In this talk, Dr Jennifer Bouek reframes childcare as a mythical market to consider the role of illusion in creating a childcare crisis. Doing so does two things. It redirects our attention toward the organizational complexity of childcare as a social and political system – a system that reinforces the inequality of women and contributes to the reproduction of racial and socioeconomic inequality. Second, considering childcare as a mythical market also pushes us to ask: what purpose does the myth serve?