Working Parents and Employers Wrestle With the Child-Care Dilemma
Barbara Jackle and her husband think they’re lucky. They found a reliable woman to watch their 5-year-old son for $85 a week, even though that required getting special permission to enroll him in a school near the care-giver’s home 3 miles away.
“And that’s good for only one year,” said Barbara Jackle, 37, a librarian who lives in Upper Darby, Pa., near Philadelphia. “We’re even contemplating moving, so we could be closer to where she is.”
The Jackles’ scramble to find a trustworthy sitter for their 5-year-old is a product of the growth in two-income families among the baby-boom generation. That, in turn, has created an enormous problem for working parents nationwide: who baby-sits, and how to pay the sitter?
“Nowadays, it seems if you’re going to need care you’d better get set up before you get pregnant,” said Louise Hurst, a licensed day-care professional who watches the Jackle boy and five other young children in her home.
“I’ve gotten lots of calls,” said Hurst, 43. “I inform them I’m full until September, 1991, so I don’t even bother to take a waiting list.”
Demand for child care has grown so fast that costs have multiplied, in some cases nearly consuming the money earned from a second income. This has crimped budgets of millions of Americans and created an underground cash economy of unregulated care-givers.
Historically, American women have been the family care-givers. But the nation’s labor pool is becoming increasingly female. A Labor Department study by the Hudson Institute, an Indianapolis research organization, says women make up almost half the work force, compared with 38.1% in 1970 and 29.6% in 1950.
Other Labor Department figures say 57% of all women with children under 6 work outside the home, compared with 12% in 1950. The Children’s Defense Fund, a Washington-based child-advocacy group, predicts that by 1995, two-thirds of all preschool children will have working mothers, an increase of 50% in a decade.
“Only 7% of American households now fit the Beaver Cleaver family’s mold of breadwinning father and at-home mother,” says a policy paper by the Child Care Action Campaign, a New York coalition that advocates a national system of care. “As female labor force participation rates continue to climb, the demand for child care will grow, too.”
Many companies, striving to attract or retain valued employees, offer incentives ranging from flexible work schedules to emergency sitters. Some have gone further, allowing young parents to work at home or take years off with full benefits and job guarantees. Others are building in-house day-care centers, hiring roving nannies or subsidizing the cost of care with cash.
“Certainly it’s fashionable these days for corporations to get into this,” said Antony Ward, director of Child Care Inc., a New York referral service many companies retain to help employees find sitters.
“A lot of people viscerally respond to the child-care issue,” he said. “Anyone who takes the kid to the family day-care provider to find a note on the door saying, ‘I have the flu,’ knows what it’s like.”
First Bank System of St. Paul, Minn., for example, this year donated space in its office building for a public kindergarten that doubles as an after-school day-care center, with priority given to children of bank employees. NCNB Corp., a fast-growing bank in Charlotte, N.C., plans to offer many of its workers a child-care reimbursement of up to 50%.
Pitney Bowes Inc., a leading maker of business machines in Stamford, Conn., helped pioneer flexible working hours to accommodate working parents, allowing them to arrive early some days, leave early on others. Federal Express Corp., the Memphis, Tenn., overnight delivery service, offers working parents four-day weeks and 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shifts.
Last month, seven large New York-based employers, hoping to cut absenteeism, announced a pilot program to provide emergency sitters for workers whose usual arrangements are disrupted.
“Companies are finding that if they’re not family friendly, they’re losing employees,” said Lorraine Dusky, a free-lance writer and co-author of “The Best Companies for Women,” a guidebook to 50 American corporations. “Companies aren’t doing this to be altruistic. If companies don’t do something, we’re in trouble.”
Child-care activists say, however, that the high-profile benefits of a few companies mask a potential labor crisis. Most businesses say child care is not a work-related issue, despite evidence that help from the boss lowers turnover, raises morale and improves productivity. Moreover, the activists say, the federal government is not providing much help.
Although a bill that would vastly expand federal support for child care is working through Congress, it faces a likely White House veto because of the estimated $22.7-billion cost over five years.
President Bush proposes more modest legislation that would cost $2.5 billion a year by 1993, mostly through tax credits to parents. Still, that is less than $20 a week or about $1,000 a year, and it would go only to poorer families.
Actual costs for out-of-home child care range from $1,500 to $10,000 a year, according to a study by the Conference Board, a New York-based business research group. Other studies show much higher costs for in-home care.
Because of the costs and the scarcity of day-care openings, the vast majority of working parents contend with a hodgepodge, hit-or-miss system for finding help they can trust and afford. Stories abound of sitters who ignore, abandon, abuse or kidnap children.
Most parents rely on referrals from friends and relatives, but the result can be hiring an unlicensed, untrained care-giver. An additional aggravation is that these care-givers generally take only cash to avoid paying income tax. An estimated $7 billion in day-care income goes unreported annually.
Beginning this year, parents must give the Internal Revenue Service the name and Social Security number of their day-care provider to qualify for a tax credit to defray child-care costs. The IRS plans to cross-reference the returns of sitters and prosecute cheaters.
Day-care experts believe the law could make it even harder for parents to afford day care, since many providers will raise rates to compensate for taxes.
“Child-care workers are the lowest paid workers in this country. One of the ways people are able to survive is to be paid without having to declare the income,” said Barbara Reisman, executive director of the Child Care Action Campaign.
“I don’t recommend people cheat on their taxes,” she said. “But many parents can’t afford to pay the full cost of care.”
Esther J. Kahn, director of Parent’s Place, a San Francisco counseling and referral service, agrees. “We have a system that has not caught up with rapid social change in our society, in which more women are back in the labor force and need child care. Our society hasn’t provided support for families,” Kahn said.
