Re-Scripting Early Care and Learning On Screen

People in the United States are forced to manage the care and education of young children in unsustainable ways. Parents are strapped for time with their young children and money to support their households. Parents who forgo paid work to care for young kids often feel unsupported by a dominant narrative measuring adults’ worth by their attachment to the labor force. Meanwhile, parents who need or want paid jobs struggle to find child care that aligns with their budgets, work schedules, and desire for high-quality care. 

It’s a complicated problem for child care providers as well as families. Licensed child care programs face high operating costs. Despite public support for more government funding, federal and state investments fall far short of what providers and parents need. Informal care provided by family, friends, and neighbors receives even fewer public dollars. And early educators’ pay is often too low to sustain their own families. 

Despite this reality, television shows and films rarely acknowledge child care as a major factor for parents, families, employers, or communities. On-screen narratives tend to overlook the messy, emotional, and practical considerations involved in trying to find or provide care. Instead, storytelling quietly reinforces a narrative that child care is an individual family’s responsibility to carry alone, often by omitting care considerations altogether, leaning into problematic tropes, or treating it flippantly. Shows and films can unwittingly suggest that child care is a luxury, just “babysitting” or “daycare,” or an afterthought, rather than what it actually is: a focal point for family dynamics and budgets, essential to shaping young minds, and central to the economy and society.

This guide helps creatives change the story. It offers storytelling tips to encourage on-screen visibility of care considerations, address audience knowledge gaps, and provide alternative visions for a brighter future where care is visible and supported.

On screen today, child care is largely invisible and lacks authenticity, nuance, and complexity. A 2024 Geena Davis Institute study found that only 20 percent of TV parents with children age 10 or younger mention child care, and even fewer reference the logistics or costs of care. 

Authentic depictions of child care workers are also rarely seen on screen. In workplace shows, child care is usually invisible and, in the rare instances when an on-site child care program is depicted, workers or conditions are seldom acknowledged. In homes, according to a 2022 Norman Lear Center study, the term “nanny” is often used interchangeably with “babysitter” or “sitter,” even when care responsibilities include nurturing and educating children alongside their physical care. Workers are realistically shown most often as women, but on-screen caregivers are usually white and unrealistically affluent, while in reality, immigrants and people of color make up a disproportionate share of care providers, and real-life providers are paid poorly.

To elevate the real-world challenges and solutions related to caregiving and generate more authentic narratives that connect with wide audiences, we encourage writers to change the story.

In real life, parents cannot ignore child care concerns, but on screen, these issues seem to barely exist. Despite practical constraints related to production and budgeting on projects with young children, there are numerous ways to weave the care of children into storytelling, whether or not the children themselves are on screen. For example:

• Acknowledge the need for child care and make sure the audience knows where a young child is, even if they don’t see the care scenario. Address where a child will receive care, whether from a parent, another family member, a friend, a neighbor, in a formal child care center or family care home, or a mix. For context, about 60 percent of children from birth to age five spend time in non-parental care at least once a week, and nearly 40 percent of parents report using more than one care arrangement for the same child.
• Include conversations about the logistics. Trade-offs, gaps, last-minute scrambles for coverage: This can be a source of rich material—fueling humor, tension, suspense, and heart to create moments of connection, conflict, and resolution between characters that make them feel real and relatable. 
• Show what happens when child care plans fall through—both for parents and other characters. In a 2026 survey, 50 percent of parents said that their ability to work is affected by child care challenges, and 40 percent of voters overall said that a coworker’s child care challenges have affected them. Make this part of characters’ lives.

When children appear on screen:

• Depict the specific care arrangements a family chooses and make the provider’s labor visible. Whether an on-screen parent is a child’s primary care provider or chooses child care in another form, depict the feelings and work involved in providing physical care and meeting children’s social and emotional needs. 
• Acknowledge child care workers as whole people, whether through a full story, a line or two of dialogue, or background action. For example, if a show features an on-site child care program, include interactions between care providers and parents or providers and children to show workers in action. 

Stories that centrally feature child care arrangements are great, but even small, incidental references to care—where they would actually appear in real life—will help shift culture and make characters and scenes more relatable to viewers. 

Representation helps audiences with children feel they are not alone. It creates awareness about what parents face for people without children. It underscores how critical child care is to parents’ ability to work and address their own needs as humans. And it makes visible just how complex the decision-making around managing unpaid care and paid work can be, with factors like guilt, time, money, and logistics driving those choices. 

Examples we love that change the story:

• The Bear (FX, 2026): In season 5, episode 2 of this dramedy series, Natalie tearfully confides in coworker Tina that she feels guilty over spending so little time with her baby. Tina reassures her that these complicated feelings are normal.
• Ex-Pats (Amazon Studios, 2023–24): This limited drama series treats in-home nannies and domestic workers as full humans and brings to light how often the families they work for take them for granted.
• Rap Shit (HBO, 2022): In season 1, episode 1 of this comedy series, Mia asks her mom for backup care during Mia’s work hours to fill a gap left by her baby’s father, Lamont. While Lamont initially falls into a “deadbeat dad” trope, he eventually evolves into a more engaged, responsible father over the season.
• No Country for Mothers (Moms First, 2026): This feature documentary explores the realities of motherhood in America and how families have too little support regardless of their child care preferences and arrangements.

Adding specificity about a character’s financial and logistical challenges inspires viewers’ awareness and understanding. The cost of care is one of the biggest challenges faced by both families and providers, but nearly half of Americans underestimate what child care truly costs: an average of $13,000 per year for children under age five. One-third considerably overestimate worker pay—which averages just over $15 per hour. And half of Americans wrongly assume the U.S. government provides the same support or more support to parents and the child care sector compared to other countries. In fact, the United States provides far less.

Other surprising facts: Most middle- and lower-income parents say they struggle to find high-quality arrangements during their work hours in a geographically convenient location. Close to half of families with young children live in communities termed a “child care desert,” in which there are three or more children for every licensed spot in the community (e.g, in a formal child care center, a family care home, a Head Start program, or through school-based pre-3, pre-4, or pre-K). Many families also turn to care provided by family, friends, and neighbors that is unlicensed.

Writing these facts about child care cost, quality, and access into storylines can help to educate viewers. It can also help viewers feel less alone, reduce judgment about people’s child care choices, shift stereotypes of stay-at-home parents, and bolster calls for more public investments in child care and parenting.

Examples we love that change the story:

• A Million Little Things (ABC, 2023): In season 5, episode 8 of this ensemble drama, Gary’s aunt cares for Maggie and Gary’s infant because child care “costs tens of thousands of dollars.”
• The Conners (ABC, 2019): In season 2, episode 3 of this comedy series, a very pregnant Becky worries that all of her income will go to child care, sarcastically joking that her soon-to-be-born daughter should just stay at the hospital where there’s a child care center and a cafeteria.
• Margo’s Got Money Troubles (Apple TV, 2026): In season 1 of this dramedy series, Margo cannot work without infant care. She articulates the relationship between work and child care and remarks on the expense of care to her parents in multiple episodes. In episode 3, she even brings her infant to a job interview.
• Nightbitch (Searchlight/Hulu, 2024): In this horror dark comedy feature film, when Mother, the main character, tries to talk to her husband about finding part-time work, he dismissively tells her “the math doesn’t add up” because all her pay would go to child care. He suggests she “hang on until kindergarten.”

Television and films help audiences imagine different realities and, ideally, solutions. Media that creates visibility can spur viewers to consider fresh possibilities. This can be done in virtually any genre, including fantasy, sci-fi, and horror, as well as those like comedy and drama, where these stories appear more regularly. 

When it comes to creating better child care systems that support families, there are hopeful realities to draw from in the United States and other parts of the world. Characters and communities on screen could push for the kind of change in ways that are already happening in the real world. Examples include: 

• Citizens coming together to advocate for investments in child care, as lawmakers, parents, providers, and advocates did in New Mexico. Their advocacy helped elect pro-child care lawmakers, pass a state ballot measure, and win other policy changes to secure free child care.
• A young mayor expanding access to free child care programs and creating a new initiative to provide parents with a night off while their kids attend community programming, as Mayor Zohran Mamdani did in New York City.
• A business or CEO considering how to expand child care for their workers and communities, as a federal law has incentivized in tech manufacturing and companies like Patagonia have long done.
• Child care workers organizing to form a union, as in-home providers and other early educators have done in several states, including California, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington.
• Emergency response planners integrating child care centers, home providers, and informal networks in emergency response plans, as Los Angeles County officials were urged to do in the wake of devastating 2025 wildfires, so all caregivers can access emergency readiness training and recovery support.

Incorporating examples of characters making change in their own workplaces and communities can be powerful. Audiences are eager to see people on screen speaking up and taking action—for themselves and for others. 

Even more powerful are shows and films that build worlds where families, providers, and children are all supported and thriving. This allows audiences to imagine how it would feel if every family had both the time and money they need to care for their children in whatever way they choose, providers were able to serve all the families that need care, and child care workers were respected and paid well.

Examples we love that change the story:

• Grey’s Anatomy (ABC, ongoing): In this long-running medical drama, parents—both moms and dads—are often shown dropping off and picking up their children at Grey Sloan Hospital’s on-site child care center and, occasionally, interacting with center staff. In season 18, episode 13, Dr. Jo Wilson, a single mom at the time, credits the child care center as making it possible for her to work. 
• High Potential (ABC, 2024): In this police procedural’s season 1 pilot episode, cleaning person-turned-police investigator Morgan negotiates a substantial child care stipend with her employer, recognizing that her full value to the Los Angeles Police Department depends on reliable care for her infant and school-aged children.
• Maid (Netflix, 2021): In this limited series, Alex, a mother fleeing an abusive relationship, struggles to find subsidized child care for her toddler, Maddy, in light of restrictive rules requiring a parent to have a job before qualifying for care, and then she is forced to remove Maddy from a center with unsafe conditions. Alex eventually finds a higher-quality nursery school and works to secure a scholarship so Maddy can attend.
• Make a Circle (PBS, 2024): This feature documentary tells the story of child care workers in California winning labor rights while caring for young children and supporting often-stressed parents.

Acknowledgments: Early child care and education experts Elliot Haspel and Julie Kashen and filmmaker Jen Bradwell provided helpful feedback on this resource guide. Their work is included in many of the sources consulted.