Many of us, if we have been fortunate, have been cared for by someone who was not our parent — a grandmother, a neighbor, a family member who showed up when our parents needed to work. For my brother and me, it was our aunt in West Philadelphia who anchored our early years with the kind of unhurried attention that stays with you for life. Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins describes this practice as “othermothering”: the work of women who share caregiving responsibilities across formal and informal arrangements, a tradition rooted in African American community life and found across many cultures and communities around the world.
I begin here because this is where child care actually begins — not in a policy document, but in relationships and culture. And that is the question at the center of the universal child care movement that does not get asked often enough: Universal for whom?
Universal child care, as a policy goal, is gaining momentum. States and cities are moving. The political case for treating child care as a public good — something we all contribute to and all benefit from — is stronger than it has been in decades. At Home Grown, we believe this moment is real, and we intend to help shape it.
But a universal child care system that overlooks or intentionally excludes the providers and caregivers that families already rely on most is not truly universal. It is not only a missed opportunity, but for the millions of children cared for by family members, friends, neighbors, and home-based providers across this country, it would be a continuation of a very long injustice. Home-based child care, and especially FFN care, is the most prevalent care arrangement in the country because so many families prefer the flexibility, affordability, and cultural familiarity it offers. Home-based child care deserves full recognition in any public child care system.
That is why we have spent the past several months with the Home Grown community doing something we believe the field urgently needs: articulating a coherent, ambitious vision for universal child care that puts home-based child care at the center.
Home-based child care at the heart
Home Grown’s research confirms what families already know: Parents choose home-based child care because they trust it. They trust their children will be nurtured and responded to. They trust their culture and home language will be honored. They trust that their caregiver sees their child not as a student to be assessed but as a whole person to be known. These are not incidental preferences — they reflect exactly what developmental science tells us children need most in their earliest years: secure attachment, cultural affirmation, and learning rooted in relationship.
Home-based providers have sustained children and families across generations. They have filled the gap between what families need and what the formal system provides, often at great personal cost. Their work has been chronically overlooked, underpaid, and undervalued. This is not an accident of history. It is a product of it — rooted in the exploitation of domestic labor, particularly the labor of Black and Brown women, that has shaped American child care since its origins. Any vision for universal child care that does not reckon with this history will reproduce it.
We believe a better system is possible. And we know it can be built from home.
A vision shaped by providers
Over the past several months, the Home Grown team has worked with provider leaders and our advisory communities to develop a set of principles for what a universal child care system should look like when it fully includes home-based child care. The result is our first draft of a shared vision: Universal Child Care, Built From Home.
This vision is not a policy blueprint. It is a set of values that describe what families and providers deserve, and a framework for holding systems accountable to actually delivering it. The principles are intentionally bold. We believe the field needs an aspirational target, not a proposal to tweak what is currently available.
The five principles at the heart of this vision are:
Everybody wins when child care is a right, not a privilege.
Child care should be universal and guaranteed. Every family deserves affordable, reliable, nurturing care in the setting that works for them — a center, a family child care home, their own home, or the home of a relative or neighbor. That care should be accessible regardless of income, language, employment status, immigration status, disability, or geography.
A system worthy of this principle is fully publicly funded, serves children from birth through age 13, and places no restrictions on participation. It does not require families to prove they deserve access. It treats child care as the public good it is.
Children grow and thrive when they are safe, healthy, and nurtured.
Quality in child care is not a checklist. It is the experience of a child who feels known — whose language, background, strengths, and challenges are understood and honored by the person caring for them. It is consistency, relationships, and the kind of attentiveness that only comes from truly showing up for a child every day. Theorists from Bowlby and Ainsworth to Vygotsky and Ladson-Billings have given us different frameworks for understanding this truth; The families who choose home-based child care already live it.
A strong system supports providers in delivering that care without burying them in administrative requirements that pull their attention away from children. It centers the voice of families and providers in defining what quality means, and it ensures that any resources a child needs — developmental support, mental health services, special education — reach them in whatever setting they are cared for.
Caring for children is a labor of love that must be well-compensated.
For many providers, this work is a calling. The love is genuine and the commitment is deep. But love is not a substitute for a living wage, health insurance, retirement savings, or paid time off. The fact that this work is priceless is not an excuse for underpaying it.
A strong system pays providers based on enrollment, not attendance. It sets rates that reflect the true cost of care. It invests in professional development, peer community, and career pathways that all providers can access — not just those with formal credentials. And it recognizes the right of providers to organize and bargain collectively.
Families and caregivers must have real power in shaping all levels of the system.
Systems often work on paper but not in real life. The history of child care policy is full of well-intentioned frameworks that failed because they were designed without the people they were meant to serve. Home-based providers in particular have long been consulted and then ignored. They are invited to comment and then handed a decision already made.
A strong system changes this. It measures success not by compliance rates but by family satisfaction, child well-being, and provider stability. It builds governance structures where families and providers hold real decision-making authority — not advisory roles, but actual power. And it assumes good intent on the part of the people navigating it, rather than treating every provider as a compliance risk to be managed.
An effective system is welcoming and easy to navigate.
Families and providers should never have to fight the system to be part of it. That means accessible entry points in every language, low-barrier requirements, and a presumption that people are there because they want to care for children well — not because they are looking for ways to take advantage.
It means a system connected to other resources families may need — food, housing, early intervention, behavioral health — so that navigation does not fall entirely on the shoulders of the people who can least afford to carry it. And it means data practices that are ethical: information collected to support families, not to surveil or penalize them.
Why now?
We are in a genuine policy window for universal child care. The political conditions, the public appetite, and the emerging state and local models are all pointing in the same direction. This is a moment to dream big and ask for more.
Child care is not an industry to be regulated or a commodity to be rationed. It is a human necessity that deserves to be honored, supported, and fully funded. This vision describes what that could look like. We must bring new frameworks for understanding the needs of families, children, and home-based providers into our child care policymaking so that all of our communities can be stronger.
Read the full vision: Principles for universal child care, built from home, Version 1.0
If you are working to build or advocate for universal child care in your state or community, we want to hear from you. This vision is a starting point, not the final word — and it gets more powerful with more voices.
