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ILLINOIS DAY CARE
REGULATIONS BURDEN WORKING MOTHERS, FAIL TO MAKE CHILDREN SAFE
Illinois Policy Institute
Illinois’
overly restrictive rules governing day care facilities drive up costs
and make high-quality child care unaffordable for many families, while
doing nothing to enhance child safety.
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 The proportion of women who work outside the home has nearly doubled since World
War II, meaning more and more families turn to day care facilities to provide
care for their children. But restrictive Illinois day care regulations heavily
burden single parents and families in which both parents work. Moreover,
evidence suggests these rules not only fail to make children safer but actually
harm children’s interests.
Day care facilities in Illinois are subject to restrictive regulations that make
day care in the Prairie State the 9th-most expensive in the nation, according to
a 2015 study by Child Care Aware of America. Facilities must maintain a
child-staff ratio ranging from 1-to-20 for children 5 years and older to just
1-to-4 for infants. And even if a facility has more staff than needed, maximum
group size can be limited to as few as 12 children. These age-specific
restrictions are based on the youngest child in the group: Even if there are 19
kindergartners and one infant, the 1-to-4 ratio applies.
Day care providers are also subject to strict licensing, even if they work out
of their own homes. Anyone wanting to run a day care facility must undergo
fingerprinting, a criminal background check, a physical exam and testing for
tuberculosis. The director must have completed at least two years of college or
have equivalent credentials – yet the guidelines do not even require the
director to have studied in a relevant field such as child development.
Assuming a person can meet all these criteria, it can also take six months or
longer to get a license after passing a home inspection. For larger day care
facilities in the city of Chicago, the restrictions are more onerous still and
include rules such as the prohibition on operating a facility close to a motor
vehicle repair shop. Though these measures are defended on safety grounds, there
is no evidence that any of these rules improve safety. In fact, studies suggest
that neither child-staff ratios nor maximum group size enhance safety.
But the rules do harm working parents, especially those from low-income
families. That’s because the cost of complying with regulations makes day care
in Illinois much more expensive. According to the data from the 2015 Child Care
Aware of America study, Illinois’ child care costs amount to $13,286 a year for
infant care in current dollars. In this instance, increasing child-staff ratios
by just one infant would save an Illinois family $1,196 to $2,657 a year.
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 A 2010 study found that families with $1,500 or less in monthly
income spend 30 percent of their income on child care. Some parents
may find that working is not financially viable, or at least not
worth the difficulties involved. And under these circumstances, it
may appear to many families that relying on public assistance makes
more economic sense than seeking employment.
Other families may look to alternatives to regulated day care.
Children of employed mothers who live below the poverty line are
twice as likely to be cared for by a relative (other than a father
or grandparent) as those who live above the poverty line.
Ultimately these regulations may have a negative effect on child
care quality. Research indicates that rather than pass the full cost
of regulation on to families, day care facilities respond by cutting
caregiver pay. As a result, child care providers work in one of the
lowest-paid occupations in the country, which leads to high staff
turnover and lower commitment levels – both of which can reduce the
quality of child care.
Well-intended regulations do not make children safer unless those
regulations are rooted in evidence. Illinois’ excessive rules serve
mainly to increase child care costs, which can reduce the quality of
child care overall and diminish parents’ financial ability to serve
their children’s best interests, whether by finding day care
facilities that pay higher wages, working fewer hours to spend more
time with their children, or moving to a neighborhood with less
crime or pollution. Lawmakers in Springfield need to pay attention
to how burdensome rules can harm children’s interests in the real
world, and pass commonsense, evidence-based reforms beginning with
eliminating ineffective rules such as maximum group sizes and
minimum child-staff ratios.
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