The Threshold Between Work and Care: Playhood's report on co-location published by leading thinktank

Our major report, the first of its kind, has been published by New America, a pioneering ‘think-and-action tank’ devoted to nurturing new voices and ideas to help solve complex public problems. Early years care and education, leave and flexible working policies, return-to-office mandates, neighbourhood development and community-strengthening are components of the complex challenge of family life. This report explores stories from founders, practitioners and parents around the world who embarked upon intentional collaborations that placed childcare adjacent to coworking spaces.

This work started as a personal account of being a member at Playhood and traces the journey of reaching out to another home-based co-located setting before embarking on a research endeavour that went global after successfully applying for an Innovative Childcare Reporting grant from the Better Life Lab at New America. Over thirty interviews and tours were conducted with founders — mothers who’d changed their career trajectories to serve their growing families and seek closer collaboration with early years caregivers and educators in 26 countries — and an audit of 160 historical and active settings helped evaluate the variance in the model and compare dynamics across regions.

All of the interviewees felt they lacked a strong peer community or the ability to share learning with others and it is our hope to foster a network for supporting these entrepreneurs battling many obstacles to launch hybrid businesses or fund innovative social enterprises. It’s also very much our hope that academics take note of the dearth of research into small and fringe experimental settings that are redefining relational practice and nurturing children that value agency and autonomy in work. Most of all, it’s an act of resistance to the mounting pressures to return to redundant pre-pandemic norms about where people work and where care takes place.