique ways. Advocates note that these providers are often uniquely positioned to deliver care in a family’s native language or to implement specific cultural, dietary, or philosophical curriculums, such as an emphasis on outdoor, nature-based play.

"We know families choose providers who eat vegan food or speak the language they like or observe the religion they like," said Natalie Renew, executive director of Home Grown, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting home-based child care infrastructure. "The strength of home-based child care is a very responsive service delivery. When you have a model reinforcing homogeneity, that is not good for parents."

Despite this deep community value, the sector has experienced a profound contraction over the past two decades. A comprehensive federal report revealed that more than 97,000 small home-based providers—defined specifically as operations where a single individual serves as the sole caregiver—closed their doors between 2005 and 2017.

Hayley Village has spent the last 45 years working in early childhood education, including the past two decades running It Takes a Village Children and Family Services, a home-based program located in San Mateo, California. Village makes a deliberate point to ask every enrolling family about the cultural holidays they observe or the specific foods they eat, integrating celebrations like the Chinese New Year, Cinco de Mayo, and Diwali directly into her daily curriculum.

Village, who originally hails from England, once even had her young students celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of the queen of England by drafting emails to the royal family—and she proudly received official correspondence back in return.

"It’s connecting what you would do with your own children," she explained. "You embrace who they are. And when you make that connection, they feel heard and validated."

Because home-based programs are also significantly smaller than traditional center-based facilities, they frequently allow for a higher degree of personalized care and spontaneous adaptation, providers note.

"It’s a lot of pivoting. My curriculum is pretty much written entirely by me, and once you get to know the children, you know who likes the dinosaurs or who likes to cook or who likes to eat dirt—even if you don’t want them to," Village said with a laugh.

While she has no immediate plans to shut down her operations, Village has spent the last three years actively pondering her future retirement and the transition of her career.

"I thought as I turn 60, it’s time to walk away and mentor the younger generation," she said. "I can’t do some of the things I did 30 years ago."

As the aging demographic of providers edges closer to retirement age, early childhood experts worry that American families will be left with severely diminished options for early care.

"When you see a type of business going out of business, it doesn’t mean families don’t want it," said Anna Powell, associate director of research and policy at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. "It is more of a warning bell; this is an aging group, and when centers close, they don’t come back."

Securing the financial means to afford retirement stands out as the single greatest concern for aging home-based child care workers, according to a recent report published by the National Association for Family Child Care. Unlike corporate or government roles, home-based centers do not typically provide retirement benefits, pensions, or health insurance coverage. Furthermore, despite skyrocketing tuition costs for families struggling to pay for care, early childhood education remains one of the lowest-paying professional fields in the United States.

"When you’re competing with In-N-Out Burger and Amazon drivers’ salaries, at $22, $23 an hour, you have to invest in early childhood education to keep people in the field," Village argued. "Why is it not looked at that children are tomorrow’s future? We’re brain developers."

For younger individuals who do aspire to open and operate their own home-based centers, structural roadblocks often prove insurmountable. Many state and local jurisdictions require home-based providers to own their residential properties—a financial milestone that has become an increasing rarity among younger generations facing a tough housing market. Village, for instance, rents her three-bedroom, two-bathroom home. The property is currently valued at nearly $2 million, a price tag she notes she would never be able to afford on her own.

"I wouldn’t say I’ve given up on it, but to live here I would need major financial assistance," she said.

Child care policy experts point out that even in states like California that legally permit renters to operate home-based child care centers, the regulatory requirements imposed on the physical property are often exceptionally specific and prohibitively expensive. Mandates frequently include hard-wired commercial sprinkler systems and multiple dedicated emergency exits from basement spaces. Even if a private landlord were to grant permission for such extensive structural modifications, those systems are notoriously pricey to maintain and can negatively impact a home’s overall resale value. Renew noted that these facility-related mandates almost never come packaged with state or federal financial assistance to help offset the costs.

"I think health and safety is important, but I think we’ve conflated them to a set of requirements with providers who can only own their homes," Renew said. "We’re asking providers to make commercial improvements to residential homes."

A handful of states have attempted to implement targeted support measures to shore up their dwindling home-based care networks. Nebraska offers startup and expansion grants of up to $5,000 for family child care operations. Connecticut launched an innovative program designed to provide prospective entrepreneurs with physical spaces to launch child care businesses when operating out of a personal residence proved impossible. Meanwhile, Louisiana utilized federal pandemic relief funding through the American Rescue Plan to offer stabilization grants that helped family child care centers weather the economic storm of COVID-19, though those temporary programs have since expired.

Crews contends that these isolated efforts simply do not go far enough to address the systemic nature of the crisis.

"Child care is expensive around the country; make it affordable for everyone," she said.

Faced with the mounting operational challenges, financial pressures, and regulatory hurdles confronting home-based child-care providers, Village recently made the personal decision to transition the next phase of her professional career away from day-to-day direct caregiving and toward full-time advocacy.

"When lawmakers make these decisions, it’s never been a truly collaborative effort," she said. "We’ve never been at the table."