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MANSFIELD — Many working parents in north central Ohio face a shared dilemma: How do you raise children without stepping away from your career?
Gayle Gorman Green became pregnant with her first child in 1985. She couldn’t find a child care option that met the needs of her kids or her career. So she built one.
“I was deeply embedded in the aviation industry, and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could do both?’” Green said. “That’s what really started it all.”
As president and CEO of Manairco, a Mansfield-based manufacturer of airfield lighting systems, Green created an onsite child care center for her employees — the first of its kind in the state of Ohio.
The center served just a handful of employees’ children, led by teacher Liz Adam, who provided structured, education-based care.
For Green, the benefits were immediate and deeply personal.
“There was much less stress,” she said. “I could focus more completely on my job, even if that meant traveling to meet clients. I always knew where my kids were, and all three benefited, whether educationally or socially.
“And they grew up thinking it was normal that their mom flew airplanes and helicopters.”
Four decades later, the problem Green confronted remains widespread. Across Richland, Ashland and Knox counties, a lack of child care is holding back parents from work and employers from growth.
In restrospect, Green sees how forward-thinking the model was — and how relevant it remains. She believes it’s time for public policies and corporate leadership to catch up.
“There are still a lot of companies stuck in an old-school mindset,” she continued. “But management has to see the benefit. It’s not just a cost — it’s a huge advantage. We need people to see the bigger picture.”
BY THE NUMBERS
While Green’s initiative offered a personal solution, her experience reflects a much bigger truth: Lack of accessible, affordable child care isn’t just a family issue — it’s a workforce and economic development issue in north central Ohio.
According to a 2025 report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation called “Untapped,” Ohio’s economy loses $5.48 billion each year due to insufficient child care coverage.
“When it comes to child care, you can talk to any business and any industry in Ohio, and the (top) challenge they will tell you they are facing is workforce,” said Rick Carfagna, senior vice president for government affairs at the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.
“For the immediate needs of the workforce, I would argue there’s no bigger workforce barrier than accessible, affordable child care.”
In 2022, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce released a report titled “The Blueprint for Ohio’s Economic Future.” It ranked removing child care barriers as the top priority for education and workforce development.
The report goes on to say 65% of households with cohabiting parents and a child under the age of 6 have both parents participating in the labor force, while 34% have only one parent in the labor force, most typically the father (in over 90% of cases).
Nearly 60% of Ohio’s non-working or part-time working moms with children under age 5 said they would go back to work or work more hours if they had access to quality child care at a reasonable cost.
Labor force participation rates in Richland, Ashland, and Knox counties hover around 60%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Women’s rates are even lower at around 55 to 56%, slightly below the national average.
In “Untapped,” 76% of working parents reported working fewer hours or working outside of business hours in the previous six months due to child care disruptions. The report estimates that child care-related employee turnover and absenteeism costs Ohio’s employers $3.97 billion per year.
Carfagna said an entire demographic of Ohioans are checking themselves out of the workforce due to the high costs of child care.
“As a household, they have done the math and they have seen that it makes zero sense to go out and bring a second paycheck that immediately goes right back out the door to fund child care,” he said.
“Employers all throughout the state are being cheated out of good labor.”
It makes zero sense to go out and bring a second paycheck that immediately goes right back out the door to fund child care.
Rick Carfagna, Ohio Chamber of Commerce
THE WORKFORCE IS WAITING
Local experts agree that thousands of potential workers may be sitting out, not because they don’t want to work, but because child care isn’t available or affordable. In a region where employers struggle to hire, that under-participation matters.
“We would instantly fill every open job if we had enough child care, including the new child care positions we’d have to create in order to do that,” said Sam Filkins, president of the Knox County Area Development Foundation. “Workforce limitations are holding back economic growth.”
In a 2022 survey by the Knox County ADF, 92% of parents reported struggling to find care. Over half (58%) said they or their partner considered leaving a job due to child care challenges.
The problem is widespread in our region.
In 2020, the Women’s Fund Steering Committee within the Ashland County Community Foundation (ACCF) made child care its top priority after finding it was the biggest barrier holding women back from advancing their careers or completing education.
“We’ve heard from companies in our community that they have openings available — especially second shift openings — where child care doesn’t exist,” said Kristin Aspin, chief program officer at ACCF. “So if child care did exist, those jobs are filled, being more productive, generating more revenue.
“We’d be a desirable place in our community where businesses would want to be located or expand because those businesses could be staffed,” she said. “Not to mention just keeping up with growth and building workforce capacity for future growth.”
These findings have led to innovative solutions: The ACCF created a new child care center, Foundations Community Childcare, which officially opened in June 2024. The Salvation Army of Mount Vernon is building a new facility that will open in 2026.
But it’s only one piece of a much larger puzzle.
“You’d have a whole lot more people with a satisfying life where, if they do want to be able to be with their family more but also get fulfillment and gratification from working, they’re able to do both,” Aspin said. “And overall, that creates a better society.”
A NEW WAY OF THINKING
When parents can’t find care, employers feel the impact: absenteeism, turnover, and lost productivity. Yet many companies still view child care as a personal issue, not a business one. That mindset is slow to shift.
“There are many people that believe this is a traditional family role of a mother to do, and do not want to set up systems that would negate that traditional role,” Filkins said.
“We’re not paying people enough to be a one-household income anymore. That’s not the reality of today’s economy.”
According to 2023 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, in Richland County alone, 4,962 young children (under age 6) were in families where all parents in the household worked.
Meanwhile, the Center for Community Solutions, one of the earliest federated charities in the United States, found that in Ohio, having children in the household increased the likelihood of poverty four-fold.
In addition, female-headed households are more than three times as likely as all Ohio households to live in poverty. On average, women living in Richland County who worked full-time earned 69.2 cents of every dollar that men earned.
Carfagna said traditional stereotypes around women staying in the home have actively worked against the cause.
“If the family wants to make that choice, God bless them, but we also know there are people that want to work,” he said. “They want to bring in more income and provide for their families, and the only way they can do that is if both of the parents can work.”
We need people to see the bigger picture.
Gayle gorman green
Aspin was able to stay at home when her kids were little. But she believes there may be an empathy gap among those in positions of power.
“When you’re in the stage of life where you have young children, you understand the issue,” she said. “But a lot of times, once people are beyond that point, it’s hard to remember exactly what that situation felt like and what those barriers were and why it was so difficult.”
LOOK TO THE FUTURE
Advocates say that child care isn’t just a personal issue — it’s essential infrastructure. And in north central Ohio, solving it may be the key to unlocking a stronger, more inclusive economy.
For Carfagna, success looks like more people actively participating in the workforce, and businesses feeling confident they have reliable, talented workers ready to step into key positions.
“It’s also about making sure we have all hands on deck to work — not just to fill the jobs that are available now that are going unfulfilled, but the jobs that are coming to Ohio,” he said.
“There’s steel going in the ground all throughout the state, and lots of new businesses are going to be opening their doors, and they need to have workers on day one — not to mention the jobs that haven’t even been invented yet.”
Who’s going to fill those future jobs?
Filkins believes it starts with the region’s youngest minds.
“Every single employer that we talk to says the most in-demand skills they have are just soft skills, people that are socially aware,” Filkins said. “We’ve heard from our child care providers that those early years are really pivotal in developing the skills.
“So many incredible providers are talking about this from an educational and family perspective, and unfortunately that doesn’t get the airtime it deserves,” he said. “For some reason, that argument is not catching the ears of people that could make decisions.”
Now retired, Green still believes her once-groundbreaking model of onsite child care is one of the most overlooked competitive advantages an employer can offer.
“I think it would be an absolute advantage for women that were applying for jobs if they knew they had a daycare there,” she said. “I can’t imagine it would ever be anything detrimental.”
The catalyst to Green beginning her child care center? He’s now 39 years old.
Curtis Freeman — a warranty manager at Gorman-Rupp — remembers what it meant to grow up with his mom just down the hall.
“Indirectly, that daycare contributed to my perception of my mom being able to take care of a bunch of things and be successful in a number of different ways,” Freeman said.
“I have a warped perception of mothers in a good way, because my perception of my mom has always been that she can really do anything.”