By Alyssa Fortner

The 2026 theme of Black History Month, A Century of Black History Commemorations, urges us to tell an accurate and inclusive history of Black people’s role in building and shaping the very systems that tried to marginalize them. As the Association for the Study of African American Life and History reminds us, “Black history’s value is not its contribution to mainstream historical narratives, but its resonance in the lives of Black people.” This resonance is particularly evident in the child care sector; a system built on the exploited labor of Black women that continues to reproduce inequities for Black early educators, families, and children today. As the current presidential administration continues to undermine child care and early education, these pre-existing inequities and compounding disparities that have disproportionately harmed Black communities have only gotten worse.

As reiterated in the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center’s new report, The History of Child Care Policies, investments in and the perceived value of child care have long been shaped by beliefs about who should work, whose caregiving labor is valued, and how children of different backgrounds are expected to be cared for. These beliefs, and subsequent implementation of policies borne from them, are deeply racialized, gendered, and classist. Under chattel slavery, enslaved Black women were forced to take care of white children in place of their own. After emancipation, low-paid domestic or agricultural work were some of the only jobs available to Black women. These professions were then systemically excluded from labor protection laws. Today, these historical patterns show up in persistent racial pay disparities and limited advancement opportunities for Black women within the child care workforce.

Outside of the care workforce, Black families have faced inequities in accessing and utilizing public assistance programs. Throughout the 1900s, public benefit programs advanced narratives about the deservingness of mothers that disproportionately stigmatized and harmed Black families. One example is the enduring “welfare queen” stereotype, which portrays Black women as negligent mothers who bear children to exploit public benefits. Though decades old and rooted in Southern segregationist attempts to send welfare recipients north, this harmful trope continues to influence public and policymaker perceptions by reinforcing the false assumption that Black women misuse public programs and shouldn’t receive them. Narratives like this persist despite child care policies moving away from overtly biased language.

Now, eligibility rules, work requirements, inadequate program funding, and administrative burdens reinforce assumptions about who deserves support and how they get it. Due to the intersectional identity of Black women with low incomes, these barriers still make accessing child care subsidies and other assistance especially challenging. While programs like the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) remain an important resource for participating families, inequities persist in who can access CCDF, generally and by race and ethnicity, due both to these barriers and to broader systemic economic inequity. Therefore, even without explicit racial exclusions, programs are still designed in ways that shape those who ultimately benefit from them and who do not. This continues to result in a system that perpetually fails to truly support Black families whose ancestors laid the foundation of the child care sector.

The harms of these inequities extend beyond access to care and care providers. To this day, Black children continue to be harmed by the systemic racism and anti-Blackness that persists through harsh discipline practices in education settings, including in child care and early education. Black children face suspension, expulsion, or being pushed out of programs more often than their peers. These inequitable practices echo the violence and control forced upon Black families under slavery and the Jim Crow era and continue today through the policing of Black children in care and educational settings.

The ingrained inequities in the child care and early education sector are intergenerational. Black early educators are underpaid and undervalued, Black families face barriers to accessing stable and safe care, and Black children face disproportionate discipline and exclusion practices. These present-day realities are born from racist, anti-Black systems that have never been transformed in ways that acknowledge and remedy these harms.

This Black History Month calls us to commemorate the deep roots and ongoing consequences of inequity in the child care sector. Doing so means not only recognizing the essential labor of Black women in the field but also understanding how disparities in compensation, access, and discipline reflect a history of oppression that adapts across generations, ensuring that systemic barriers continue to affect Black early educators, families, and children today.

To respectfully commemorate these inequities, the field must go beyond acknowledgment and take meaningful action to transform the child care system so that it works for everyone who provides, upholds, or relies on it, no matter their background. This action must center the voices of Black communities, confront the harms caused by racial, gender, and class inequities, and embed equity into every facet of the sector. The long-overdue transformation we need also must be supported by meaningful federal investment that is robust and equitable to allow for these necessary changes such as higher wages; good jobs with meaningful benefits; universal access; and quality, consistent, and stable care for children. This is the way to create a system that no longer perpetuates harm against the most vulnerable and truly honors the labor and care that has built and sustained it.

For a detailed analysis of the history of child care policies and that history’s impact on equitable implementation, please see the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center’s new report.