Child care isn’t just a social issue, it’s infrastructure

Child care isn’t just a social issue, it’s infrastructure.

The recent estimate that U.S. businesses lose up to $70B annually due to child care disruptions makes one thing clear: this is not a peripheral challenge. It’s a structural constraint on workforce participation, productivity, and long-term economic growth.

What’s striking is that this isn’t a problem of awareness, or even capital.
It’s a problem of coordination.

Employers, policymakers, and funders are all engaging, but too often in fragmented ways. The result is a system that remains unstable despite meaningful investment.

The opportunity now is to move beyond isolated solutions and toward platform-based approaches that align capital, partners, and shared learning across the ecosystem.

That’s how durable systems get built, not just by funding services, but by strengthening the infrastructure that makes them work at scale.