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County supervisor Lisa Gauthier has a front-row seat to child care challenges. Gauthier, who lives with her daughter and 5-year-old grandson, sets her work schedule so she can walk her grandson to school most days. Despite sharing in the child care responsibilities, Gauthier has seen her daughter struggle to find reliable care at times.
It’s safe to say she can relate to San Mateo County residents who described their experience with child care as “expensive,” “challenging,” and “essential” during a town hall at San Mateo Library Tuesday night.
The town hall, the third session of a listening tour hosted by county supervisors Gauthier and Jackie Speier, was a chance for parents, policymakers and providers to discuss a variety of issues related to child care.
Top-of-mind for many parents is the high cost. In an area where infant care averages $3,000 per month, according to Speier, child care expenses can amount to a substantial part of a family’s budgets, especially for families with multiple young children.
“We have a workforce crisis that starts in the crib, and it’s because San Mateo County is such an expensive place in which to live,” Speier said in an interview. “Our birth rate is declining. Our families are leaving San Mateo County. We’re going to lose employees. We’re going to have to close schools because we’re not going to have children here. So it’s a massive problem.”
The high cost of child care impacts families of different income tiers differently. One attendee noted that while low-income families qualify for governmental child care subsidies, middle-class families with dual incomes who surpass the income threshold may still struggle with child care costs. The income maximum for subsidized child care is about $9,000 a month – about $108,000 annually – for a family of four in San Mateo County, which is 85% of the state median income.
Gauthier said in an interview that this “benefits cliff” is prompting some parents in dual-income households to leave the workforce altogether if their salary barely covers the cost of child care. This trend disproportionately impacts women, researchers have found. The labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of the working-age population who are either employed or unemployed and looking for work, differed drastically between fathers and mothers to children under six years old in 2024. The rate was 95% for fathers and 68% for mothers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This problem is not specific to Silicon Valley, though costs in California are among the highest in the nation. The Center for American Progress, a public policy think tank, found that of the 5 million families with young children that pay for child care each year, about 43 percent pay unaffordable rates.
“If families can’t afford child care and they can’t work; it impacts the innovation economy,” Gauthier said. “You have less money in the economy in general, because those families have less money to spend.”
Another attendee of Tuesday’s town hall, a mother to an 8-year-old and a 4-year-old who said she works for San Mateo County, advocated for increased flexibility for working parents. The mother, who did not state her name, became tearful as she explained that her 10-hour work days allow her only an hour per weeknight with her children, making her feel distant from her young daughter in particular.
“If we could just promote some flexibility for working parents, then maybe I could do her hair, and make her lunch, and see her when she comes home, and make her a snack, and then go back to working,” she said. “That would be great for this society as a whole.”
Tuesday’s town hall also highlighted a communication disconnect between parents and providers. While several parents noted they had difficulty identifying providers in their area with capacity for their children, some providers – particularly home child care providers who run their business out of their personal residence – said they were having trouble filling spots.
To connect families and providers, Speier said during the event that the county is creating a portal that will serve as a one-stop shop for parents to see a list of all providers in their area.
“[We are] looking at this industry as a whole to see how we fix the gaps,” Gauthier said.
Speier said her long-term goal is to have universal child care in San Mateo County which could be funded by a half-cent sales tax. She noted that New Mexico recently announced it would offer universal child care to families of all incomes, funded by a windfall from the state’s oil and gas revenue.
