This framework was built to help employers, brokers, and families see childcare for what it actually is: a patchwork that employees are already piecing together on their own. Sitters. Daycare. Grandparents. Neighbors. After-school programs. Summer camps. Most working parents juggle four or more arrangements - and most employers have no idea.
The Modern Childcare Stack maps those layers into a framework and connects them to the financial tools - DCFSAs, tax credits, employer benefits - that make the whole system more affordable. It exists because no one was drawing this picture for the people who need it most.
The Modern Childcare Stack was created by Drew Chambers, Co-founder of SitterSync. Drew has a background in private equity and energy transactions, and holds an MBA from Darden.
When Drew moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, he had a list of local babysitters from a community organization but no way to manage bookings, payments, or track expenses. He also discovered that most families around him overlooked babysitting as a primary care option, and nearly all of them didn't realize they could use their Dependent Care FSA or the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit to make those sitters tax-free.
SitterSync was built to solve both problems: make it easy to manage and pay babysitters, and make those payments tax-advantaged through DCFSA and the care credit.
As Drew built SitterSync and started talking to dozens of benefits consultants and brokers across the country, one thing kept surprising him: how large a crisis childcare is for the workforce, and how little employers understand it. Not just the cost - the logistics. How families actually find care, receive care, pay for care, and cobble it all together to make it work.
Nobody in the employer benefits world thinks about childcare like a technology stack. They offer a DCFSA checkbox and move on. But the reality is that childcare support is a patchwork - and it requires a stack from companies to actually support working parents. When Meijer started reimbursing employees not just for daycare but for personal network care - grandma, the neighbor, the trusted friend - it confirmed what Drew had been seeing: the companies paying attention are building a childcare stack for their employees, even if they don't call it that yet.
The Modern Childcare Stack is a free, open framework for thinking about this differently. It's built from real experience, real broker conversations, and real tax policy research.
The childcare problem has multiple dimensions. Each one needed its own tool:
This framework is a living document. If something doesn't match your experience, if we got a tax detail wrong, or if you just want to share how your family does it - we want to hear from you. The best ideas in this framework came from other parents.
drew@sittersync.com - We respond to every message.