Give Parents Real Choices on Child Care

The presidential candidates are focusing on issues symbolic of “family values,” such as school prayer. What’s missing is the No. 1 issue that would improve the health and welfare of American families: day care.

Our study of working families, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, shows that no other issue causes greater stress and anxiety for today’s parents than securing good, affordable care for their children. The kind of day care didn’t make a difference in stress levels; whether care was given by a family member, a sitter or a day-care center wasn’t important. What counted was whether the parents felt the children were thriving.

The study found that conflict about child care was a major stress factor for couples. It’s clear that good and affordable child care is critical for American families. Unfortunately, not much of an effort is being made to meet this problem head on. Many of the solutions being offered are unrealistic or fragmented, leaving parents to scramble on their own.

For example, many people are recommending part-time work for women, especially for mothers of young children. But good part-time or flextime jobs are available mainly to higher paid women or men who can negotiate reduced hours. The part-time jobs being created by today’s economy tend be low-paid, lack benefits and offer the most stressful working conditions: high productivity demand and little employee control. One study showed that women in part-time jobs often are more stressed than full-time workers because they take on all of the work at home and don’t feel they can say no to any demands.

Too many parents have nothing but bad choices: a crummy part-time job or scramble to find child care.

Some critics suggest that today’s parents are just selfish, working for vacations or fancy cars. But as one woman put it, “I’m not working to take my kids to Disneyland; I’m working for health care.” Stable, well-paid jobs that can support a one-earner family are becoming harder to find. One management study showed that 50% of the companies studied in 1995 cut their work forces. Men’s wages have been stagnant or declining for decades.

Scare stories about day care abound. Many people believe--as unfortunately, some conservative “family advocates” claim--that there is scientific evidence proving day care hurts children. The opposite is true. Studies of children in day care consistently show they do well in measures of development. A few years ago, there was major concern about whether infant day care would harm the mother-child bond. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development undertook a national study of 1,300 families. The first results were released this spring with all the experts who took part saying that infant day care does not harm the mother-child bond. The number of hours did not seem to matter, even for infants in care more than 30 hours a week.

Instead of simple, sound-bite solutions, we need a national task force that would provide many more resources for day care--national, state, regional and private programs. We seem reluctant to devise solutions that will apply to the competitive, global economy of the the 21st century. It’s a fantasy to think that women are going to stay home, or that there are enough part-time jobs to sustain families economically. The most realistic step toward healthier families would be widespread, affordable, reliable day care.

Caryl Rivers, professor of journalism at Boston University, and Rosalind C. Barnett, senior scholar at the Murray Research Center at Radcliffe, are the authors of “She Works, He Works--How Two-Income Families Are Happier, Healthier and Better Off” (HarperCollins San Francisco, 1996).