When debating child labor, there’s one group often left out: caregiving youth 

It is long overdue for Congress to invest in a robust care system, ensuring comprehensive access to long-term care, good pay for care workers, and smart economic policies like paid leave.

Many states like Florida, Arkansas, and Iowa have been rolling back child labor law causing news stories of instances of businesses illegally using children in their workforce. In addition to these children who are being forced into work, the lack of community and governmental support for aging and disability care has created an additional invisible child labor issue, as children do uncompensated, skilled caregiving work for their seriously ill, aging or disabled loved ones. 

Due to the lack of access to paid supports and the incredibly high cost of care, children providing unpaid caregiving for their loved ones is a growing trend across the country. Imagine the college student dropping out of school to care for his mother who is having a Multiple Sclerosis flare; a high school junior not able to work an after school job to help out financially because they need to care for their grandmother living with Alzheimer’s; a teenager missing school to care for her disabled sister because her parents don’t have paid leave; or an 18-year-old stays home to support their disabled brothers because there are no direct care workers in their rural hometown. 

While it is an honor to provide care to loved ones, and in many cultures an expectation, for so many families in this country, there is also no other choice. For the 5.4 million youth under the age of 18 who identify as caregivers, and the millions more in their late teens and early 20s, care responsibilities change their life trajectories. There are also no choices for the care recipients who need care due to long waiting lists, workforce shortages, or extremely high costs for out-of-pocket care. 

This lack of care for many young people also disproportionately impacts communities of color. Research suggests that Asian, Black, Latinx, Native/Pacific and multiracial youth are more likely to be a caregiver than a white youth. This caregiving comes with an emotional and financial toll. In some states family caregivers can be paid, but that is only if a family member has funding for long-term care and the wages are extremely low. The majority of youth providing care are doing it unpaid, contributing to the $600 billion dollars worth of unpaid care that family caregivers provide in this country each year. 

It is long overdue for Congress to invest in a robust care system, ensuring comprehensive access to long-term care, good pay for care workers, and smart economic policies like paid leave. Without this action, we will continue to squander the potential of millions of young people who make care possible. On National Family Caregivers Day, let’s choose a different path. 

Jason Resendez is CEO of the National Alliance for Caregiving, which aims to improve the quality of life for caregivers and those in their care. Nicole Jorwic if chief of advocacy and campaigns of Caring Across Generations, a group the seeks to change the long-term care system.