Parents Not Using Their Preferred Type of Care, by Child’s Age and Current Child Care Figure 2 Figure 2: Mismatch - Current vs Ideal
Parental care Informal care Formal care
10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
87%
80%
67%
64%
62%
60%
50%
38%
33%
24%
12%
9%
0%
Under Age 1
Age 1
Age 2
Age 3
Source: Survey of 4,306 parents and caregivers of children ages 0-5 living in New York City; conducted by NORC for New America’s New Practice Lab and Robin Hood, March 31-April 20, 2026. Note: For each type of current arrangement (categorized as parents using parental care, informal care, or formal care), the share of parents who would prefer to be using a different type of child care at each given age is shown.
Notes: Source: Robin Hood
Overall, 39 percent of parents say they have less child care than they actually need and that unmet need varies in some cases significantly across demographic lines. Roughly half of parents who primar- ily speak Spanish at home report needing more care. Unmet need is similarly high among parents who have irregular work schedules, and parents with household income below 100 percent of the federal poverty level. There are also higher rates of unmet need among Black, Hispanic, and AAPI parents; women (46 percent compared to 30 percent of men); and unemployed parents (45 percent versus 37 percent of working parents). Of the 16 percent of parents overall who say at least one of their children under six has a known or suspected developmental delay or disability, more than half (55 percent) report having less child care than they need; this is 20 percentage points higher than parents whose children do not have a known or suspected developmental delay or disability who are more likely to say the amount of child care they have generally meets their needs. 13
13 Review of a nationally representative sample of children born in the US in 2001 indicated that approximately 13% of children in the sample had devel- opmental delays that would make them eligible for Part C Early Intervention. Eligibility criteria for Early Intervention (EI) vary from state to state and may have an impact on access to EI services. Some states, like New York, require a moderate degree of delay in 2 or more domains of development or a severe delay in one domain in order to be found eligible, so some children with mild delays may not receive EI services. Stigma around the label of “developmental delay”, concern that this label, even if no longer applicable, may follow a child through their entire educational career, and cultural differences in the recognition and acceptance of developmental delays also play a role in EI uptake. See: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18504295/
THE 2026 NEW YORK CITY PARENT SURVEY : WHAT CHILD CARE PARENTS WANT 12
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker