“If you can prevent a family from sliding into poverty or you can shore up families early on and position them well, they are much more likely to succeed and withstand other challenges.”
– Debra Lancaster
Interview with Debra Lancaster
Deb Lancaster has spent her career focused on improving families’ day-to-day lives. At the Center for Women & Work (CWW) she focuses on improving access to paid family leave and quality, affordable child care.
What is your background and what did you do before running the Center for Women & Work?
When I was in high school, I worked 2 summers for the phone company, New Jersey Bell. The first summer I worked with a bunch of guys as a second shift mail room clerk. It was good money, and fairly easy to sort the mail, and we had a decent amount of down time and control over when we took breaks.
The next summer, I wound up being a 411 operator providing customer service — people would call looking for hospitals or pizza places or whatever they needed. But this work was very female dominated. I don’t think there were any men on the floor, and it was only split shift. This job was more responsibility, had less autonomy, and the wages were also lower. That was the first time I started thinking about this gendered division of labor, which has really informed the direction of my career. During college, I was interested in how women’s work is valued, and I focused on the child care dilemma: For women to participate in the paid workforce, you need to have another workforce to care for their children. I also looked at wages, working conditions, and the cost of quality child care.
After time in the labor movement and running a center on health and safety in the workplace, I worked with the New Jersey Department of Children and Families, which was some of the most rewarding work I’ve done. I had the opportunity to work on reforming aspects of the child welfare system, like addressing child health and well-being of children in foster care, as well as work that was more transformational in nature. For example, we brought in housing coupled with concrete supports and other services for high-needs families.
We realized that, for families confronting domestic violence challenges, opioid and other drug addictions, mental health issues, poverty and/or generational trauma, traditional child welfare services alone were not effective, especially for people also experiencing housing instability. It’s such a wise investment and so far the evaluation results are incredibly promising.
What’s one thing you wish people knew about the Center for Women & Work?
We would love people to know the research and policy analysis we’ve done for the past 30 years has made contributions toward policies that support families in the first 1,000 days and beyond. Getting Paid Family Leave instituted is probably the best example. In that case, were part of the research process and also participated in the Time to Care Coalition that helped pass Paid Family Leave from its inception. New Jersey was the second state in the nation to pass Paid Family Leave, which we know is so critical for children and families in those early days.
We care deeply about equitable implementation of that policy and we also want to encourage a shift in our culture overall. We want the policy to live up to its full potential as well as help employers and communities understand that we don’t have to stop with the policy that’s on the books. There are ways to enhance that policy to support families as they raise their children or care for others during various life events.
What were some key findings from CWW’s 2023 child care study relating to working families?
One observation is that the need for child care in New Jersey has increased over time. In 2010, the share of New Jersey children under the age of 6 with all available parents in the workforce was just under 63% but in more recent years, it’s close to 70%. And the demand for child care presumably goes along with that.
Approximately 24% of families with children experienced some type of child care disruption because of the pandemic. A key finding in the report was that parents managed the disruptions several ways. Some parents supervised their children while they were working—if they were able to work at home and have that flexibility— and some of those who could do so cut their work hours or used paid time off. But households with incomes of less than $50,000 a year more often lost wages and jobs because of child care disruptions. If you’re already living close to the edge, that can create some additional stress.
New Jersey’s child care workforce was one of the slowest in the country to recover. This may be connected to our tight labor market or to the low returns on education in the child care sector – child care workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher earn just 33% of their equally-educated counterparts who are not in child care.
What role will data and research play in the First 1,000 Days Coalition?
New Jersey is a leader in many areas for children and families, but I also think we have the wisdom in the state to know we can do better and that some of the progress we’ve made isn’t always felt evenly or isn’t implemented equitably.
The Coalition aims to improve the quality of life for families in those early days when they have very young children, because when we invest in families when the children are very young, the research evidence is that those investments pay off in the long run. If you can prevent a family from sliding into poverty or you can shore up families early on and position them well, they are much more likely to succeed and withstand other challenges.
We’ve identified 3 critical policy areas: access to high-quality, affordable child care; equitable implementation of Paid Family Leave; and income support so families have some economic stability in those early days.
The research can go a long way to convince people to join the Coalition who might not otherwise understand the connection to themselves, and to guide investments that promote nurturing. Peoples’ lived experience is part of the research evidence, so sharing their stories will be central to this campaign. In the areas where we’re focusing there is a decent amount of literature already, but it doesn’t always get in front of the right people, so that’s something the Coalition can rectify.
What innovative things are happening now that the Coalition should consider for the areas it will pursue?
Research has found that increasing the income of lower-income families when kids are young is linked to positive outcomes as those children enter adulthood. Outside of such federal initiatives as the 2021 American Rescue Plan, where the child tax credit was expanded, there are other local types of income supports we can explore, like baby bonds — which have been instituted in other states and help reduce the racial wealth gap.
There’s absolutely room and interest for public-private partnerships for potential new revenue sources for child care. COVID helped people connect the dots between healthy child care infrastructure and benefits to children, families, and the economy.
Are there barriers that you anticipate to achieving progress in the work of the First 1,000 Days Coalition?
One big barrier is that we’ve never viewed child care as a public good in the United States. It just hasn’t been framed in that way. That still requires a cultural shift in how we think about child care.
Another challenge is that building a broad and robust coalition can often be hard work because people have different interests and approaches. We might all agree that we want affordable, accessible child care, but not everyone might agree on where the resources need to come from. The Paid Family Leave benefit that exists in New Jersey is better than what most states have. But there will be different approaches to how we best address gaps in the existing policy. There might also be competing demands. The first 1,000 days or the areas we’ve identified as central to our policy aims are not the only thing that coalition partners may be wanting to advance. There could be distractions we don’t anticipate, such as another pandemic, for example. But I would argue that having a strong child care infrastructure and solid income supports would help insulate families from unexpected things that might come along.
What gives you hope about the work you do or will do with this Coalition?
New Jersey has had significant achievements. Now we have universal home visiting. Who would’ve thought that would happen? It might not always make headlines, but New Jersey has a decent track record of making progress when we set our minds to it.
During the pandemic, I was invited to Trenton to talk to the Children and Families Committee about CWW’s analysis of child care and COVID and women in the workforce. Among the legislators who were leading the committee, were 3 women who had something like 10 young children among them. As working mothers, they each had stories that every parent in the room could related to no matter what side of the aisle they were on. Other legislators on the committee began to share their own child care stories and challenges, including the men. I found it hopeful that making child care more available and affordable was something everyone agreed on. It was one of these moments where I felt this is an area where we can make progress because it’s such a common experience.
Many people have struggled with finding the type of child care they need or with taking the time off after the birth of a child or know someone who has faced these challenges. I think there’s a lot of hope that these are the kinds of issues where we can work across many different interests and come up with solutions.