A 2025 report from the Missouri Champion of Children and Child Care Aware of Missouri says that majority of Missouri is a "child care desert" for care from birth up to age 12, but even more of the state–97%–is a desert for infant care.
A child care desert is defined as a place where there are three times as many children than there are available licensed child care slots; or no licensed spots at all.
This definition refers to all children, including ones who may be receiving child care at home. But Casey Hanson, Deputy Director for Kids Win Missouri, said that since there are substantially more children than there are available child care spots, it's inferred that a majority of those children most likely need care services.
Kids Win Missouri is an advocacy group for child care.
"Child care is a broken market," Hanson said. "Especially in the case of infant, toddler care."
Hanson said a reason for that is "it costs much more to deliver high quality infant/toddler care than parents are able to pay." She said there is not current government investment to fully offset that cost.
Hanson said childcare workers are underpaid, causing lots of them to leave the industry.
"One of our challenges is just getting good quality teachers," Ben Balk, the director of Super Start Preschool said.
Super Start Preschool and Infant Care, a Christian faith-based preschool in Columbia partnered with a local nonprofit called St. Raymond's Society, opened in September 2023 in response to what the directors said felt like a need for child care in the community.
While the preschool has open spots in its toddler care classrooms, which take care of children ages 2-5, its infant care program is currently full. Infancy is the age from birth to two years.
Super Start works with a large amount of single moms, and the preschool directors said most of the moms who come in have infants.
"They're getting on a wait list as soon as their child is born," Ben Balk, the director of Superstart, said about parents looking for infant care.
Some child care facilities have closed down in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and to subsidy backlogs.
But Balk said there's just not as much money involved in infant care compared to toddler care as the worker to infant ratio is smaller than needed for toddlers.
"Most preschools will start at the age of two," Balk said. "So just zero to two, nobody seems to be doing that in the area, typically, because it doesn't generate a lot of income."
Infant care is also expensive. 1/3 of the families at Super Start receive subsidy payments, its directors said.
Data from 2023 shows child care costing more in Boone County than other counties.
"It's just a big investment for families, and then you have child care providers kind of bearing the brunt of that too," Hanson said.
Hanson said there is an effort to get more state investment in child care facilities to take some of the burden off of employers and families.
"We've started making some progress," Hanson said. "We need to keep up the momentum, because, you know, our children are worth in it Missouri."
