Charlie Bonello and Ben Newton, cofounders of Vivvi, a child care and learning company.
Two dads, Charlie Bonello and Ben Newton, show why men must be part of the child care solution. Their company, Vivvi, is an employer-sponsored child care and learning company.
Employers are expanding their child care benefits to retain workers and attract new talent. The high cost of child care is one of the top reasons parents leave the workforce. The average yearly price ranges from $5,400 in Mississippi to $21,000 in Massachusetts. Women are more than twice as likely as men to take a career pause to care for children.
Providing child care benefits can increase employee satisfaction, loyalty, and retention and can also have financial benefits for the employer.
The Inspiration For Vivvi, A Child Care And Learning Company
Vivvi enables employers to offer care and learning for children from zero to five years of age. Campuses—for now only in New York City—are open from 7 am to 7 pm year-round, Monday to Friday. Parents can use a two-, three-, or five-day program. Even if your employer doesn’t offer child care benefits, you can still access Vivvi as a community family.
Bonello and his wife, a nurse, have a five-year-old and two-year-old twins. They needed child care, but that wasn’t what inspired his interest in launching a child care and learning company. Before he and his wife had children, it was the needs of his employees of the first company he founded—Grand Central Tech (GCT)—and the startups it served.
Child care costs drive employees—primarily women—to leave the workforce because of the expense and inconvenience. The child care locations are often in different directions from work, adding more time to parents’ commute, and the hours usually don’t cover early morning or late-in-the-day meetings.
“The child care market is highly fragmented. The top 50 providers have less than 10% of the total market,” said Bonello. “There were one or two very large players. We weren’t the size where it made sense for them to serve us, and their ancillary services were too expensive and inflexible.”
When Bonello became a venture capitalist, he searched for a child care company he could fund but found nothing. Instead, he teamed with Ben Newton, who had spent his career launching and building schools. He is the father of a two year old.
Newton started his career as a teacher in New Orleans for Teach for America after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2015, he trained his focus on early childhood education because 95% of brain development happens before age five.
The two men looked at building child care and learning centers differently—the needs of families and the employees were their top priority.
It wasn’t just about adding capacity. “It was about figuring out how to attract and develop the best teachers,” said Newton. That starts with teachers who are full-time employees with college degrees. Vivvi provides good benefits. Its employees even have equity in the company.
Services go beyond dropping kids off for the day. Vivvi is a global platform designed to serve families across their life and career stages. It supports families with school-aged children and even elder-care needs. It offers backup care options when other child care plans fall through and Care Cash— financial reimbursement for using employees’ providers or paying a relative for care. It offers virtual tutoring for children ages 6-18.
Why Child Care Is An Economic Issue
When more women work, economies grow, and having a more inclusive workforce leads to increased innovation, productivity, and diversity of ideas. Women’s labor force participation is critical to the US economy. Increasing it could add trillions of dollars to the country’s GDP.
Evidence also shows that companies with higher numbers of women in leadership perform better. Significant economic advantages result from increasing women’s participation in the workforce. Yet, women are quitting their jobs or choosing not to have kids—a long-term detriment to the economy.
Parents are often forced to choose between caregiving responsibilities and work. This choice has had significant economic implications, including decreased labor force participation and workforce productivity.
Why Men Are Key
The motherhood penalty is a woman’s price for starting and growing her family while working. Those responsible for the care of their children are less likely to be chosen for new roles and promotions, will earn lower salaries, and be held to a higher standard than non-parents or those who can afford live-in help.
Yet many companies devote scant resources to the parenting marathon—going beyond parental leave. The most difficult are the early years—infancy and toddlerhood for the parents, which corresponds to a critical time on the mid-career ladder. And, as Bonello and Newton understand, parents want high-quality staff teaching their children. By allaying these fears, they are helping workers become more productive, loyal, and successful. The services offered by Vivvi also help children to get a solid educational foundation, which is good for the future economy.
Business leaders—primarily men—must recognize the importance of child care and invest in it. Gender equality cannot be achieved without men.
