Today’s Topic
Most mothers with jobs have faced the child care issue, and few have come out of the battle unbloodied. Tough choices have to be made about who provides the care, in what location and at what price.
In fact, the experts say, quality child care usually is available. Being able to afford that quality care is another story. A 1990 National Child Care Survey reported that, in families where the mother works full-time, the average weekly child care expenditure for children under 5 was $68 or more than $3,500 a year; in major cities, the total is likely to be higher.
“After rent or a house payment, I think child care is the largest single budgeting item,” says Peter Lunsden, assistant director of UCLA’s Child Care Service. “It really is something you cannot live without yet the burden on individual families is increasing all the time.”
The problem is particularly acute in low-income areas.
“I liken it to grocery stores,” says Sharon Reuss, communications director for the New York-based Child Care Action Campaign. “In low-income areas, you find mom-and-pop grocery stores where the prices are very high. You don’t have the kind of supermarket of choices that is readily available in middle-class neighborhoods. It’s the same with child care in these neighborhoods; parents are stuck when it comes to finding child care.”
In today’s Making a Difference, a profile of the nonprofit Stone Soup project demonstrates a creative solution to the child care crisis, at least for children of school age. By bringing together businesses, foundations and the community, Stone Soup is able to provide affordable, quality after-school care, right at the child’s school.
While there is no ideal solution to the child care problem, many parents are beginning to advocate another idea for younger children: day care at the parent’s place of employment.
One corporation that has instituted such a center, Ventura-based Kinko’s, has found that on-site day care provides both tangible and intangible benefits to the company and its co-workers, as it calls its employees.
While the company isn’t certain how day care affects its turnover rate, Kinko’s spokesperson Gail Michalak says, “We feel certain that it helps. What we are sure of is that it is a tremendous recruiting tool.
“A lot of parents go over to the center on their lunch hour or during their breaks to see their children,” Michalak says. “They do not feel pressured to leave work at a certain time. If their child is sick, they can go over to the center and take a firsthand look without leaving work.”
Despite the obvious benefits to parents in the work force, on-site day care centers can be costly. “It’s expensive to set up,” says Marilyn Nolan, director of the day care center at USC. “You have to hire staff, you have extra liability.” And a business has to be large to even consider providing such a service.
“Still, I think the United States is really behind the times,” says Nolan. “Many countries are providing on-site child care and they find that work productivity and attendance go up.”
