Why Are Young Children Not in Child Care? Typologies of Child Care Non-Use among Canadian Children under Six Years

Karine J. Lavergne

Canadian Public Policy, 2025, vol. 51, issue 1, 35-60

Abstract: I examine child care non-use prior to the 2021-2026 Canada-wide early learning and child care agreements between the federal and provincial and territorial governments supported by a federal investment of up to C$30 billion. Using the Statistics Canada Survey on Early Learning and Child Care Arrangements collected in 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2020 (mid-pandemic), I conducted latent class analyses of parental reasons for not using child care and identified six similar typologies of child care non-use in both cohorts, plus a typology of pandemic-constrained parents in 2020. Some parents did not seem to want child care (i.e., volitional stay-at-home parents, parents accommodated by school, employed parents on leave, out-of-work parents). Others appeared to have unmet child care demand due to affordability barriers or pandemic constraints. I estimate unmet demand to have been equivalent to 201,858 children under six years (9 percent) in 2019 and 394,881 children (17 percent) in 2020.

Keywords: child care demand; latent class analysis; child care affordability; early learning and child care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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