It Is Time to Face Our Child Care Crisis

It has taken one particularly tragic event, the death of baby Matthew, and the question of the 19-year-old au pair’s responsibility for that death to bring the long festering issue of child care back before the public’s attention.

However, there is little serious public discussion and understanding of the profound societal changes that have helped create a child care crisis. Thus, most proposals for solutions are inadequate at best.

The decline in earning power of the middle class has driven millions of mothers of young children into the work force. Additionally, the sexual revolution and changes in divorce laws have created an enormous increase in the number of families with a single wage earner, almost always a woman. Now, the new welfare laws and regulations are adding significantly to the pool of working mothers in need of child care.

It is wishful thinking, if not something more disingenuous, to preach the importance of a mother in the home to the millions of women forced by economic necessity to be in the work force. Such arguments are particularly suspect when they come from the same people legislating welfare mothers out of the home into low-paying jobs with few or no benefits.

It is also wishful thinking, or ignorance of the complex social changes that have taken place, to suggest, as some have, that the solution is simply to press into service more grandmothers, extended family members or some other supposedly untapped reservoir of caregivers. Ask any parent desperately putting together a patchwork of family members and other caregivers how often that patchwork falls apart. Full-time responsibility for young children, particularly infants and toddlers, is confining, strenuous work, usually for very low pay. It doesn’t attract many people who have other job options.

Disturbingly absent from most proposals is a concern about quality of care. No parent should have to make do with substandard care because he or she can’t afford good care. But good care is scarce and expensive. Thus, most children receive unlicensed, unregulated, home-based care. While much unlicensed care can be good, there is no system to find and prevent care that is mediocre or worse.

Licensed care in California, either in a home or in a center, has the advantage of having to meet health and safety standards, but availability falls far short of need. Additionally, for-profit centers are faced with an insoluble dilemma: They can’t offer affordable care and pay a living wage.

Mediocre or poor care results in wasted lives and enormous social costs. Yet, policymakers are too willing to let families use any kind of care that can be arranged rather than assuring that all children receive safe, nurturing care.

No other industrialized nation is able to meet its child care needs without a strong policy commitment and substantial government support. It is time to recognize that we share a collective responsibility for all children, not just some of the children, some of the time.

In California, for instance, children of the poorest families can receive subsidized care, but, due to lack of funding, only a small percentage eligible receive assistance. In Orange County, 17,000 children are on the waiting list, and untold numbers will be added because of welfare-to-work policies.

The middle class receives subsidies through tax credits, but even then child care costs can take a disproportionate share of income. The working poor are caught in the middle, earning too much for direct subsidies and earning too little to take advantage of tax credits.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin is proposing we examine the feasibility of providing publicly funded preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds. It is a logical extension of the role of the public schools. We did it during World War II when women were needed in the work force. We can do it again, if we choose.

But that will be only a first step. What about publicly funded after-school care for all who need it? What about challenging and interesting programs for unsupervised teenagers? What about infants and toddlers? They are in the most vulnerable and developmentally crucial stage of their lives.

We need to catch up with the rest of the industrial world and institute flexible employment policies and publicly funded programs that recognize the need to mix work and family. If we want to see children of all ages have age-appropriate care and programs to assure their welfare, it is not a matter of how much we can afford, but how much we care.