U.S. Child Care: Critical But Still Lacking
A growing percentage of U.S. employers are working to help employees with their childcare needs. This trend is being driven by the fact that child care has become crucial to U.S. working mothers with young children. A new analysis by the Urban Institute, a nonprofit policy research organization, found that three quarters of young children of employed mothers are in nonparental childcare arrangements while their mothers work. About 40% are in these childcare arrangements for more than 35 hours a week.
Despite the critical role that child care is now playing in the lives of U.S. families, it is far from a high-quality industry, reports HRI's new Child Care report. Although abuse is rare in childcare settings, mediocrity is pervasive. "It's better than we fear, but still less than our children deserve," claims Harriet Brown, author of The Goodbye Window: A Year in the Life of a Daycare Center. Some experts estimate that 80% of U.S. children spend up to 50 hours per week in child care that could be rated only poor or mediocre. Even worse, 35% to 40% of the child care received by infants and toddlers is deemed of such low quality that the safety and health of the children are imperiled.
In the U.S., high-quality care is not only scarce but hard to afford for many parents; one of every three families with young children earns less than $25,000 a year. Yet to place a child in a daycare center full time can easily run a family $4,000 or more a year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In fact, a 1998 Children's Defense Fund study found that many parents spend more on child care than on in-state college tuition. Crushed under the expense of obtaining the best possible child care, many families feel forced to resort to less-expensive and often inferior options. Such problems are especially disturbing in light of new research showing that the first years of life are critical to a child's intellectual, emotional and social development. In short, today's childcare arrangements may have a large impact on the quality of tomorrow's workforce.
Recognizing the importance of this issue, a growing number of U.S. firms are offering some type of childcare benefit. A Hay Benefits Report survey of over 1,000 predominantly medium-size and large U.S. employers found that over three quarters offer childcare benefits, up from just over half in 1990. The most commonly offered childcare benefit is the dependent-care flexible spending account, but some major corporations are taking other steps as well. For example, there is the American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care, a corporate team effort to invest more than $100 million in dependent-care programs in 68 communities across the country.
There has also been a trend toward developing emergency-care services for employees. DuPont Company, for example, has collaborated with a commercial firm to create a backup/emergency childcare program called "Just in Time Care." The program allows employees to call a toll-free number to find someone to come to the home or to find a childcare center near the worksite that would take the employee's child on a school holiday, a snow day or when the child is sick. The program was later expanded to include the last week of summer, a time during which school is not yet open but most summer camp programs have ended. In response to employee surveys, management also has implemented a dependent-care travel reimbursement policy: DuPont employees who have to be gone overnight on business are reimbursed for the cost of taking their children under age 18 with them.
Despite such laudable corporate efforts, the question remains whether enough is being done by the government and the private sector to increase both the quality and affordability of U.S. child care. In the upcoming presidential elections, the debate over this question is likely to play a significant role. Both of the major party candidates have vowed to increase childcare funding, and at least one is proposing tax incentives for employers providing onsite day care or emergency childcare services.
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For more information on the Urban Institute's new childcare analyses, please see
http://www.urban.org/news/pressrel/pr000308.html
For information on the U.S. Department of Labor's Business-to-Business Mentoring Initiative on Child Care, see
http://www.dol.gov/dol/wb/public/childcare/b2bintro.htm
For information from The National Child Care Information Center, see
http://nccic.org/cctopics.html
Despite the critical role that child care is now playing in the lives of U.S. families, it is far from a high-quality industry, reports HRI's new Child Care report. Although abuse is rare in childcare settings, mediocrity is pervasive. "It's better than we fear, but still less than our children deserve," claims Harriet Brown, author of The Goodbye Window: A Year in the Life of a Daycare Center. Some experts estimate that 80% of U.S. children spend up to 50 hours per week in child care that could be rated only poor or mediocre. Even worse, 35% to 40% of the child care received by infants and toddlers is deemed of such low quality that the safety and health of the children are imperiled.
In the U.S., high-quality care is not only scarce but hard to afford for many parents; one of every three families with young children earns less than $25,000 a year. Yet to place a child in a daycare center full time can easily run a family $4,000 or more a year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In fact, a 1998 Children's Defense Fund study found that many parents spend more on child care than on in-state college tuition. Crushed under the expense of obtaining the best possible child care, many families feel forced to resort to less-expensive and often inferior options. Such problems are especially disturbing in light of new research showing that the first years of life are critical to a child's intellectual, emotional and social development. In short, today's childcare arrangements may have a large impact on the quality of tomorrow's workforce.
Recognizing the importance of this issue, a growing number of U.S. firms are offering some type of childcare benefit. A Hay Benefits Report survey of over 1,000 predominantly medium-size and large U.S. employers found that over three quarters offer childcare benefits, up from just over half in 1990. The most commonly offered childcare benefit is the dependent-care flexible spending account, but some major corporations are taking other steps as well. For example, there is the American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care, a corporate team effort to invest more than $100 million in dependent-care programs in 68 communities across the country.
There has also been a trend toward developing emergency-care services for employees. DuPont Company, for example, has collaborated with a commercial firm to create a backup/emergency childcare program called "Just in Time Care." The program allows employees to call a toll-free number to find someone to come to the home or to find a childcare center near the worksite that would take the employee's child on a school holiday, a snow day or when the child is sick. The program was later expanded to include the last week of summer, a time during which school is not yet open but most summer camp programs have ended. In response to employee surveys, management also has implemented a dependent-care travel reimbursement policy: DuPont employees who have to be gone overnight on business are reimbursed for the cost of taking their children under age 18 with them.
Despite such laudable corporate efforts, the question remains whether enough is being done by the government and the private sector to increase both the quality and affordability of U.S. child care. In the upcoming presidential elections, the debate over this question is likely to play a significant role. Both of the major party candidates have vowed to increase childcare funding, and at least one is proposing tax incentives for employers providing onsite day care or emergency childcare services.
====================================================
For more information on the Urban Institute's new childcare analyses, please see
http://www.urban.org/news/pressrel/pr000308.html
For information on the U.S. Department of Labor's Business-to-Business Mentoring Initiative on Child Care, see
http://www.dol.gov/dol/wb/public/childcare/b2bintro.htm
For information from The National Child Care Information Center, see
http://nccic.org/cctopics.html