500 Men in Congress and a Baby Bill--Child Care Problem Hits Home

Recently, I took my children to see “Three Men and a Baby,” the mega-movie-money-maker that requires little elucidation beyond its title. It is about three swinging New York roommates who must work outside their penthouse so that they can pay the mortgage and still have enough money left for throwing lavish parties, sleeping with dream girls, and heaven knows what else. This they manage with aplomb until a baby--sired unknowingly by one of the trio--is left at their doorstep, compliments of an ex-dream girl.

What follows is the predictable “dumbo dad” routine, only with three dumbos instead of one. And what a time they have of it! While the female apartment manager is on hand to help, the grandma and one true love have better things to do, leaving the dads dizzied by the competing demands of home and work. They’ve ceased socializing; they’re too tuckered out, and anyway, they’d rather be with the baby.

Well, wouldn’t you know this would happen? Just when the guys have gotten the hang of fathering and have fallen out of their post-party depression and into a workable routine--Mom shows up! Newly refreshed,she sweeps up the baby, thanks them and heads for home on another continent. The fellows are stupefied, and by the time they come to their senses and race to the airport, mother and child’s airplane has taken off for London.

Glumly, they head for home, and from the looks of it are about to succumb to the syndrome of the empty nest, when they find the baby and the mother waiting at their doorstep. Too much to handle--an acting career and the baby all alone, sobs the mom. Nodding heads and empathy all round. Naturally, there is an answer to this quandary: They make room for mommy! There’s always room for another pair of helping hands in the penthouse nursery.

All--including the audience and me--end up smiling broadly. But I also leave wondering when and if American men ever will be expected to responsibly rear their children without being glorified for it; when and if ever the notion of men as caretakers of children will be unentertaining because it is . . . unremarkable.

Call me cynical, but it strikes me that members of Congress are finally responding to the ballooning problem of child care in this country because enough of them--men, that is--are having to take part in rearing their children. Unlike, say, nearly all of the industrialized countries of Europe, which have provided parental supports like paid leave and subsidized child care for longer than the lives of most U.S. representatives, our government has looked on birth and child-rearing as a kind of elective event, offering few sympathies and fewer subsidies.

But at long last a number of child-care measures are scheduled for congressional action, the most effective and expensive of which is the ABC bill, the Act for Better Child Care Services, sponsored by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.). It is a $2.5-billion package that would be targeted primarily to help moderate- and low-income families pay for child care.

And in what must be the political squint of the season, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has introduced a child-care bill--more modest, mind you, than Dodd’s-- but a bill all the same. This from a lawmaker whose indifference to child care (until now) was oddly paired with an obsession to protect the child before it was born.

Not a moment too soon have these measures come down the congressional pike. Here are a few fun factson the state of child care in America, land of the free and home of the Supermom, as of 1986:

--When the women who today are between 30 and39 years old were between 20 and 30, only 58.3% had children. Today 78.2% of them do--a 40% increase, and many are trying to pursue professional careers.

--70% of all moms with school-age children work outside the home.

--Female heads of household surged to 6 million in 1986 from 1.5 million in 1950.

--One in six kindergarteners was born to a teen-ager.

--There are at least 2 million latchkey children, but only 4% of all schools operate after classroom hours.

Meanwhile fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, moms gotta work and congressmen gotta . . . baby-sit?

Who knows? Perhaps it was too frightening for members of Congress, the mere thought of one day being greeted at the Capitol Hill doorstep by a baby constituent in a basket, with note pinned to the nightie (and here I’m thinking of something along the lines of the movie mom’s message): “Dear Congressman Such and So, I just couldn’t handle this any longer. Sylvia.” This fantasy-nightmare may well have moved the men of Congress to make child care their business.