Is America Ready to Care for Its Children?

At long last, the moment may have arrived. Decades after other industrialized nations came to grips with the needs of children in working families, America seems poised to tackle child care as an urgent social concern.

“Finally, finally, finally,” said Vivian Weinstein, who has toiled in the deep and muddy trenches of child care for nearly 30 years. “Finally,” she said, “the time is getting closer when the United States joins the rest of the civilized world and acknowledges child care as a universal need for all children whose parents need to be or are in the work force.”

Advocates and child-care professionals say they are heartened that after years on the political margins, their issue is at last on the agenda at all. But even after President Clinton unveiled his $21.7-billion child-care initiative, and as he prepares to make child care a priority in his State of the Union message Tuesday, specialists say the question of how best to provide for children whose parents are in the work force is nowhere close to resolution. As child care surfaces as an issue du jour, moreover, some longtime child-care workers worry that the current spotlight represents an expediency, not a commitment.

Too many policymakers, for example, see child care only in terms of the number of slots available, said Carolyn Harris, director of the Westminster Child Center in Eagle Rock. Meanwhile, child-care teachers receive salaries below those of most fast-food workers. After more than 20 years in the field of early education, “years and years in which we sat around and moaned and groaned and said ‘nothing is ever going to happen,’ ” Harris said that even with the present level of interest, “I would want over and over again to emphasize that it’s not just the numbers. It’s the quality that counts. We need to do a better job.”

Still, professionals are encouraged that top government officials are paying attention. At the state level, California’s Pete Wilson has emerged as a leader among governors who are focusing on pre-kindergarten children. In a report expected this spring, Wilson’s Universal Task Force on Preschool Education will propose state-provided preschool for California’s 1.2 million 3- and 4-year-old children.

Recent reports on the astonishing amount of brain development that takes place in a child’s first years also have strengthened the case for more aggressive involvement in the lives of young Americans. New brain research is winning converts even among hard-core skeptics, said Los Angeles County child-care coordinator Kathleen Malaske-Samu.

“All this new data has provided something tangible. It’s made it real for a lot of people who demanded a different kind of proof,” Malaske-Samu said. “It has shown clearly that these aren’t little vegetables until they turn 5 and hit the kindergarten steps.”

With data to demonstrate that all children benefit from enriched environments in their early years, child-care discussion has become more broad-based. Using grants and tax breaks, for example, President Clinton’s child-care proposal “provides support for low-income families and for middle-income families as well,” said Helen Blank, director of child care at the Children’s Defense Fund in Washington, rather than zeroing in only on the needs of poor families, as has often been the practice.

Professionals note that much of the concentration on child care stems directly from state and federal efforts to restructure the politics of poverty. “Welfare reform threw a tremendous spotlight on the whole issue of child care,” said Faith Wohl, head of the Child Care Action Campaign in New York. By requiring low-income mothers to work in order to receive welfare benefits, the national ambivalence about child care became inescapable.

“We really are of two minds when we think about our national feelings about caring for kids,” said Wohl, a longtime business executive. “On the one hand, we say that welfare mothers ought to go to work. On the other hand, we say that someone like my daughter, who is an executive at DuPont, ought to stay home with her kids.”

Welfare-to-work mothers are caught in a bind of their own, said Blank. While they are required to work, the salaries they command seldom accommodate an “extra,” such as child care. When these mothers go off to work, said Blank, “there’s no safety net.” Because of this dilemma, she said, “A lot of governors, whether Republican or Democrat, are starting to get it. They’re starting to realize, you can’t do welfare reform unless you look more holistically.”

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Social benevolence is not their only motivation. Politicians know the kids in child care don’t vote--but their parents and grandparents do. With more parents of young children working than not, child care becomes a safe, marketable issue, even though some conservatives have questioned Clinton’s approach of expanding the federal government’s role.

Not coincidentally, this change in perspective has taken place amid other significant cultural shifts. “We’re at the end of an era in calendar terms, and that makes the whole society reflective,” said Wohl, of the Child Care Action Campaign. “As much as you want to throw up if you hear one more thing about the bridge to the 21st century, the fact is, there’s a great sense of the possibility of change.”

As members of one generation of mostly male executives and policymakers approach the end of their careers, a new crop of young, high-powered women is moving up the ladder of responsibility. Rather than postponing motherhood, many of those female professionals are having children early. “You have more and more people sitting in those decision-making chairs who have dropped their children off at child care before they came to work,” said Malaske-Samu.

Older government officials or corporate captains who may have felt that taking care of children was their wives’ jobs sometimes are forced to take a different view when “their precious grandchildren” are involved, child-care advocates say. Whether by choice or by necessity, their daughters are in the workplace--and their grandchildren are spending time in the care of others.

These same senior executives typically enter “what I call the legacy period,” said Wohl. “They want to be known for something else, not just the return on their investment.” Projects such as mentoring, community outreach, volunteerism and day care--concepts they may once have opposed on the basis of the bottom line--start to sound more appealing.

Wohl and others theorize that this same feeling may apply to government officials. Wrapping up their final terms, governors--such as Wilson--and even the president may feel comfortable championing policy they avoided earlier. Children don’t vote, so many of their concerns have been seen as expendable. It was then-Sen. Walter Mondale of Minnesota who observed more than 20 years ago that if the voting age were dropped to 18 months, the child-care crisis would end overnight.

“Maybe Clinton is in his legacy period, too,” Wohl speculated. “I don’t know what the political calculus was that kept the words ‘child care’ from crossing his lips in the first four years--and all of a sudden made him speak it. But I almost don’t care.”

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Despite the change in mood, critics contend that the president’s initiative solves none of the structural problems of providing care for the children of working parents. Nor does the potential infusion of funds offer a framework to improve the quality of care. An equally pressing--and unaddressed--concern, say those in the field, is boosting pay for providers.

“His focus on the importance of child care for all families could have a lasting impact,” said Malaske-Samu. “But we have to back that up. Quality care costs. It requires a more highly skilled staff. That means better compensation.”

In Los Angeles County, for example, Malaske-Samu’s agency found the average 1995 entry level salary for a child-care worker to be $7.24 an hour. Child-care teachers reached the top of their wage scale that year at $10.64 an hour.

“That is frightening enough,” she said. “But what was really disturbing to me was the lack of health benefits.” Her survey showed that 45% of child-care teachers were offered no health insurance. Only 29% in her sample had full health benefits, and 29% had partial coverage. Without offering more attractive compensation packages, “I don’t know how we are going to attract or retain people,” said Malaske-Samu.

With no hesitation, Ray Hernandez of the Southern California office of Volunteers of America said improved compensation would top his own wish list for child-care reform. As director of children’s services, Hernandez administers four programs that serve just shy of 1,000 children. He said that money for training staff also is often overlooked in child-care budgets.

“If we’re talking about quality, then you have to invest money into training of staff--even if it’s just connected to getting them college credit for work,” he said. Attaching college credit to child-care employment also would help to build credibility in a field that ranks only above the clergy at the low end of professional salary scales, Hernandez noted.