It Takes a Village (23 page)

For twenty years after the end of World War II, a booming economy made it possible for most families to support their children on one income, typically the father's. When mothers worked, out of necessity or desire, the care of children was usually entrusted to siblings, relatives, or older women like Mrs. Walters, whom Bill's mother employed to care for him and Roger.

Over time, however, child care became a political issue, as women, responding to a changing economy and exercising their hard-won rights to enter the paid workforce, again began joining men on the job. In 1971, President Nixon vetoed federal child care legislation, explaining that it “would commit the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over against the family-centered approach.” In retrospect, what is more interesting is what he said he could support: increased funding of day care for welfare recipients and the working poor; tax deductions to subsidize day care for families with two working parents; increased funding for the construction of day care facilities; expanded nutrition and health care services for poor children; better targeting of maternal and child health services to low-income mothers; and expanded funding for Head Start. Now even these measures are controversial in some quarters.

Meanwhile, the need for child care has continued to grow. Global economic changes since the early 1970s have resulted in stagnant wages and benefits for many people. On one income, many families cannot enjoy what is considered to be an American standard of living. Most single parents face a stark choice: either they work or they end up on welfare. But they cannot work without a safe place to leave their children.

In the late 1980s, the federal government forged a bipartisan consensus that significantly increased funding of child care for low-income children. States also increased their contributions. Yet even at its peak, the amount of assistance provided has not come close to meeting the needs of families.

 

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because we have done so little to encourage better training and compensation for child care workers, a culture has evolved in which child care is more often viewed as “baby-sitting” than as a vehicle for nurturing the emotional and intellectual development of children. Like the French, we should make sure that child care offers our kids the opportunity to learn and grow in warm, stimulating environments that help prepare them for school.

Finding quality child care should matter to parents. Although studies show that children are not affected adversely by having parents who work outside the home, there is evidence that poor care has damaging consequences. Children enrolled in family child care—care in a private home—are more likely to be in settings without licensing or standards than are children in child care centers. Family care is generally less expensive and more convenient than center-based care, which makes it especially popular with single parents. But unlike in the French system, family caregivers in America are often not regulated. In 1993, almost half of the states did not limit the number of children who could be cared for in these home settings. And roughly half of all states did not require a full range of basic health and safety protections. Child care centers, too, suffer from a hodgepodge of regulations, which vary from state to state.

Parents often assume that cost is the biggest barrier to good care, but another problem may be their inability to recognize good quality and demand it for their children. Parents need to be alert, engaged, and informed consumers, just as they need to be self-aware in their own parenting. I have visited child care facilities all over the country, and I can testify to the superb conditions in some settings and the abject inadequacy of others. While many centers offer bright, pleasant surroundings and an assortment of toys, others are dreary and spartan, with no open spaces for play. In some centers, the caregivers seem bored, distracted, and uninterested in the children. But in the best settings, the workers are creative, energetic, and focused on the children. And you can tell immediately that they also take seriously the responsibility of their jobs.

Zero to Three, an organization devoted to informing the public about young children's needs, tells us that caregivers should be “well trained in pediatric first aid, rescue breathing, sanitation, and prevention and detection of early signs of contagious disease” and that the setting should meet or exceed local and state health standards and provide health information to parents.

Having enforceable state licensing requirements for child care providers also helps raise standards of care. A study of Florida's child care centers measured the quality of care children received before and after state regulations went into effect. These laws put more adults in charge of fewer children and required that at every licensed center at least one staff person have a Child Development Associate credential or its equivalent for every twenty children served. Researchers observed that the day care workers were more responsive and positive in dealing with the children after the regulations went into effect. The children themselves exhibited greater language and social development, and the number of behavior problems went down.

Even when caregivers meet legal standards, there is no guarantee that the quality of their care is what children deserve. Parents can learn a lot about child care by making unannounced visits to a site before
and after
enrolling their children. Every parent ought to find out the ratio of adults to children in a particular child care setting. Experts agree that one adult should watch no more than three or four infants, for example.

Parents should ask questions about the training of child care workers, which can range from a few hours a week as a neighborhood baby-sitter to a master's degree in early-childhood development. And parents should feel they have the right to ask about salaries: a caregiver making only the minimum wage might have one eye focused on finding a new and better-paying job. Continuity is important. Turnover is high among low-wage workers, and that can be problematic, as children form attachments with people who suddenly vanish from their lives.

In scouting out child care, what we observe tells us a lot. The room where kids play does not have to be opulent, but it must be clean. It does not have to be filled with every toy advertised on television, but it should have a variety of toys, books, stuffed animals, and art supplies suited to your child's stage of development. The Child Care Action Campaign, a nonprofit coalition of individuals, organizations, and businesses dedicated to helping parents recognize and find quality child care, advises that “jigsaw puzzles and crayons may be fine for preschoolers but are inappropriate for infants.” It may seem obvious, but when parents are feeling pressed to find a place for their child, these factors are sometimes ignored.

Zero to Three illustrates easy ways to understand the impact “quality of care” can have on small children and how parents can be partners in promoting it. Let's say Tim is two and a half years old and his mother drops him off for the first time at a child care center. She may have visited the center before but has not made a point of finding out who her son's primary caregiver will be. It turns out no one is assigned that role and Tim is left to fend for himself. He is bullied, and when no one attends to him when he starts to cry, he takes it upon himself to fight back. Within a few weeks, he, too, has become a class bully, who is regularly yelled at and assigned to “time-outs.” He has learned his lessons well: his feelings are not valued, and in this day care center it is every toddler for himself.

In an alternate scenario, Tim and his mother spend time with his primary caregiver, a woman named Mindy. She asks Tim and his mother questions, and learns from Tim's mother about his temperament and particular needs. When another child intentionally bumps Tim, Mindy pulls him aside to talk and then introduces the two boys. Whenever Tim's mother leaves him, Mindy gives him extra attention and reassurance. Within a few weeks, Tim is playing happily with the other children and is no longer anxious about his mother's return. With Mindy's help, he has come to feel safe and valued.

These are steps we can take as individuals to ensure that our own children receive the care they need. But what can we do as a society to make sure that all children are cared for the way we want our own children to be?

We can begin by insisting that the federal government not turn its back on children by depriving low-income and working families of the assistance they need to be assured quality child care. As battles rage over the federal budget, it is important to remember that much of the best child care for low-income children is subsidized in one way or another by the federal government. Child care for working and low-income parents has been subsidized through the Child Care and Development block grant and other federal programs, along with additional state funding. Other forms of assistance help subsidize care for children whose families are on welfare.

Earlier this year, I visited the Linn County Day Care Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which, supported by federal, state, and local funds, enrolls nearly seventy children from low-income families. I was impressed by the center's range of activities. In one room, children were gleefully feeding guinea pigs; in another, they were busy making valentines with paper and glue. Every classroom and every activity I saw reflected the center's emphasis on developing the language and social skills of each child.

It was also clear that the center understood that quality child care and strong families go hand in hand. There was not one parent I met who was not either working, actively involved in job training, going to college, or trying to get a high school equivalency diploma. Having access to child care they could trust enabled them to pursue goals that would benefit both their families and society.

Many states have worked to address the patchwork problem by creating integrated systems of support and supervision of child care. Beginning in August 1993, North Carolina merged its state and community funds to establish the Smart Start initiative to improve the health and well-being of its young children, in part by improving the training of child care providers and creating high-quality programs to prepare children to enter school. In Ohio, even in an era when the state's overall spending has grown at its slowest rate in forty years, legislators have increased funding for select programs for children and families by one third since 1991 through the Ohio Family and Children First Initiative. Its goals are to assure healthier infants and children, to increase access to quality preschool and child care, and to improve the state's outreach efforts to promote family stability. These programs are successful in part because they expand on a base of federal support delivered through the states.

One of the most hopeful signs I have seen is the growing interest of the business community in assisting employees with child care. More and more, businesses are recognizing that when employees miss work to stay home with sick children or when parents are distracted by child care problems, the bottom line suffers too.

The Du Pont Company was one of the first large companies to institute work-family programs such as job sharing and subsidized emergency child care. A study of Du Pont employees confirmed the view that family-friendly policies are a good business practice, because they make the workforce more committed and more engaged. “If you do something to meet the employees' needs, they return the favor,” said Charles Rodgers, whose firm conducted the study.

Eastman Kodak provides a backup child care service in which a nurse or similarly trained professional will come to an employee's home when regular child care arrangements fall through. IBM allows some of its employees the flexibility to work at home and sponsors day care centers that offer children a wide range of activities. The
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
in Texas allows employees to work from home via computer and has set up a private room at its headquarters where new mothers can nurse their infants. Local governments and nonprofit organizations, too, are discovering the benefits of policies that help families. In Kansas City, Missouri, for example, city employees are granted four hours of paid leave annually to participate in children's school activities. And the YWCA of New York City offers employees reduced tuition for children's summer camp.

On October 31, 1995, I hosted an event at the White House honoring twenty-one companies in the American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care that have pledged to contribute $100 million for child and dependent care in fifty-six cities nationwide. Allstate, AT&T, Chevron, Citibank, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Mobil, Texaco, and Xerox were among the companies honored. James Schiro, the chairman of Price Waterhouse and one of our guest speakers, said: “All of the companies participating believe in our theme: ‘Doing together what none of us can afford to do alone.'”

Hundreds of other companies around the country have also been listed on the Department of Labor's “honor roll”—a list of employers who pledge to initiate workplace policies that help parents and families, such as flexible work schedules, paid leave to attend children's school activities, and tax-deductible set-asides from employees' paychecks that can be used to pay for child care.

Susan O'Neil, an employee of Deloitte & Touche, who spoke at the White House, described the hectic pace of her life as a mother working full time outside the home. She credited her employer with helping her find child care through a company referral service and giving her flexible hours to meet her family's needs.