"We Are the Backbone: Faces of the Care Nation"
Learn about the essential work of child care providers and the value of child care in this national campaign shifting the narrative around care work.
Photograph of child care providers by Lloyd K. FosterNational Women's Law Center
We Are the Backbone: Faces of a Care Nation is a national campaign to center the essential work of child care providers and the value of child care by shifting the narrative around care work from being a personal responsibility to public infrastructure.
Photograph of child care provider by Lloyd K. FosterNational Women's Law Center
Child care workers are the backbone of the economy. They have held us up while we have left offices bare and streets cleared.
Photograph of child care providers by Lloyd K. FosterNational Women's Law Center
92% of these essential workers are women and specifically, Black and brown women. We can’t talk about valuing care and opening the economy without prioritizing child care workers.
Photograph of child care provider by Lloyd K. FosterNational Women's Law Center
When families do not have good care options they need, we see the impacts in the next generation of workers and our economy.
It takes a village to raise children.
For too long, care work has been seen as an individual responsibility instead of a key part of our economic and social infrastructure.
Just as we rely on bridges and roads to get us where we need to go, we rely on child care workers to have a functioning workforce, economy, and society.
Photograph of child care providers by Lloyd K. FosterNational Women's Law Center
It’s time to recognize that when it comes to the common good, we can find the funding. We can choose to provide quality child care and ensure all our families are able to thrive.
Photograph of child care providers by Lloyd K. FosterNational Women's Law Center
We need $700B to create a child care system that meets the needs of children, families, communities and child care providers.
We can’t talk about care without including child care.
If COVID has taught us anything, it’s that without child care, our families, our communities, and the economy would not function.
Photograph of child care providers by Lloyd K. FosterNational Women's Law Center
We need to value care and the women—disproportionately Black, brown, and immigrant women—who provide it. There is no working economy without child care.
We Are the Backbone: Faces of a Child Care Nation honors the women who have held us up every day. This campaign is an ode to the everyday unrecognized heroes and features portraits of child care providers by photographer Lloyd K. Foster, which will be displayed in cities throughout the country in 2021. The photos feature providers at Child Care Center, ACCA Development Center, and Hopkins House, who have all been serving the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area for over 20 years combined.
