Child care providers’ emotional distress links stressors to turnover intention: implications for rebuilding a healthy workforce

In the early care and education (ECE) workforce, providers’ intentions to leave their child care positions (i.e., turnover intentions) have detrimental impacts on the quality of care and signal risks for high turnover rates, an issue that has been endemic to this workforce for decades. To better understand the process leading to provider turnover intentions, this study examined the extent to which providers’ personal and workplace stressors were linked to self-reported emotional distress and subsequently increased turnover intentions. Leveraging longitudinal data from a US sample of 701 home- and center-based child care providers, we found that one in three providers indicated intentions to leave their jobs within the next year. Results suggested full mediational pathways of three sources of stress – financial insecurities and instabilities, workplace disruptions, and concerns for children’s stress – on provider turnover intentions via elevated emotional distress, which highlighted the central role that provider emotional distress played in ECE issues of high turnover and low accessibility. Variations by sociodemographic (e.g., race/ethnicity and income levels) and program characteristics (e.g., roles in the workforce, program status of receiving pandemic-relieving stabilization funds) were discovered in providers’ experiences of personal and workplace stressors, as well as emotional distress. This study suggested ECE providers’ emotional distress and turnover intentions to be serious threats to the current policy and grogram efforts that attempt to stabilize the workforce and support families’ child care needs. Critical investments are identified to support a healthy workforce across different types of care.