What to Look for in a Daycare: What Parents Weigh First

What to look for in a daycare sounds like a parent's question, and it is, but the data behind it is really a specification for your marketing.

The federal research on how parents search for and choose care describes a short list of practical factors, one or two options considered at most, and heavy reliance on people they know, not the ten-way comparison most center websites are written for.

This page reads that research the child care marketing way: what the family across the table is actually weighing, and what it means for the page they land on.

How parents choose child care

Roughly a third of US households with a child under 6 searched for care in the previous two years, per OPRE's 2025 federal brief on the 2019 data; the 2012 round put it at 46% of parents.

Most searches start with the parent's life, not the child's: 66% searched to work or attend school, and 30% to support child development (2012 NSECE).

Searches end in enrollment often: 60% of parents who searched in the 2012 data enrolled their child with a new provider, though that is a household-level outcome, not a center's inquiry-to-enrollment rate.

The consideration set is where it gets uncomfortable.

Among parents who made a child care decision in the 2024 federal survey, 45.8% considered no new provider at all, 18.6% considered one, and 20.5% considered two; only 15.1% considered three or more.

If you have heard that parents tour three to five centers, that is not what the national data shows.

Part of the small set is supply: 22.5% of parents said no child care option met their family's needs, 36.5% had one and 27.7% had two, though supply varies a lot by market (2024 survey).

Part of it is difficulty: in NCES's 2023 survey, 72% of searching parents had at least a little trouble finding care, 11% never found the program they wanted, and cost and lack of open slots were each the main reason for 34%.

When a decision happens, staying is common: 36.0% of deciding parents stayed with their current provider, versus 28.6% who chose a new one, and cost (25.8%) beat quality (15.4%) as the main reason.

How to choose a daycare: the sequence parents run

Choosing runs in five moves: hear about a program, find it online, check what is visible without calling, visit, then settle the logistics.

Your referral network drives the first, your pages carry the middle two, and the visit plus the math on cost and openings finish it, which is why the questions parents ask on tours deserve their own guide.

What parents look for in a daycare

The framework version comes from OPRE's 2025 review of the research: parents generally look for a setting that seems safe, sits in a convenient location close to home or work, has hours that fit, is affordable or accepts subsidies, and has a vacancy now or soon.

Mentioned less often: the type of setting (home, center, school), curriculum and activities.

The compromise data says the same thing: in a December 2020 Bipartisan Policy Center survey of 1,500 parents of children under 5, 35% made no compromises before the pandemic, while others compromised on cost (23%), flexible hours (22%) and location (18%).

That survey ran during COVID, so illness prevention may have weighed more than usual.

The factors parents consider, in order

When NCES asked parents in 2023 which factors they rated very important about their child's arrangement, curriculum did not lead.

Lower on the list: recommendations from friends and family (40%), number of children in the group (39%), ratings on a website (31%) and religious content (17%).

The 31% is one survey item, not evidence that reviews don't matter, since parents in federal focus groups described using Google reviews and Facebook mid-search.

Measured directly, safety tops everything: safety, cleanliness and illness prevention was the most important factor in the December 2020 survey, rated 1.5 times as important as the next factor, quality caregivers and teachers.

Affordability is structural, not a preference: Child Care Aware of America's 2025 price report puts the national average price of care at 10% of the median income of a married couple with children and 33% of a single parent's, and the blended average understates infant care.

Location, parents express in minutes: NCES's 2019 data has the trip from home under 10 minutes for 51% of children in weekly center-based care, and 10 to 20 minutes for another 35%.

Faith-based programs should note a gap between stated and revealed preference: religious content was rated very important by 17% of parents in NCES's 2023 survey, yet 53% of single-parent or two-working-parent households using center-based care in January 2020 used a center affiliated with a faith organization, per Bipartisan Policy Center.

The measures differ, stated factor versus attendance, so read them side by side rather than as a contradiction.

How parents find child care

The 2024 federal survey asked 2,035 parents of children under 6 where their child care information came from, and the top answer is not a search engine.

65.7% got information from people they know: friends, family, employers and neighbors, including through social media.

Providers' own channels came next at 60.2% (websites, flyers, ads, social media, visits or calls), then commercial sites and apps such as Care.com at 40.2%, official government sites and search tools at 37.5%, and conversations with organizations that help parents find care at 27.6% (parents could name several sources).

Trust tracks the same lines: parents most often said they very much trust service providers they know (48.3%) and official government websites (39.5%), over commercial sites or apps (28.5%) and people they don't know (18.2%).

OPRE's review adds that parents especially value recommendations from other parents, and that many learn about care through state sites such as childcare.gov, QRIS pages and licensing search tools.

The survey's search types put structure on the mix: the largest group (37%) mainly used friends and family plus internet search, 28% used internet search plus social media, 20% social media plus friends and family, 8% providers they already knew plus friends and family, and 6% child care resource and referral agencies plus friends and family (2019 NSECE, OPRE analysis).

Four of the five search types include friends and family, and those are search types rather than channel shares, so don't convert them into "37% of parents use Google."

Federal CCDF rules also require each state to run a consumer site with a localized list of providers searchable by zip code, separating licensed from license-exempt programs and showing a quality rating where the state has one (45 CFR 98.33, eCFR version in effect October 2026); not every program carries a public rating.

The same rule requires states to post monitoring and inspection reports in plain language, with health and safety violations prominently displayed and at least three years of results where available.

Formats vary by state, so look at your own listing and reports the way a parent would, and confirm the details with your state licensing agency.

In federal focus groups, parents called physically visiting a program and asking questions in person the most useful way to get good information, and they described building their lists from Google reviews, Facebook comments, Yelp, Google Maps and state websites (OPRE's 2025 qualitative study).

What this means for your center's marketing

Publish the practical facts, then keep them current.

In the 2024 survey, 80.9% of parents who looked for information said practical information was the most helpful kind: hours and days of care (56.2%) and closeness to work or home (48.6%) led, followed by quality (41.6%) and cost (39.5%), with age groups served (35.2%) and whether the provider is enrolling (33.1%) behind them.

The gap parents named most often was the same kind of fact: 44.9% said more practical information would help them most, especially whether a provider is enrolling new children.

Treat openings as a marketing asset.

Open slots were a main reason 34% of searching parents struggled, so a plain "we have openings in these rooms" line, with a waitlist path for full rooms, beats silence.

Let the state's records and your site tell the same story.

Parents can already read your inspection history on state sites, so your trust signals should line up with them; our guides cover inspection reports and state search sites in detail.

Work the two channels parents actually use.

With 65.7% getting information from people they know, a systematic referral program is worth building, and with Google reviews in the focus-group mix, so is asking enrolled parents for reviews.

Assume the visit decides it.

Several parents in those focus groups rejected a program after visiting because they did not feel comfortable, which makes the tour itself part of conversion.

That is the game the data describes: be findable through the two channels families trust, answer the practical questions before they're asked, and make the visit worth showing up for.

I work on the website side of this: one controlled test a month on center websites and landing pages, judged by tour requests and enrollment rather than clicks; prices and terms are on the pricing page.

More of these numbers, including demand and search data, are collected in the child care marketing statistics roundup.

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