For parents of infants and toddlers, finding affordable, high-quality child care in San Francisco can be a nightmare.
Just 15% of babies ages 0 to 2 have access to child care in San Francisco, compared with about 94% of preschool-age children between 3 to 5 years old, according to estimates from the Children’s Council, a child care advocacy and referral agency.
For a family with two adults and one infant, the cost of child care in San Francisco is about $2,100 per month, according to estimates from the Insight Center, an Oakland economic research and advocacy organization. That’s among the highest price tags in the state, with child care for the same family costing less in counties such as Alameda, Marin, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Los Angeles.
In San Francisco, the waiting lists for infant care are so long that many parents who can afford to often look for private nannies, while families without the means must choose between work or caring for young children. Those who can’t afford those options can turn to financial assistance, but even then, spaces for infants are limited.
For many working families, life in The City with a baby just doesn’t pencil out easily.
“I’m full for the next two years for infants and toddlers and get calls every other day. It breaks my heart to have to say, ‘Sorry, I have a waiting list and to be honest, by the time your baby comes up they will be in preschool,” said Monique Guidry, who owns and runs an in-home child care facility in Ingleside. “It can be especially challenging here finding toddler care.”
Infant care is particularly difficult to provide due to federal regulations requiring very low teacher-to-child ratios. In California, there must be a minimum of one adult for every 4 children under 2. But many teachers like Guidry prefer to have as close to 1-to-1 as possible since babies require near-constant attention.
“Caring for just one baby is a lot. Those ratios are there for the health and safety of children. But it is very difficult to provide infant and toddler care,” said Ingrid Mezquita, executive director of San Francisco’s newly minted Department of Early Childhood Education.
Nearly 33% of child care programs did not have enough teachers and staff to enroll as many children as desired, according to a 2017 estimate from the former S.F. Office of Early Care and Education, now the Department of Early Childhood Education.
Those challenges have continued to persist for infant caregivers in the years since.
“I have more infants than preschoolers this year, which is different. And I have more than I’ve ever had previously under age 3,” said Guidry, who currently has six infants and four preschool-age children in her class, along with two teachers. “A lot of families had babies. I know because I teach their siblings.”
How parents are doing it
Parents like Jonah Horowitz, a father of a six-month-old in Bernal Heights, had heard of the long wait lists and challenges ahead for child care. As soon as his partner became pregnant, they went to online community message boards and found a neighbor they could share a nanny with.
Others have had success navigating subsidy programs that offset the costs of child care through organizations like the Children’s Council.
But due to a need for more staff to take care of infants, it’s still hard to get a spot even if you qualify for assistance.
That leaves the third option: leave San Francisco for cheaper alternatives.
Monique Woodford Breaux was born and raised in San Francisco before moving to Oakley, where she said it has been easier to afford housing and child care for her six kids.
“It was more of a challenge than I had expected. So many people go, ‘Why don’t you just leave your kids with the neighbor?’ People assume there is someone available or that it’s affordable for everyone. Not everybody has access to the same things,” she said.
Advocates for better infant care options in San Francisco are determined to change the notion that families should have to leave The City to raise their babies.
“As a native San Franciscan, I’ll tell you, S.F. is a wonderful place to grow up. We want to make sure this is where families have children and are able to raise a family,” said Mezquita, who is now overseeing her Department of Early Childhood Education’s target to provide universal child care access for infants and toddlers.
What The City is doing
Today, San Francisco has just over 1,000 licensed child care centers. Of those, about 650 are family in-home child care facilities and 350 are child care centers that together have capacity for 26,194 children under 5. Overall, The City has an estimated 35,053 children under 5, according to 2021 U.S. Census data.
The number of child care facilities in San Francisco has actually grown since 2020, unlike many parts of the country, largely due to emergency grants and funding provided during the pandemic. Still, demand for infant care has not budged. Early educators like Guidry say there’s a drastic need for more caregivers who can take on infants.
“Right now, it’s so challenging to find teachers (for infant care). And that’s not just my experience, that’s across the field,” said Guidry, “This means a lot for the teachers. It means retention and hopefully bringing back teachers we lost during the pandemic.”
In June 2018, voters passed Proposition C, which authorized an additional tax on some commercial leases to subsidize child care wages and build-out facilities. About $300 million has been collected through Prop. C to date, according to the Department of Early Childhood Education.
To entice more workers to the field, the Department is now funneling $70 million annually from the Prop. C funds into the early care workforce in order to bring the pay rate for city-funded caregivers to a minimum of $28 per hour.
That’s more than double the national average hourly pay for child care workers, which was $13.31 in 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, animal care workers, like dog walkers, earned even higher than child-care givers, at a mean hourly rate of $14.19.
But once wages go up, so do child care costs. So, to get families in the door, the department is also spending $40 million annually to increase subsidy rates for child care and $180 million to help families afford child care.
Scholarships and subsidies helped Woodford Breaux cover care costs for her young children, and it’s also provided her space to pursue opening up a child care facility of her own.
“Don’t be afraid to ask for help. There are caring and trusting people who will be supportive throughout the process,” she said. “Just don’t try to figure it out when the child is here, start as early as possible.”
