Like other working parents, farmers with children face competing demands on their time, but arranging for childcare for farm families can be challenging because of non-traditional work hours, rural locations and cost. This journal article identifies and analyzes social, economic and cognitive pathways through which childcare impacts farm decisions, operations, labor, and success. The authors draw on interviews and focus group data with farmers in the Northeast US to describe how farmer-parents access and negotiate child care, and suggest that childcare arrangements are an under recognized challenge through which farm household dynamics directly influence agricultural production.