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Debate 2 Child care for school-age children is a concern for millions of American families. This issue is also important to policymakers. Over the past decade, child care has emerged as an issue of public concern and as a key component of U.S. social policy. More people have become aware of the impact that out-of-school arrangements can have on families and their children. The large number of mothers with preschool children in the workforce has made America’s families more reliant on nonparental care and, in turn, raised public awareness of early care and education as an issue of public policy. Many children spend at least some time in child care during their critical developmental years. Child care centers, family child care homes, relatives, and nannies have become essential to working families with children. Parents rely on out-of-school child care arrangements in order to work, and their choice of arrangement can affect the health, safety, and development of their children. The primary child care arrangement is defined as the arrangement in which the child spends the most number of hours while the mother is at work. The arrangements are commonly groups in the following categories: center-based child care (child care centers, Head Start, preschool, pre-kindergarten, and before- or after-school programs); family child care (care by a non-relative in the provider’s home); baby-sitter or nanny (care by a non-relative in the child’s home); relative care (care by a relative either in the child’s or provider’s home); and parent care (for those children whose mother did not report a nonparental child care arrangement while she worked). OBSERVATION: The banner outside the courthouse read DON'T BLAME THE NANNY, BLAME THE MOTHER. On February 4, 1997, when English au pair Louise Woodward fractured the skull of her 8-month-old charge, Matthew Eappencausing, his death five days later, she unleashed a storm of outrage. One of the principle targets was Deborah Eappen, the child’s mother who had returned to work as an ophthalmologist (albeit part time) after her son’s birth. On display was society's massive ambivalence toward mothers who work. Eappen was vilified as selfish and irresponsible for leaving her son in the care of an 18-year-old. [Sarah Pollock interviews Stephanie Coontz, Mother Jones, May-June 1998] OBSERVATION: The latest and most comprehensive study of childcare had only one negative finding when a mother starts out low in sensitivity to her child's needs, then puts the child in childcare for long hours before the age of 15 months, or in poor-quality childcare, that tends to reinforce the interaction. In other words, if you have poor parenting, and poor childcare (and too much childcare), its a double whammy. The kids suffer. When mothers start off with normal responsiveness and you combine that with high-quality childcare, you have a double advantage. In between, the adequate childcare most families have should be better but is not really a risk factor. FACT: Roughly 76 percent of children under five with employed parents are in some form of nonparental care each week, often for many hours. Parents must sometimes use more than one child care arrangement. Parents may primarily use a center-based child care arrangement or family child care home, but also may rely on a relative for some hours each week. FACT: Parents rely on relatives or paid sitters to help mind even their smallest children. With 1-year-olds, 50 percent of families use some non-parental arrangement. By the time they are 5, just 16 percent of children are watched only by their parents. FACT: In many locations, children of families at all income levels are on waiting lists of 12 months or more for child care. FACT: In the 1995 census, for the first time ever, a majority of moms in the U.S. went back to work at least part time before their kids reached age 1. FACT: In every state it is cheaper to send your 4-year-old to public college than to child care. FACT: Studies have shown that only 25 percent of American daycare centers offer quality services--and those are the 25 percent most expensive. Other studies show that one out of every 10 children three years old and younger lives in "extreme poverty"--at or below 50% of the federal poverty level. OBSERVATION: Joan Williams, author of Unbending Gender, says stay-at-home mothers can be divided into two groups--those who really want to stay home with their children 24 hours a day and those who end up there because they can't forge a good job-family balance in a 24/7 working world. FACT: More than half of married mothers with children under 18 do not work full time, and nearly half of those do not work at all. OPINION: Some research shows that it would be preferable if parents could be home for the first six months of life. But if, in fact, staying home is as important as the conservatives like to say, then it ought not to be a class privilege. FACT: Think about the impact that economic circumstances have on an American child's educational prospects. "Consider how typical middle-class families raise children" wrote education columnist in The New York Times last year. "Infants' first toys are `touch and feel' books. Toddlers soon `read' stories from memory. Magnetic letters decorate refrigerator doors. Sitting on parents' laps, children `help compose' on computers before they can talk." Whether or not they happen to be enrolled at The Country Club Childcare Center, these children are obviously being taught to appreciate what the education system has to offer. OBSERVATION: Could quality childcare close the gap between the middle class kid with magnets on the fridge and the welfare child whose vocabulary is falling behind by age 3? The evidence suggests that it could--or at least narrow it substantially. FACT: In Massachusetts, childcare teachers have to be college graduates with special training in early childhood development. In Louisiana, they just have to be 18 and in good legal standing. In Maryland, you can't have more than six three-year-olds for each adult caregiver. In Texas, you can have up to 15 kids for each adult. OPINION: For the facts are these: childcare, while filled with the joys we have read about before, is also very time-consuming, very stressful and can be, as already noted, rather tedious as well. Without vast amounts of money, nannies and back-up nannies, when children are small it cannot be combined easily with any sort of career that demands long office hours. Nor can it be easily turned over to the state. There are simply limits to what can be done by extending school hours and thinking up clever schemes like after-school homework clubs: at the end of the day, no one wants their child in school from eight o'clock in the morning until six in the evening, 48 weeks a year. FACT: The national studies find that the number of hours a mom works and the age at which a child enters daycare do not predict a kids outcome. The outcome depends on a real interaction between the quality of childcare, the quality of parenting, the contentment of the parent with the work situation, the emotional and financial consequences of a woman not working, and the willingness of the dad or other significant people to share responsibility. FACT: Last week the largest study ever undertaken of the effects of child care offered some reassurance. Very young children in day care do just about as well as those who stay at home with their mothers. In the area of learning skills, they do a bit better--provided the day care is good. But what is most important by far to development is the quality of a child's family experience during the hours at home. Time, April 14, 1997. FACT: Research conducted with 1,153 children and their families indicates that attachment behavior in infants at 15 months shows no significant relationship to the type of child care they experienced. Insensitive, unresponsive mothering seems to contribute more to insecure attachment than child care arrangements. Science News, April 27, 1996. FACT: According to a study in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, kids cared for by hired help do indeed develop secure attachments to their caregivers, which is good--the kids will be less likely to have emotional or behavioral problems, be more sociable, develop better relationships with peers and be more motivated to try new things. It's the full-time caregiver who lays a foundation for future emotional development, and it doesn't impede the child's development if that caregiver is not a parent. OBSERVATION: About 40% of day-care centers for infants and toddlers gave less than the minimal standard of care. Problems ranged from safety hazards to unresponsive caregivers to a lack of toys. If a caregiver spoons food from one bowl into the mouths of half a dozen toddlers lined up in high chairs, as has been known to happen, not only is the health of the children at risk but they are surely not receiving the kind of attention that promotes healthy brain development. Time, Feb 3, 1997. REPORT: A Baptist church in the small town of Berryville, Ark., closed its day-care center recently after concluding that working mothers too often neglect their children and set bad examples. FACT: The Department of Agriculture calculates that the middle-class parents of a 3-to-5-year-old spend just over $1,260 a year on average for child care. Wealthier families are more likely to opt for the pricier nanny. FACT: The average cost for all families using child care is $74.15 a week, or about 7.5 percent of average pretax family income, which is roughly equal to most workers' employee-contribution rate for Social Security. The rate is much steeper, of course, at the low end of the income scale; families making less than $1,200 a month who use day care spend an average 25.1 percent of their income on day-care expenses. FACT: "day care"….What are we talking about--a few hours a week, or twelve hours a day? Carried out by whom--the thirteen-year-old next door, or a licensed teacher? What sort of arrangement--one on one, or in a large group with several caretakers? What about the children--do they come from secure and stable homes, or are they troubled? How old were they when day care began, and for how long did it continue? THE ISSUES: The concept that motherhood entails staying at home and taking care of the baby 24 hours a day is a myth. It should be replaced with the modern-day concept that motherhood is something that should fit in with the rest of one's life instead of eliminating it. The reality is that many mothers work, and nationally, infants and toddlers are more likely to be with relatives and in parent care than with their mothers, and three- and four-year-olds are more often found in center-based arrangements. Staying home in 2000 is different from what it was in the 1950s. Back then, homemaking was what mothers did. Nowadays the focus has shifted to the kids. "There's been a ratcheting up of expectations about what parents owe their children," argues says Joan Williams in Unbending Gender. "The fear is that you have to spend a lot of time with the lessons, the tutors and helping them do their homework or they won't succeed." Notes Peggy Orenstein, author of Flux, a book based on interviews with women across the country: "There's more pressure to be a perfect mother. Listening to women talk about their expectations of motherhood is like listening to teenage girls talk about weight. You can never be thin enough--and you can never be a good enough mother." Maybe the closest thing
America has to a universal anxiety is the question shared by parents who
have children in day care: Is this good for my kid? THE DEBATE QUESTION: Is the widespread use of childcare harming our children? Worthwhile Web Resources National Child Care Information Center NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund National Center
for the Business of Family Child Care State child care rules vary widely, raising quality concerns The 'child care will harm children' argument at work
@ Harvard: Work/Life Support Services BlueSuitMom.com
-- The child care delimma Child Care Arrangements for Children Under Five: Variation Across States The Hours that Children Under Five Spend in Child Care: Variation Across States The Number of Child Care Arrangements Used by Children Under Five: Variation Across States Snapshots
of America's Families II: 1999 Results
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Is the Widespread
Use of Childcare Harming Our Children?