Report on Child-Rearing, Jobs Aims to Aid Families

We are not accustomed to thinking of the United States as a backward nation.

However, despite national furor over the importance of the American family, the United States is the only country in the industrialized world that has no comprehensive policies to help parents deal with the demands of holding jobs while rearing families. In an era in which economic and demographic trends have transformed the family and the workplace, our major institutions--including the government, business world and schools--have neither recognized nor responded to the change. Social institutions continue to organize services on the assumption that a family consists of a working father, homemaker mother and children, a description that applies to fewer than 10% of contemporary families.

These conclusions were the impetus for a report, “Work and Family in the United States: A Policy Initiative,” produced by the Family Policy Panel of the Economic Policy Council of the United Nations Assn. The two-year-study offers a plan of action for government and business that would improve the conditions of families. Its ambitious recommendations, ranging from establishment of a national commission on contemporary work and family patterns to guaranteed maternity leaves and child care, represent a consensus of people of different interests who worked on the project--leaders from business and labor as well as academics.

Co-chairs of the Economic Policy Council are Robert O. Anderson, chairman of Atlantic Richfield, and Douglas Fraser, president emeritus, International Union-United Auto Workers. The report was released at a dinner in Washington last week keynoted by Sen. Daniel Moynihan (D-N.Y.) and attended by 100 corporate, labor and academic leaders.

Unique Perspective

The diversity of the group offered a unique perspective, the report said, reflecting the pragmatic and economic concerns of business as well as the social welfare of families and children.

The report outlined and addressed problems in five areas:

--Maternal and child health. The report said that every country in Western Europe provides free medical services to pregnant women including prenatal care, delivery and follow-up care for new mothers and infants. In the U.S. one of seven women and one of six children have no health insurance. Nine million children receive no routine medical care. Medicaid health care for poor women and children reaches less than half of the eligible population.

Among the recommendations for change are that complete prenatal, maternal and child health coverage should be extended through Medicaid to all low-income women and children not otherwise covered and that the federal Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants and Children be expanded. This program--which meets the basic nutritional needs of impoverished, at-risk pregnant and nursing women and babies--currently reaches only about a third of those who are eligible. A major study of the program released Wednesday found the program had contributed to lower rates of premature birth, fewer stillbirths, better nutrition and better intellectual development of preschool children. Nutrition advocates said that the Agriculture Department had repeatedly delayed releasing this report because the department opposes feeding programs.

--Parental leaves and benefits. More than 100 countries, and almost every industrial country except the United States, have laws that protect pregnant workers and allow new mothers a job-protected leave and full or partial wages at the time of childbirth. In the U.S., almost half of all women with babies under a year old are in the labor force, and 90% of all working women will bear a child while employed. But fewer than 40% of American working women are entitled to maternity leaves.

Calls for New Laws

The report recommends that federal laws should be enacted requiring public and private employers to provide short-term disability leaves to all employes. Currently only five states--California is one--have such laws. It also recommends that employers should consider giving unpaid, job-guaranteed parenting leaves to all parent workers for up to six months.

--Child care. Most of Europe recognizes the need for child care for workers. The report cited France as a good example. Public preschool originated there in the 1880s, and it is free and available to every French child. In the United States, where there are 20 million children under 13 including 9 million under 6 with working mothers, there are an estimated 1 million child-care-center slots nationwide. Only 1,850 of the nation’s 6 million employers provide any kind of child-care assistance.

The report recommended that states should provide expanded child care services with federal encouragement in the form of funding for pilot projects and inclusion of child care in block grants; that the federal dependent care tax credit should be increased; that public policy at all levels should include incentives for employer-sponsored child care; federal funding for Head Start programs should be increased; high quality preschools should be available to every 3- to 5-year old-child; employers and unions must become more responsive to the child-care needs of workers; and schools must recognize and address the needs of children whose parents work.

--Economic support for families. The report named pay equity as a high priority on any family policy agenda. Pay equity is a national policy in that employment discrimination is illegal in the United States. However, such discrimination is widely practiced. Almost 25% of all children in the United States are living in poverty. A substantial number of these children are poor because they are supported by underpaid mothers to whom society affords little recognition or assistance. In a dual-earner family with children, now the norm in the U.S., the median income in 1984 was $34,668. In a family in which only the husband works, the income was $23,582. In a family in which a woman is the sole support, the income was $11,400.

The recommendations for change are for greater enforcement of federal civil rights laws and the recognition by society and by institutions of the roles of parents of both sexes in the labor force and in the family.

--The flexible workplace. Employers and unions must become more sensitive to the time pressures on employees and provide greater flexibility in work schedules and leave time, the report said.

Benefit packages must be changed. Most were designed for employees who were the traditional male heads of household and do not meet the needs of today’s workers. Nor are traditional plans cost-effective for companies, the report said. Legislation regulating benefit plans should be enacted to apply over longer time periods--at least 10 years--to encourage employers and unions to develop creative benefit programs with the assurance they won’t have to be changed soon.

Some senators who attended the dinner where the report was unveiled were sympathetic, but did not see much chance of introducing legislation for new or increased social programs, project coordinator Judy Farrell said. “They see it as a framework for developing policies in this area. It seems it will take off when there is more (federal) money,” she said.