When I walked into my infant daughter’s classroom the morning of Aug. 14, I could tell something was wrong.
My daughter’s usually peppy teacher quietly greeted me. A black cloud hung over what is typically the most joyful part of my morning: seeing my daughter’s face light up as I pass her off to the caretakers who provide for her while I am at work.
They were the ones who told me about the email from Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Darnell Hunt announcing the closure of the Krieger and University Village centers, under UCLA’s Early Care and Education program, in June 2027.
This choice will have a devastating impact on maternal mental health.
UCLA is making a decision about childcare without adequately accounting for the importance of infrastructure that allows women to participate in academic life.
Already, new parents experience intense stress navigating childcare options, especially infant care. With the closing of the Krieger and University Village centers, infant care has become increasingly scarce.
Mothers who perceive fewer good childcare options are more likely to have clinically significant symptoms of depression, and the relationship between childcare availability and depression is stronger for single mothers. Women who have no childcare or informal arrangements are more likely to have higher rates of depressive symptoms compared to those who have access to free, center-based programs.
For new mothers already affected by sleep deprivation, physical recovery, hormonal changes and the psychological adjustment of becoming a parent, reliable childcare is not a luxury. It is one of the things that make it possible to function.
Through all of this, women who use ECE still show up to teach UCLA students. They treat UCLA patients. They write UCLA multimillion dollar grant proposals. They are cornerstones of the university community.
Further, not all mothers will feel the impact of the centers closing equally. Black and Latina mothers already have less access to high-quality childcare. They are also at greater risk of experiencing prenatal depression.
For UCLA students with children – particularly students who are low-income or who have no income – affordable childcare may determine whether they can continue their education at all.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, childcare closures pushed disproportionate amounts of caregiving onto women, leading many women to reduce their hours or leave the workforce altogether. Those disruptions were associated with worse mental health. UCLA should not need another crisis to recognize that childcare is part of the infrastructure that allows parents – especially mothers – to participate in the workforce.
If UCLA evaluates ECE only as a line item, then childcare looks like an expense.
But UCLA is not simply a collection of individual programs. It is an ecosystem. When a mother cannot find infant care, she may miss work, reduce her hours, her position or struggle with depression. Those consequences have costs for an institution whose ability to teach, conduct research and provide patient care depends upon its workforce being able to work.
ECE has a complicated history. There are ECE families and alumni who carry profound trauma from the sexual abuse perpetrated by former teacher Christopher Rodriguez and who understandably have complicated feelings about the program’s closure. There are also parents who would choose community childcare regardless.
[Related: UCPD received notice of suspected child sex abuse years before childcare teacher’s arrest]
But the fact that childcare does not serve every family does not mean that it does not serve an essential function for the families who depend on it.
UCLA should understand childcare as infrastructure, not as a perk. Please keep the system in place that allows us to do our jobs without worrying about our children, which lets us stay committed to academic excellence and, most importantly, keeps us healthy.
Today, I canceled my morning patients: a mother diagnosed with postpartum psychosis, a woman who is 33 weeks pregnant and has just learned that her baby will not survive and a 24-year-old single mother whose baby is in the NICU.
None of these patients will receive the clinical care they desperately need and are entitled to today because I am taking PTO to tour a preschool. And I will be doing this every week for the next few months, using my earned vacation time to find childcare because the Krieger and University Village centers are closing.
My patients will go without care so that I can find care for my own child. I hope the irony is not lost on UCLA.
Louise Dixon De Silva, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist with expertise in reproductive mental health, the Clinical Director of the Perinatal Intensive Outpatient Program at UCLA’s Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital and an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychology.
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