Childcare Research Futures: Critical and Women of Color Feminist Possibilities

• In Event: A Critical Women of Color Feminist Analysis of Childcare: Histories, Contemporary Issues, and Futures

Abstract

There is a spectrum of ways in which research has been conceptualized and carried out in early childhood studies (Bryan, 2022; Nxumalo, 2019; Saavedra, 2019; Yelland et al.; Yoon & Templeton, 2019). As a team of early childhood educators and scholars with a range of positionalities, diverse professional experiences, and who are at various points in our academic careers, we have come together to rethink futures in childcare research. With a critical and women of color feminist theoretical lens (Anzaldúa, 2009; Collins, 2008), the points of analysis we have contemplated include centralizing the lived experiences of parents/caregivers who have been minoritized, and unearthing matrices of power related to the central issues impacting early childhood educators, parents/caregivers, and often under-resourced education and care programs. Importantly, in future research, we seek to be co-creators of inquiry with stakeholders, and to ally with those advocating for more equitable, culturally sustaining, and accessible childcare.

In this paper, we share some of the complexities and grapplings with our initial inquiry seeking to gain a broad understanding of the context of childcare in a major U.S. metroplex, with a focus on understanding the lived experiences of families using government subsidies and centers/educators who support them. From the research discussed throughout this session, based on interviews with seventy parents/caregivers, educators, and directors/assistant directors, we take up these knowings as foundational to research futures. Some of the provocations we discuss and grapple with are: how do we support and foster a research process that co-creates inquiry with stakeholders, and what methodological approaches could foreground reciprocity, particularly through partnerships that have both immediate and long term transformational possibilities for those most impacted by childcare inequities? In considering reciprocity, we discuss what our roles are as scholar-activists who hope to influence public policy and disrupt oppressive discourses that sustain and further inequities. These and other provocations are lensed through critical, women of color feminisms, which offers scholarly significance through the generation of new possibilities for both research methodologies (Esposito & Evans-Winters, 2021; Hurtado, 2020) in early childhood studies and advocating for more just and culturally sustaining childcare for young children and families (Cheruvu, 2019; Durden, 2015).

Authors

• Iana Phillips, University of North Texas
  Presenting Author

• Margarita G. Ruiz-Guerrero, Western Washington University
  Presenting Author