TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/87/87child.1

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                                                                                June 22, 1987

LIVING

The Child-Care Dilemma


Millions of U.S. families face a wrenching question:  Who's
minding the kids?


The smell of wet paint wafts through the house on a tree-lined
street on Chicago's North Side. Marena McPherson, 37, chose a
peach tint for the nursery, a gender-neutral color. But the
paint had a will of its own and dried a blushing shade of pink.
Ah well, no time to worry about that. With the baby due in
less than a month, there are too many other concerns. Like
choosing a name, furnishing the baby's room, and reading up on
infant care and attending childbirth classes. Above all,
McPherson must tackle the overriding problem that now confronts
most expectant American mothers. Who will care for this
precious baby when she returns to work?

An attorney who helps run a Chicago social-service agency,
McPherson has accumulated two months of paid sick leave and
vacation time. She plans to spend an additonal four months
working part time, but then she must return to her usual full
schedule. So for several months she has been exhaustively
researching the local child-care scene. The choices, she has
learned, are disappointingly few. Only two day-care centers in
Chicago accept infants; both are expensive, and neight appeals.
"With 20 or 30 babies, it's probably all they can do to get
each child's need met," says McPherson. She would prefer having
a baby-sitter come to her home. "That way there's a sense of
security and family." But she worries about the cost and
reliability; "People will quit, go away for the summer, get
sick."  In an ideal world, she says, she would choose someone
who reflects her own values and does not spend the day watching
soaps. "I suspect I will have to settle for things not being
perfect."

That anxiety has become a standard rite of passage for American
parents. Beaver's family, with Ward Cleaver off to work in his
suit and June in her apron in the kitchen, is a vanishing breed.
Less than a fifth of American families now fit that model, down
from a third 15 years ago. Today more than 60% of mothers with
children under 14 are in the labor force. Even more striking
about half of American women are making the same painful
decision as McPherson and returning to work before their child's
first birthday. Most do so because they have to; seven out of
ten working mothers say they need their salaries to make ends
meet.

With both Mom and Dad away at the office or store or factory,
the child-care crunch has become the most wrenching personal
problem facing millions of American families. In 1986, 9
million preschoolers spent their days in the hands of someone
other than their mother. Millions of older children participate
in programs providing after-school supervision. As American
women continue to pour into the work force, the trend will
accelerate. "We are in the midst of an explosion," says Elinor
Guggenheimer, president of the Manhattan-based Child Care Action
Campaign. In ten years, she predicts, the number of children
under six who will need daytime supervision will grow more than
50%. Says Jay Belsky, a professor of human development at
Pennsylvania State University:  "We are as much a society
dependent on female labor, and thus in need of a child-care
system, as we are a society dependent on the automobile, and
thus in need of roads.

At the moment, though, the American child-care system -- to the
extent that there is one -- is riddled with potholes.
Throughout the country, working parents are faced with a triple
quandary:  day care is hard to find, difficult to afford and
often of distressingly poor quality. Waiting lists at good
facilities are so long that parents apply for a spot months
before their children are born. Or even earlier. The Empire
State Center in Farmingdale, N.Y., received an application from
a woman attorney a week after she became engaged to marry.
Apparently she hoped to time her pregnancy for an anticipated
opening. The Jeanne Simon Center in Burlington, Vt., has a
folder of applications labeled "preconception."

Finding an acceptable day-care arrangement is just the
beginning of the struggle. Parents must then maneuver to
maintain it. Michele Theriot of Santa Monica, CAlif., a
37-year-old theatrical producer, has been scrambling ever since
her daughter Zoe was born 2 1/2 years ago. In that short period
she has employed a Danish au pair, who quit after eight months;
a French girl, who stayed 2 1/2 months; and an Iranian, who
lasted a week. "If you get a good person, it's great," says
Theriot, "but they have a tendency to move on."  Last September,
Theriot decided to switch Zoe into a "family-care" arrangement,
in which she spends seven hours a dy in the home of another
mother. Theriot toured a dozen such facilities before selecting
one. "I can't even tell you what I found out there," she
bristles. In one home the "kids were all lined up in front of
the TV like a bunch of zombies."  At another she was appalled
by the filth. "I sat my girl down on the cleanest spot I could
find and started interviewing the care giver. And you know what
she did?" asks the incredulous mother. "She began throwing
empty yogurt cups at my child's head. As though that was
playful!"

Theriot is none too sure that the center she finally chose is
much better. Zoe's diapers aren't always changed, instructions
about giving medicine are sometimes ignored and worse, "she's
stared having nightmares."  En route to day care on a recent
day, Zoe cried out, "No school! No school!" and became
distraught. It is time, Theriot concludes to start the
child-care search again.

Fretting about the effects of day care on children has become
a national preoccupation. What troubles lie ahead for a
genertaion reared by strangers?  What kind of adults will they
become?  "It is scaring everybody that a whole generation of
children is being raised in a way that has never happened
before," says Edward Zigler, professor of psychology at Yale and
an authority on chid care. At least one major survey of current
research, by Penn State's Belsky, suggests that extensive day
care in the first year of life raises the risk of emotional
problems, a conclusion that has mortified already guilty working
parents. With high-quality supervision costing upwards of $100
a week, many families are placing their children in the hands
of untrained, over-worked personnel. "In some places, that
means one woman taking care of nine babies," says Zigler.
"Nobody doing that can give them the stimulation they need. We
encounter some real horror stories out there, with babies being
tied to cribs."

The U.S. is the only Western industrialized nation that does
not guarantee a working mother the right to a leave of absence
after she has a child. Although the Supreme Court ruled last
January that states may require businesses to provide maternity
leaves with job security, only 40% of working women receive such
protection through their companies. Even for these, the leaves
are generally brief and unpaid. This forces many women to
return to work sooner than they would like and creates a huge
demand for infant care, the most expensive an difficult
child-care service to supply. The premature separation takes
a personal toll as well, observes Harvard Pediatrician T. Berry
Brazelton, heir apparent to Benjamin Spock as the country's
preeminent guru on child rearing. "Many parents return to the
workplace grieving."

New York City Police Officer Janis Curtin resumed her
assignment in south Queens just eight weeks after the birth of
Peter. The screaming sirens and shrill threats of street thugs
were just background noise to a relentless refrain in her head:
"Who can I trust to care for my child?"  She tried everything,
from leaving Peter at the homes of other mothers to handing him
over to her police-officer husband at the station house door
when they worked alternating shifts. With their schedules in
constant flux, there were snags every step of the way. Curtin
was more fortunate than most workers:  police-department policy
allows a year of unpaid "hardship" leave for child care. She
decided to invoke that provision.

The absence of national policies to help working mothers
reflects traditional American attitudes:  old-fashioned
motherhood has stood right up there with the flag and apple pie
in the pantheon of Amiercan ideals. To some people day-care
centers, particularly government-sponsored ones, threaten family
values; they seem a step on the slippery slope toward an
Orwellian socialist nightmare. But such abstract concerns have
largely receded as the very concrete need for child care is
confronted by people from all walks of life.

Child care is fast emerging as a political issue. At least
three Democratic presidential candidates have been emphasizing
the need for better facilities and calling for federal action.
Former Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt has proposed that the
U.S. Government establish a voucher system to help low-income
parents pay for day care. Delaware Senator Joseph Biden favors
federal child-care subsidies for the working poor and tax
incentives to encourage businesses to provide day care. If
elected, he vows, he will set up a center for White House
employees as an example to other employers. Massachusetts
Governor Michael Dukakis, who was established the country's most
comprehensive state-supported day- care system, would like to
see the Federal Government fund similar programs throughout the
U.S.

Last week the issue surfaced on Capitol Hill. In the House,
Republican Nancy Johnson of Connecticut and Democrat Cardiss
Collins of Illinois introduced legislation to establish a
national clearing house for information on child-care services.
A Senate subcommittee began hearings focused on the shortage
of good-quality, affordable day care. Says Chairman Christopher
Dodd of Connecticut:  "It's about time we did something on this
critical problem."

Without much federal help, the poorest mothers are caught in a
vise. Working is the only way out of poverty, but it means
putting children into day care, which is unaffordable. "The
typical cost of full-time care is about $3,000 a year for one
child, or one- third of the poverty-level income for a family
of three," says Helen Blank of the Children's Defense Fund in
Washington. As a result, many poort mothers leave their young
children alone for long periods or entrust them to siblings only
slightly older. Others simply give up on working.

Rosalind Dove, 29, of Los Angeles, is giving it her best shot.
A single mother of four, she worked for five years as a
custodian in a public high school, bringing home $1,000 in a
good month. "I was paying $400 a month for child care," she
recals. "We didn't buy anything."  When that failed, she began
brining her children to work with her, hiding them in an empty
home-economics classroom while she mopped floors and hauled huge
barrels of trash for eight hours a day. "I'd sneak them in
after the teacher left and check on them every 30 minutes or
so."  She finally quit last February and slipped onto the
welfare rolls. She applied for state child-care assistance only
to learn were were 3,000 others on the waiting list.
Frustrated, she returned to work this month. "Don't ask me how
I'm going to manage," she says.

Child care has always been an issue for the working poor.
Traditionally, they have relied on neighbors or extended family
and, in the worst of times, have left their children to wander
in the streets or tied to the bedpost. In the mid-19th century
the number of wastrels in the streets was so alarming that
charity-minded society ladies established day nurseries in
cities around the country. A few were sponsored by employers.
Gradually, local regulatory boards began to discourage infant
care, restrict nursery hours and place emphasis on a
kindergarten or Montessori-style instructional approach. The
nurseries became nursery schools, no longer suited to the needs
of working mothers. During World War II, when women were
mobilized to join wartime industry, day nurseries returned, with
federal and local government sponsorship. Most of the centers
vanished in the postwar years, and the Donna Reed era of the
idealized nuclear family began.

Two historic forces brought an end to that era, sweeping women
out of the home and into the workplace and creating a new demand
for child care. First came the feminist movement of the '60s,
which encouraged housewives to seek fulfillment in a career.
Then economic recessions and inflation struck in the 1970s.
Between 1973 and 1983, the median income for young families fell
by more than 16%. Suddenly the middle-class dream of a house,
a car and three square meals for the kids carried a dual-income
price tag. "What was once a problem only of poor families has
now become a part of daily life and a basic concern of typical
American families," says Sheila B. Kamerman, a professor of
social policy and planning at Columbia University and co-author
of Child Care: Facing the Hard Choices.

Some women are angry that the feminist movement failed to
foresee the conflict that wold arise between work and family
life. "Safe, licensed child chare should have been as prominent
a feminist rallying cry as safe, legal abortions," observes Joan
Walsh, a legislative consultant and essayist in Sacramento.

In the early 1970s, there was a flurry of congressional
activity to provide child care funds for the working poor and
regulate standards. But under pressure from conservative
groups, Richard Nixon vetoed a comprehensive child-development
program in 1971, refusing, he sid, to put the Government's "vast
moral authority" on the side of "communal" approaches to child
rearing. The Reagan Administration has further reduced the
federal role in child care. In inflation-adjusted dollars,
funding for direct day-care subsidies for low- and middle-income
families has dropped by 28%.

California, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut
are among the few states that have devoted considerable
resources to improving child-care programs. Most states have
done virtually nothing. Thirty-three have lowered their
standards and reduced enforcement for licenses day-care centers.
As of last year, 23 states were providing fewer children with
day care than in 1981.

Nor have American businesses stepped in to fill the void.
"They acknowledge that child care is an important need, but they
don't see it as their problem," says Kamerman. Of the nation's
6 million employers, only about 3,000 provide some sort of
child-care assistance. That is up from about 100 in 1978, but
most merely provide advice or referrals. Only about 150
employers provide on- site or near-site day-care centers.
"Today's corporate personnel policies remain stuck in a 1950s
time warp," charges David Blankenhorn, director of the
Manhattan-based Institute for American Values. "They are rooted
in the quaint assumption that employees have 'someone at home'
to attend to family matters."

There are basically three kinds of day care in the U.S. For
children under five, the most common arrangement is "family" or
"home-based" care, in which toddlers are minded in the homes of
other mothers. According to a Census Bureau report called
Who's Minding the Kids, 37% of preschool children of working
mothers spend their days in such facilities. An additional 23%
are in organized day-care centers or preschools. The third type
of arrangement, which prevails for older children and for 31%
of those under five, is supervision in the child's own home by
a nanny, sitter, relative or friend.

Home-based groups are popular primarily because they are
affordable, sometimes costing as little as $40 a week. The
quality depends on the dedication of the individual mothers,
maay of whom are busy not only with their paid charges but with
their own children as well. Darlene Daniels, 31, a single
mother of three in Chicago, has been through four such sitters
in six months. Two proved too expensive and careless for
Daniels, who was earning $7 an hour as a janitor; another robbed
her. "For most people, it's not their own kids, and they're
just looking at the dollar sign," she complains.

Only eight states have trainig requirements for home-based
centers. Regulations governing the ratio of attendants to tots
vary widely. In Maryland there must be one adult for every two
children under age two. But in Georgia each adult is allowed
to care for up to ten chldren under age two and, in Idaho,
twelve.

A private nanny or au pair usually assures a child more
individual attention. Professional couples, who must work long
hours or travel, often find that such live-in arrangements are
the only practical solution, though the cost can exceed $300 a
week. However, most live-in sitters in the U.S., unlike the
licensed nannies of Britain, have no formal training. Many
speak English poorly, and agencies frequently do a cursory job
of screening them. A Dallas mother who asked an attorney friend
to run a check on her newly hired nanny was told the woman was
wanted for writing bad checks. "People need a license to cut
your hair but not to care for your child," observes Elaine Claar
Campbell, a Chicago investment banker. She and her
lawyer-husband Ray, armed with five pages of questions, spent
three months interviewing more than 50 people, before settling
on Clara Hawkes, 47, an artist from Santa Fe whose own daughter
is a National Merit Scholar. "You don't want to gamble with
your child," says Ray.

Au pairs, usually European girls between 18 and 25, are less
expensive, receiving an average of $100 a week plus room and
board. Most stay only a year, and few have legal working papers.
The immigration law that took effect this month will make the
employers of such workers liable for fines up to $10,000, though
the Immigration and Naturalization Service does not plan an
aggressive crackdown on domestic help.

Concerns about legality have led more families to hire American
au pairs -- frequently teenage girls from the Midwest and often
Mormons. "We Mormons come from big families, so we have
experience with kids," explains Karen Howell, 19, a Californian
who is spending a year with a Washington, D.C. family. "We
don't drink, and we know the meaning of hard work."  Two
agencies -- the Experiment in International Living and the
American Institute for Foreign Study -- have Government
permission to bring in 3,100 European au pairs a year on
cultural-exchange visas. Although the programs are more
expensive than traditional au pair arrangment, host families are
assured that their helpers are legal.

The professional day-care center is the fastest-growing option
for working parents. There are an estimated 60,000 around the
country, about half nonprofit and half operated as businesses.
Costs vary widely, from $40 a week to as much as $120. In the
best centers, children are cared for by dedicated professionals.
At the nonprofit Empire State center in Farmingdale, N.Y.,
teachers make up up lesson plans even for infants. Empire,
which receives partial funding from New York State, keeps
parents closely informed of their child's development. "If a
child takes a first step, develops in the least, the parent is
called," says Director Ana Fontana.

Not all day-care centers are so conscientious. Day-care
staffers rank in the lowest 10% of U.S. wage earners, a fact
that contributes to an averge turnover rate of 36% a year.
Says Caroline Zinsser of the Center for Public Advocacy Research
in Manhattan:  "It says something about our society's values
that we pay animal caretakers more than people who care for our
children." Gilda Ongkeko is delighted with the quality of the
Hill an' Dale Family Learning Center in Santa Monica, Calif.,
attended by Jason, 4. In her job as owner of a preschool-supply
company, she has come to appreciate how unusual it is. "I've
been to over 1,000 child- care centers," she sys, "and I'd say
that 90% of them should be shut down. It's pathetic."

Experts worry that a two-tier system is emerging, with quality
care available to the affluent, and everyone else settling for
less. "We are at about the same place with child care as we were
when we started universal education," says Zigler of Yale.
"Then some kids were getting Latin and Greek and being prepared
for Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Other kids were lucky if they
could learn to write their own name."

In 1827 Massachusetts led the way to universal education by
becoming the first state to require towns with 500 or more
families to build high schools. Now it is showing the way to
universal child care. Aided by a booming economy, the state has
worked out a program with employers, school boards, and unions
and nonprofit groups to encourage the expansion and improvement
of child-care facilites. Small companies and groups can receive
low-interest loans from the state to build day-care facilities.
Funds are earmarked for creating centers in public housing
projects. School systems can get financial aid for after-school
programs. A statewide referral network serves both individual
parents and corporations looking for child care.

Emilia Davis, 38, of Boston's working-class Roslindale section,
is the beneficiary of another of the state's far-reaching
programs. After years of dependence on welfare to support
herself and her five children, Davis, who is separated from her
husband, is now going to college with the ultimate hope of
finding a job. The state's E.T. (employment and training)
program provides her with vouchers for day care in the public
housing complex where she lives. "Child care is an absolute
precondition if one is serious about trying to help people lift
themselves out of poverty," insists Governor Dukakis. Though
the state will spend an estimated $27 million on day care under
the E.T. program this year -- and a total of $101 million on all
chld-care related services -- it claims to have saved $121
million in welfare costs last year alone. Next month the sate
will begin a pilot program that will pay 20% to 40% of
child-care costs for 150 working-class families.

San Francisco has adopted another innovative approach. It
requires developers of major new commercial office and hotel
space to include an on-site child-care center or pay $1 per sq.
ft. of space to the city's child-care fund. The state of
California is spending $319 million this year on child-care
subsidies for 100,000 children. It also funds a nework of 72
resource and referral agencies.

Because such state programs are the exception, a number of
political leaders and lobbying groups are calling for federal
intervention. This summer a coaltion of 64 groups -- including
the National Federal of Teachers and the Child Welfare League
of America -- will propose a comprehensive national child-care
bill, which will probably call for increased support to help
low- and moderate-income families pay for child care.
Legislation has already been introduced in both houses of
Congress to create a national parental-leave policy.

In an era of towering federal deficits, much of the future
initiative will have to come from the private sector. By the
year 2000, women will make up half the work force. Says Labor
Secretary Bill Brock:  "We still act as though workers have no
families. Labor and management haven't faced that adequately,
or at all."

A few companies are in the forefront. Merck & Co., a large
pharmaceutical concern based in Rahway, N.J., invested $100,000
seven years ago to establish a day-care center in a church less
than two miles from its headquarters. Parents pay $550 a month
for infants and $385 for toddlers. Many spend lunch hours with
their children. "I can be there in four minutes," says Steven
Klimczak, a Merck corporate-finance executive whose
three-year-old daughter attends the center. "It's very
reliable, and that's important in terms of getting your job
done."

Elsewhere in the country, companies have banded together to
share the costs of providing day-care services to employees.
A space in Rich's department store in downtown Atlanta serves
the children of not only its own employees but also of workers
at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the First National Bank
of Atlanta, Georgia-Pacific and the Atlanta Journal and
Constitution newspapers.

Businesses that have made the investment in child care say it
pays off handsomely by reducing turnover and absenteeism. A
large survey has shown that parents lose an average of eight
days a year from work because of child-care problems and nearly
40% consider quitting. Stuides at Merck suggest that the
company also saves on sick leave due to stress-related illness.
"We have got an awful lot of comments from managers about
lessened stress and less unexpected leave time," says Spokesman
Art Strohmer. At Stride Rite Corp., a 16-year-old, on-site
day-care center in Boston and a newer one at the Cambridge
headquarters have engendered unusual company loyalty and low
turnover. "People want to work here, and child care seems to
be a catalyst," says Stride Rite Chairman Arnold Hiatt. "To me
it is as natural as having a clean-air policy or a medical
benefit."

The generation of workers graduating from college today may
find themselves in a better position. They belong to the
"baby-bust" generation, and their samll numbers, says Harvard
Economist David Bloom, will force employers to be creative in
searching for labor. Child-care arragnements, he says, will be
the "fringe benefits of the 1990s."  The economics of the
situation, if nothing else, will provoke a change in the
attitude of business, just as the politics of the situation is
changing the attitude of government. In order to attract the
necessary women -- and men -- employers are going to have to
help them find ways to cope more easily with their duties as
parents.

By Claudia Wallis. Reported by Jon D. Hull/Los Angeles,
Melissa Ludtke/Boston and Elizabeth Taylor/Chicago.