A Bias Toward Children

Each workday, a majority of the nation's parents entrust the care of their young children to others -- a relatively recent phenomenon that has transformed the issue of child care from a strictly private family matter to one with profound implications for the whole of society.

In this context, the president's threatened veto of the Act for Better Child Care Services (known as the "ABC bill") -- and his similar threat concerning any measure requiring parental leave for the care of young children or for family emergencies -- does far more to illustrate his administration's social policy than does his pro-family rhetoric.

The ABC bill has generated significant controversy in and out of the religious community about the church-state implications of subsidized child care. Churches and synagogues operate, or provide space for, many of the nation's day care centers. (A National Council of Churches survey revealed that 18,000 member churches are involved in child care programs.) Thus, federally-subsidized child care often looks like state support for religion.

Those who support the subsidies in the ABC bill -- which would not go directly to care centers, but to parents in the form of vouchers -- argue that such assistance is necessary to help make quality day care accessible, especially to low-income parents. Others respond that the use of vouchers could eventually hurt the same low-income parents and children if a similar system were begun for the schooling of elementary-age children.

According to Karen Collins, associate director of the Child Advocacy Office at the National Council of Churches, "Our major concern is that the voucher system could seriously undercut public education in elementary schools" if parents were ever able to use such federal subsidies for private schooling.

In 1972, 80 percent of federal child care spending was targeted at low-income families. During the 1980s, the bulk of federal child care subsidies moved from low-income families to the middle class, primarily in the form of income tax credits, despite the fact that nearly 25 percent of children under 6 are poor. Today, less than 30 percent of child care spending goes to low-income families, who pay an average of one-quarter of their income for day care. Day care can be a necessity for single mothers trying to finish school or hold a job -- which is often a requirement for welfare recipients to stay eligible for assistance -- let alone the benefits of providing support for the parent and a social setting for the child. The ABC bill, which focuses its spending primarily on low- and moderate-income people, begins to address this crying need.

BY THE END OF THE DECADE, nearly 80 percent of American children will have mothers in the work force. If all else remained the same, this trend in itself would necessitate a massive expansion of available child care. But all else needn't -- and probably won't -- remain the same. The most significant change in child care in the next decade or two is likely to be in gender roles.

Earlier this year there was a flood of media attention to the child care issue connected to Mother's Day. Although the mass media is unlikely to do the same with Father's Day, the connection is every bit as valid. Father's Day should be celebrated as a day to revel in the intimate bond between fathers and their children, and thus appropriately a time to look at how that relationship is lived out.

Men are beginning to see that the responsibility for child care is, rightfully, equally theirs. The long-standing societal assumption that raising the children is women's work -- and thus that the primary sacrifice of career opportunities should fall to the mother -- is being overturned, albeit slowly. As more and more fathers share the primary care of their children, another myth is falling by the wayside as well: the popular image of the clumsy, incompetent father, barely able to change a diaper, let alone provide the tender, nurturing care a baby needs.

Although many parents have felt it necessary or desirable to consign to others the daytime care of their young children, more and more parents are exploring alternatives to both the traditional, stay-at-home mother and to institutional day care. For example, here at Sojourners, as in a growing number of other places, parents have put together a variety of creative alternative arrangements to balance child-rearing and work. Some families exchange child care for days or parts of days each week with other families; most of the parents have part-time work arrangements to free up time for child care; and for all of us there is a commitment to shared responsibility between men and women.

Such arrangements entail some lifestyle and career sacrifices. Obviously, a family with two part-time salaries will not have the earning capacity of a two full-time-income family with children in day care. Cutting back to part-time work has a tendency to put an employee on the "mommy track," be they female or male, and less likely to advance in some organizations. But most of those who choose such arrangements feel that it's worth the cost to be able to be the primary nurturers of their young children.

Such flexibility also has costs for the employer. Productivity declines as workers move to part time, and part-time staff members are sometimes gone just when they are needed the most. Because of this, businesses are reluctant to grant their workers such flexibility -- and President Bush has opposed legislation that would require them to do so, claiming that government should not be involved in "dictating fringe benefits."

Care of children needs to be seen as a right and a responsibility, not a fringe benefit. Business has seldom secured or protected the rights of workers without pressure. Business wouldn't pay minimum wage or guarantee a 40-hour workweek unless mandated by law and urged on by organized labor. The same is true of measures to secure the right to balance the demands of work and the raising of young children: Business will not change, in a widespread way, its policies on issues such as flextime, job sharing, and parental leave until the state (urged on by labor) mandates such changes.

In Britain this spring, Parliament abolished a "workplace nurseries" tax. Parents will no longer be taxed on the money their employers contribute to their child care costs. In some countries, with Sweden as the best example, the raising of children is seen as such a high priority that the government will subsidize new parents as they stay home to care for their young children.

Such a priority shift must be taken to heart by our society as well. A bias toward children must be built in to the nation's workplace policies, the allocation of public funds, and tax laws -- with tax credits for parents who stay home with their small children. Such measures will begin to reflect the truth that what is at stake is nothing less than our very future.

Jim Rice is editor of Sojourners.