Military families across the country are facing a childcare crisis that is forcing parents out of the workforce, straining household budgets, and leaving children on waitlists that can stretch for months. Behind the statistics are real families — like one at Fort Campbell, Kentucky — struggling to hold things together when reliable care simply isn’t there.
Jessica Maloney, an Army spouse and mother of three children under the age of 6, wanted to work. Her family needed that second income. But without consistent childcare, the job was impossible to keep. Her family turned to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program just to keep food on the table — and even that hasn’t been enough.
“Our family is a two-income household and with childcare not being regularly available, I am not able to work. We’ve been feeding our kids on SNAP, and I still struggle to have enough of what they need.”
Maloney put the situation plainly:
“It shouldn’t be this hard to go to work.”
The Department of Defense runs the largest employer-sponsored childcare program in the United States. But staffing shortages and chronic difficulties recruiting and keeping workers have created long waitlists and persistent gaps in available care. According to a June report from the Government Accountability Office, the military employed roughly 19,000 childcare workers — paid through nonappropriated funds — who served nearly 172,000 children of service members and DoD civilian employees in fiscal year 2024. Despite that scale, the department’s unmet childcare needs list included close to 9,000 children in 2025. More than a third of those unmet needs were concentrated in just five areas: Hawaii, the National Capital Region, Norfolk, Virginia, San Antonio, Texas, and San Diego, California.
Low Pay and Slow Hiring Are Driving Workers Away
The staffing problem is not abstract. At Camp Pendleton, California, Karen Cunningham, a youth services coordinator, described conditions that became unsustainable.
“We aren’t supposed to have more than 20 children, but we had nearly twice that many. We were over capacity, but understaffed and that caused all of us who worked there to pay a very heavy price, mentally, physically and emotionally.”
Cunningham said she eventually had to step back from the position entirely.
A 2024 report from the GAO, based on visits to eight military installations, identified lengthy onboarding timelines and stressful work environments as key barriers. Officials at those installations said the onboarding process alone could take anywhere from one to six months, with background checks and screening requirements adding more delays before workers are cleared to start.
Wages are another major obstacle. During a meeting of the President’s Military Spouse Commission, Andrea Ruiz, spouse of the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlos A. Ruiz, compared entry-level childcare pay at Southern California installations. Workers at Miramar and Camp Pendleton were earning roughly $18 to $19 per hour, while those at Navy facilities at Point Loma made $21 an hour. Kimberly Weimer, spouse of the Sergeant Major of the Army Michael R. Weimer, pointed to locality pay gaps of $3 to $5 per hour at some high-cost duty stations — a disparity that makes it harder for military programs to compete with civilian employers nearby.
Tameeka Pethel, a former childcare provider at Joint Base San Antonio, said she genuinely valued the work — but couldn’t afford to stay.
“If I could afford to have kept that job, I would have never left. It’s pretty sad that I earn more money at Taco Bell than I could’ve as a childcare provider.”
In April, the Army announced a new pay model aimed at pushing staffing levels at its child development centers above 90%, as Stars and Stripes reported. The effort included pay increases for direct-care workers and childcare discounts for employees’ own children. At the time of the announcement, only 22 of the Army’s 68 installations had staffing at or above that threshold, with nearly 3,000 children still waiting for spots. The GAO has also documented the use of recruitment bonuses, retention incentives and professional development opportunities as tools to attract and keep workers.
When Care Doesn’t Fit Military Life
Finding a childcare provider is only the first hurdle. For military families, that care also has to match irregular schedules, survive frequent moves, and adapt when duty requirements shift without warning.
Tiffany Orner, an Air Force veteran, military spouse, and board member of Operation Childcare Project, told Military Times she sees the same desperate requests repeated constantly in spouse groups at coastal installations.
“The posts never change. I need a sitter for a shift that starts at 0500. We PCS in three weeks, who has an opening. The CDC hours changed and I have no Plan B.”
For dual-military couples, the stakes are even higher when both parents are called to report and their childcare arrangement falls apart. Orner was direct about what that means:
“Childcare is mission-critical. End of story.”
When on-base care isn’t available, the Defense Department’s Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood program offers fee assistance for eligible families using approved civilian providers. But the GAO has found that providers in that program can face accreditation requirements, state quality-rating standards, administrative burdens, and unclear communication about eligibility — all of which limit how many families can actually use it. While all four military services expanded the number of community-based providers and children served through fee assistance between fiscal years 2019 and 2024, that growth doesn’t guarantee a family can find an available provider nearby, afford the out-of-pocket cost, or secure care during nontraditional hours.
A recent commission meeting highlighted a five-location pilot program allowing eligible military families to use fee assistance for certain faith-based childcare providers that are legally exempt from state licensing requirements. The pilot is running in Arlington, Norfolk, and Virginia Beach, Virginia; Naval Base Kitsap, Washington; and Naval Base Point Loma, California, with the commission exploring whether Coast Guard families could also participate. However, Stars and Stripes reported on October 21 that neither the Pentagon nor the White House had independently confirmed the pilot was operational.
Commission members also discussed broadening fee assistance to cover other license-exempt arrangements — including care by family, friends, or neighbors, part-day programs, public and private school programs, and care at government or institutional sites. On the staffing side, members discussed more consistent pay across installations, faster hiring and background screening, and benefits that help workers afford childcare for their own children.
Orner called on the commission to make sure the solutions reach the families who need them most, rather than staying confined to pilots at selected sites. She urged officials to
“measure who gets hired and who stays, not who pledged, and get the help to the spouse before the pilot ends.”
For families already in crisis, she said, the message needs to be clear:
“The spouse in survival mode deserves to hear that plainly.”
For Maloney, the math is straightforward. She wants to work. She needs to work. But until dependable childcare exists for her family, that option remains closed. Her family’s reliance on food assistance is not a policy abstraction — it is a daily reality shaped by a gap in the system that no waitlist metric captures on its own. As she put it:
“Military kids have to go through enough hard things. Going to bed hungry should not be one of them.”
