Survey Data Supports the Need for Better Access to Child Care for Parents of Infants and Toddlers

Families with infants and toddlers are struggling to find consistent access to child care, according to a March 2025 fact sheet from RAPID.

RAPID, based in the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, administers national and place-based surveys designed to gather essential information on young children and their caregivers. These surveys collect data monthly from parents and child care providers in all 50 states in order to provide actionable data on the experiences and well-being of the important adults in a child’s life.

The March 2025 fact sheet focuses on data from household surveys asking parents of infants and toddlers (birth to age three) about their child care experiences and preferences. While it was found that more than two in three (68%) parents of infants and toddlers use child care for five hours or more per week, reliable access to child care was shown to be a particular concern among these parents. 

Parents used a variety of provider types in an effort to fulfill their needs, specifically:

• 32% used center-based care
• 26% used unpaid family, friend, and neighbor (FFN) care
• 13% used paid FFN care
• 12% used home-based care (also referred to as family child care programs)

Consistent with other national data, variations of FFN care made up the largest share of care provided for this age group, yet responses to open-ended questions indicated a lack of consistent availability. Responses to these open-ended questions also provided insight on the most important factors for parents of infants and toddlers when selecting care for their child, with availability being among them.

These factors, listed in order of frequency, being: 

1. Trust and/or comfortability
2. Affordability
3. Availability 
4. Location
5. Hours

The fact sheet features quotes from parents demonstrating challenges parents of infants and toddlers experience, which include difficulty in finding trusted relatives/friends, the inability to predict schedule changes of informal caregivers, high costs of formal child care settings, and challenges in finding child care slots and qualified caregivers, especially in rural areas.

RAPID data demonstrates the need for more reliable, affordable, and trusted sources of child care for families with infants and toddlers in order to better support parents and ensure children’s healthy development.