I leverage the staggered expansion of subsidized childcare facilities across municipalities in response to a succession of national plans to investigate the effect of collective childcare on parents’ labor outcomes and childcare choices in France between 2007 and 2015. These plans did not lead to any substantial change in parents’ labor outcomes or in paid parental leave take-up. Instead, these collective childcare expansions crowded out more costly formal childcare solutions, such as childminders or at-home childcare. These crowding-out effects highlight a downside of family policy strategies that foster the coexistence of multiple childcare arrangements.