Please share widely if you can!

These findings have implications for policy and practice, as decision-makers should consider targeting resources to facilitate the search for new arrangements on top of securing the stability of care. And that includes mental health resources for parents and children too!

We also find different latent classes of childcare precarity, meaning there seem to be clusters of families that have specific profiles across the different indicators of precarity. Class membership is also associated with different levels of distress for caregivers and children.

We see associations of commonly used indicators such as recent disruptions and lack of reliability, but we also find that the state of searching for care is itself associated with elevated levels of distress for caregivers and children, especially when it clashes with caregivers' ability to work.

My first lead-author paper, with Phil Fisher and Sihong Liu, reveals interesting patterns in how childcare precarity affects the family system.

We define childcare precarity as multidimensional hardship characterized by unreliable or insecure arrangements while parents work or attend school.