When I was in college I had a cohort and one of my colleagues was from an Eastern European country. He was married and had a few kids. He was trying to find a good daycare and came to me very confused.

He said that daycare where he was from was free and very high quality. They had set curriculum, good food, and the government checked in weekly to make sure the facilities were run correctly. He asked why all the US daycares were run down, no curriculum, poor food, poor worker pay, and also extremely expensive.

Here is a guy from a country we would probably look down upon just flabbergasted by our shitty daycare system. It was a real eye opener for me. Needless to say it is entirely possible to improve these facilities.

I think you are right though, unless we start trying to fix these problems holding our breathe is not going to help.