I’ve been to two child care/early education briefings in less than one week. Clearly the issue is gaining momentum, likely fueled by the President’s push to expand pre-school programs. This is a good thing, since nothing could be more directly tied to women’s economic security. Access to child care is necessary for mothers of young children to work, and those very same families have to pay for the care they receive. (I know, I know, it’s also necessary for dads to work - but still more mothers bear the burden for family care, so this is the way I’m framing it!) So I’ve been paying pretty close attention - here’s the scoop on what you ought to know. (A note on terms - “child care” and “early learning” and “early education” are now used interchangeably by practitioners and policy types, to signify non-parental care in an environment intended to enhance the child’s development, from birth until the beginning of formal schooling. Of course, parents are primary caregivers for their children, and the care they give matters tremendously too, which is why they need support, just like the support provided in a Mothers Center. But it’s a fact now that more and more children also receive non-parental care as well, and that’s what this particular post is about.)
There is simply no debate over the advantages of quality early education. Exposure to an affirmative pre-school experience improves subsequent school performance, income potential and health, and decreases the likelihood of interactions with the criminal justice system or dependence on public assistance programs. It is also quite settled that most American children live in households where their parent(s) or adult guardians are employed outside the home. (70%) So child care is an absolute must for families, because the old model of a working father and stay at home mother is a long gone relic of the past.
What may surprise you is that a huge chunk of child care providers out there are entirely unregulated by any governmental agency. In most states. at least half of all children in non-parental care are in places no inspector ever sees and subject to no minimum safety or education standards whatsoever. As far as the federal government is concerned, only the very poorest can qualify for public funding child care subsidies,. What’s worse, millions of eligible children will qualify but not get the help they need because not enough money is available. Each state can set its own rules, and there is no consistency from one jurisdiction to another. Anyone - absolutely anyone - can put up a sign and start taking care of children for money if s/he wants to. How terrifying is that?
Also shocking - according to the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD - an international alliance of 134 countries in the developed and developing world), the US spends less on early education than any other country. One reason is that child care providers are viewed as “babysitters” rather than educators, a huge mistake considering how much a baby learns in the first few years and the impact it will have on the child’s later life. Often paid less than parking lot attendants, plumbers or dog walkers,, these caregivers are more often than not poorly trained or not trained at all, with no expertise in child development or CPR. The truth is, there is never a time in a child’s life when the quality of care doesn’t matter. Babies are born learners and are developing their brains and bodies even before they leave the womb. The idea that nothing of any significance happens in a child’s brain until he or she shows up for kindergarten is just flat wrong.
Child care is an economic issues. It is not a private matter, or a family issue, or a woman’s issue, or so peripheral as to not figure as a national priority. Unless there is a safe, nurturing place to leave a child, dads and moms can’t support the family financially. The nation simply cannot be economically strong if workers can’t go to work because of no access to quality care. The economy can’t function unless educated and trained workers are available for paid employment. These days, that most certainly includes women, who are better educated than men, comprise half the paid workforce, and 80% of whom will become mothers. An economy that can’t utilize its labor force to best advantage imperils its national security. Yes, it’s true - lousy child care options are a threat to national security.
Child care is a social justice issue. There are more single parent households in the US than in other OECD countries. Children in households headed by single mothers have a poverty rate of 63%. For all parents, the US offers the absolute least in terms of social supports - we have no paid leave for new parents, no cash supports for parents of young children, no national child care program, and an inadequate child care subsidy program. To make matters worse, women on average earn less than men, and it is in precisely households with women ( or headed only by a woman) that must bear the cost of child care. This explains in part why social mobility, or the ability to move up to a higher income and increase your standard of living, is actually lower in the US than in many other countries, including….FRANCE!
Child care is an education issue. We know that education does not actually close the income gap. Kids from poor families are more likely to be poor themselves, and kids from well off families are likely to be well off. There is no argument that access to affordable, high quality early education results in higher reading levels, higher graduation rates, less truancy, less incarceration and less money spent on interventions when children are older and change is harder. The return on investment in early care and education has shown to be in the vicinity of 16% - huge! (Best return outside of a Ponzi scheme.) Our current public education system actually exacerbates income disparity. The real window of opportunity is not in elementary education, or even a college education. If you want to improve a child’s chances at life, and improve the quality of life for all of us, making the most of the pre-school years is where the opportunity lies.
Over and over again, the experts at the briefings I attended emphasized that child care has to be a national policy. Every citizen is impacted and affected whether he or she has children or not. The quality of our individual lives is dependent upon the quality of the lives of the people next door, down the street, running our businesses, serving in our governments, policing our streets and designing our cities. We have to change the conversation and put child care right where it belongs - smack dab in the middle of our most pressing national priorities. Other countries already have.
You can read about both briefings here and here. You can also watch videos of the speakers - Kristen Rowe-Finkbeiner at The Aspen Institute briefing and Karen Kornbluh at the New America briefing are particularly good!
Til next time,
Your (Wo)Man in Washington
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