Ask any Minnesota parent of a young child what the hardest thing about working is, and the answer isn't the job. It's the child care — finding it, affording it, and keeping it. In too much of this state, the answer to "where's the nearest licensed provider with an opening?" is a waiting list two years long, or nothing at all. This series documented the shortage earlier: whole counties in Greater Minnesota where the number of licensed family providers has collapsed, and metro families paying more for infant care than for their mortgage.
And the political debate offers two answers that both miss the actual problem. One side says: subsidize families so they can afford it. The other says: government shouldn't be in the child-care business. But you can't subsidize a family into a slot that doesn't exist, and "stay out of it" leaves a market that has already failed. The problem is supply. Treat it that way.
Child care is infrastructure
Start with what it is. Child care isn't a family perk. It's the thing that lets a nurse take a shift, a welder show up, a teacher teach someone else's kids. When a county loses its providers, it doesn't just inconvenience parents — it pulls workers out of the workforce, and employers in that county can't hire. That makes child care workforce infrastructure, in exactly the sense that roads and broadband are. We don't argue about whether government should "be in the road business." We build the roads so the economy can run. Same principle.
Why the supply collapsed — and how to rebuild it
The rules make a small provider impossible. A licensed family child-care provider — a woman running care for a handful of kids in her own home, the backbone of rural child care for generations — faces a thicket of regulation written for institutional centers: ratios, training hours, paperwork, inspections, and liability that a one-person operation can't carry. Many of them simply quit. Right-size the rules: keep the ones that protect a child's safety, and strip the ones that exist to make a home look like a hospital. A provider who's been safely caring for kids for twenty years shouldn't be regulated out of existence by a form.
A home provider shouldn't also be a lone accountant and HR department. The other reason small providers fail is that they're running a business alone — billing, taxes, licensing paperwork, substitute coverage, benefits — on top of caring for children all day. Shared-services networks solve this: a hub that handles the back office for dozens of home providers at once, so each one can do the work she's actually good at. Other states have proven the model; Minnesota should fund it statewide.
Bring employers in. The businesses that can't hire because there's no child care have every reason to help build it. Employer partnerships — on-site or near-site care, pooled slots, direct investment in a local provider — turn the companies feeling the shortage into part of the solution, with the state matching what they put in.
The honest concession
To the subsidy side: yes, affordability matters too, and supply fixes take time — a family in the squeeze this year needs help this year, so subsidies stay part of the picture. To the stay-out side: right-sizing regulation is not deregulating child safety, and the line has to be drawn by what actually protects kids, not by what's convenient. And to everyone: rebuilding supply costs money up front, and the return — parents back at work, employers able to hire, kids in stable care — is real but not instant.
What I'd actually do
Right-size family-provider regulation to child safety, and clear the rules that only serve to make a home look institutional.
Fund shared-services networks statewide so small providers aren't running a business alone.
Match employer investment in local child-care supply.
Keep affordability help in place while supply rebuilds.
You can't subsidize your way to child care that doesn't exist. Treat it as the infrastructure it is, and make it possible to open the doors.
First the facts. Then the fix.
Sources
This is a policy position. Minnesota's child-care supply shortage — the decline in licensed family providers, county-level gaps in Greater Minnesota, and infant-care costs — is documented in this series' earlier articles drawing on First Children's Finance need analyses, the Greater Minnesota Partnership, and the 2026 Minnesota Child Care Business Survey (Minneapolis Fed and First Children's Finance, June 2026). Shared-services alliances for home-based providers are documented by the Opportunities Exchange and state programs in several states. Family child-care licensing is governed by Minn. Stat. ch. 245A and Minnesota Rules ch. 9502.
Specific provider-count declines and cost figures are as reported in this series' sourced rural and affordability articles; the regulatory changes and employer-match design would be set in legislation and rule. Corrections: campaign@madgettformn.com.