FEMINISM AND FAMILY: Children as a Public Good
Strober, Myra H.
WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY are children? In twenty-first-century America, the answer too often is "their parents." Although politicians and pundits frequently make pious pronouncements calling...
...This philosophy was most clearly articulated by President Richard Nixon, when he vetoed the Child Development Act of 1971: "For the Federal Government to plunge headlong financially into supporting child development would commit the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over against [sic] the family-centered approach...
...the argument here is that meeting children's needs should be a collective responsibility as well...
...The birth rates in these countries are now below replacement...
...Among school-age children, ages six to twelve, 41 percent were cared for by a parent, 23 percent by a relative, 15 percent in before- and after-school programs, 10 percent by the child him or herself, 7 percent in family child care, and 4 percent by a nanny or babysitter...
...A change in the national mindset about the value of children would lead government, private businesses, and nonprofit organizations to develop policies to assist parents in meeting their child-rearing responsibilities...
...In other countries, most notably Japan, Spain, and Italy, people have reacted to the unwillingness of employers and the government to help parents combine work with child-rearing by not having children or by having only one...
...Although parents reap the rewards of well-reared children (emotional rather than economic rewards in this day and age), children whose needs have been met confer benefits as well on society as a whole...
...Census Bureau, Current Poppulation Reports, pp...
...Determining the quality of care in familychildcare homes is difficult, because so many are unlicensed...
...Not only do employees experience reduced stress, higher morale, and a greater ability to respond to their family's needs, but employers gain increased productivity...
...Among five-year-olds, 40 percent were cared for at centers, 19 percent by a parent, 19 percent by a relative, 11 percent in family child care, 8 percent in before- and after-school programs, and 3 percent by a nanny or babysitter...
...of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Working in the Twenty-First Century," 1999...
...Quality control, as currently practiced, has more to do with the child's physical safety than with the emotional or educational skills of the provider or the content of the program...
...Care by a parent means care by the parent who is not at the place of employment during the time of child care...
...In addition, 14 percent of preschoolers were cared for in family child care, and 4 percent were cared for primarily by a nanny or babysitter...
...We are one of the few industrialized countries that do not provide such leave...
...Although politicians and pundits frequently make pious pronouncements calling children "our best hope," "our future," and "our nation's most valuable resource," mouthing such sentiments is a far cry from taking collective responsibility...
...Although children under eighteen represent about one-quarter of the total population, they are more than onethird of those in poverty...
...Studies of family-child-care homes find that their quality is more variable than that in centers...
...What are we doing about the fact (published by our own government) that 12.9 million children under the age of eighteen-17.6 percent of all children—live in poverty, that they go hungry, have inadequate clothing and shelter, and are ill-equipped for the education they need...
...U.S...
...According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 1999, the laborforce participation rate of mothers with schoolage children, six to seventeen, was 79 percent...
...http:/ /www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/phc-t9.html U.S...
...We could also stop discriminating against part-time workers, paying them less per hour than employees who do the same work full time, and often offering them no benefits...
...We have to revise the national mindset, visible on the left as well as the right, that puts sole responsibility for children in the hands of individual families, many of whom are ill-equipped to give them the care and opportunities necessary to provide for the citizens, workers, and human beings we wish to develop...
...Child care in a center is expensive, and many families cannot afford it...
...Child Care I won't focus here on the timeworn debate about whether mothers of young children should work outside the home...
...U.S...
...In 2000, among mothers with infants, the labor-force participation rate was 55 percent, down slightly from 59 percent two years earlier...
...Because children are considered a private good and child-rearing a private activity, they get little assistance from either employers or the government...
...It requires helping their parents, and particularly their mothers, earn higher incomes...
...There needs to be national recognition of the service that parents are providing to the society as a whole—and some kind of reimbursement for their efforts...
...It is enough to say that mothers are in the workforce by economic necessity and seek an income so that they can improve their lives and the lives of their families...
...For the vast majority of families, the division of emotional and housekeeping labor and income-producing labor between men and women is no longer an option...
...Washington, D.C.: U.S...
...This would be expensive for employers, and so it might result in less part-time work...
...Census Bureau, Median Family Income for Families with Four Persons, http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/ 4person.html U.S...
...http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/income00/ statemhi.html U.S...
...it costs between $5,000 and $10,000 per year per child, depending on the age of the child (infant care costs more) and the geographic location...
...Lotte Bailyn has done research on firms that have changed their professional structures to allow parents (and others) to work on more reasonable schedules...
...The United States lags behind all other western democracies in providing for their needs...
...Washington, D.C., U.S...
...And we would seek collective solutions for their care...
...This is not a new argument on the left, but it is one rarely articulated these days...
...A second problem is that children don't vote...
...On balance, however, the prohibition would be beneficial...
...In some areas, it is even more expensive than $10,000 per year...
...Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute, May 2002...
...Dept...
...gov/ macro/032002/povinew01_001.htm U.S...
...Others in this series will discuss the rhetoric and sentiments associated with the changing norms of motherhood and their intensive demands...
...ARECENT BOOK by Suzanne Helburn and Barbara Bergmann underscores the problems with our current child-care system (or lack thereof...
...An exit poll found that 88 percent of the three-fourths of the electorate that had voted against the measure agreed with the statement, "Child care should be paid for by parents, not by the whole community...
...Among the 25 countries surveyed, the percentage of all children in poverty ranged from a low of 3 percent in Finland to a high of 24 percent in Russia...
...http://www.edsource.org/ sch_naep03.cfm Luxembourg Income Study, "Poverty Rates for Children by Family Type," 2000...
...children are in poverty, one of the highest percentages in the study...
...If that were done, employers who wanted their professional and managerial workers to put in more than forty hours a week would have to pay time and a half for overtime and double time for weekends...
...We should stop punishing them for working part time...
...Finally, we must mend our child-care system so that all children who need it get quality care...
...Jacobs suspects, as I do, that under those circumstances, employers would get the same work done by hiring more employees and helping current employees to work more efficiently...
...Living with a single mother increases children's chances of being in poverty in all the countries in the Luxembourg study...
...We need to make a reality of the rhetoric that sees children as our most valuable asset...
...Children are one of the few groups that have not yet created a social movement to improve their situation...
...Government Printing Office, 2000...
...The second (related) problem with child care is its quality...
...MYRA H. STROBER is a labor economist and professor of education and business at Stanford University...
...In recent years, there has been little progress on the matter of pay equity (paying women the same as men for jobs requiring the same education and experience...
...the public as well as individual students and parents benefit when its citizens are literate and numerate, and when they understand the benefits of democracy...
...http://ferret.bls.census...
...Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Report on the American Workforce," 1999...
...60226, "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States, 2003," Washington, D.C.: U.S...
...http://www.bls.gov/Opub/ working/home.htm DISSENT / Fall 2004 n 61...
...At the same time, because most poor women will continue to do women's jobs, it is important to raise their wages...
...among mothers with children ages three to five, it was 72 percent...
...In some cases, these homes provided care on a par with centers, but particularly in unlicensed homes, care was often found to be poor...
...The European Union has already begun to move in this direction...
...of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Current Population Survey," 2002...
...I argue that treating children well is the right thing to do from a self-interest perspective...
...Let us compare children's poverty in the United States and other developed countries in the late 1990s and 2000...
...Parents report that their primary considerations when purchasing child care are location and convenience, the hours of service provided, their child's safety and well-being, and cost...
...The only other country 58 n DISSENT / Fall 2004 with a rate higher than 20 percent was Italy...
...Mothers of children in poverty are in dire need of pay equity...
...There was no sense that parents and the federal government might engage in a partnership for child care, no sense that there were public benefits to be gained from federal involvement in improving the child care system...
...This is how the state justifies taxing the public to provide for children's schooling...
...A public good is one whose provision confers externalities—benefits beyond those accruing to the direct beneficiaries...
...http://www.lisproject.org/keyfigures/ childpovrates.htm National Education Association, "America's Top Education Priority: Lifting Up Low-Performing Schools," February 2001...
...Census Bureau, "Labor Force Participation for Mothers with Infants Declines for First Time," Census Bureau Reports," Press Release, October 18, 2001...
...Census Bureau, Census of Population, 2000...
...Having a good child-care system simply requires a collective will to spend tax revenues for that purpose...
...Government Printing Office, 2000...
...SOURCES OF STATISTICS CITED Ed Source, "NAEP Results Consistently Show Achievement Gaps Nationally," 2003...
...Data from the Luxembourg Income Study show that if we use 50 percent of median adjusted disposable income for all persons in a family as the measure of poverty, 22 percent of all U.S...
...Legislation prohibiting discrimination against part-time workers is long overdue...
...Collectively meeting the needs of children enhances the well-being of each of us...
...Women who have been on welfare need training for those jobs if they are to keep their children out of poverty...
...But let us consider the pressing needs of families today for quality, affordable, collective child care...
...The highest quality centers were run by public agencies, private schools and colleges, and employers...
...We might begin by providing partially paid leave to parents during the first year after the birth of their 6o n DISSENT / Fall 2004 child...
...The Cost, Quality, and Childhood Outcomes Study (CQO) looked at a hundred randomly selected centers in 1993...
...There are of course several well-known child advocacy groups, but because they have not been successful in getting Americans to change the way in which we view children, they have not been successful in winning over policymakers...
...http:// www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/cb01-170.html U.S...
...in two-parent families, it generally means that the parents split shifts...
...It needs to be adults who lead the way in a movement on children's behalf...
...Median household income in the United States in 2000 was $42,178...
...the median income for families with four persons was $62,228...
...In the current election season, one listens in vain for concrete proposals from candidates to improve the lives of children...
...Not only does poverty affect children's economic well-being, it is also associated with poorer performance in school, in part because children in poor neighborhoods go to schools with lower per-pupil expenditures...
...Certainly, parents have primary responsibility for meeting the needs of their children...
...Census Bureau, Income 2000 (Income of Households by State...
...In 1966, only about one-fifth of married mothers with a child under age three, and only about 40 percent of FEMINISM AND FAMILY widowed and divorced mothers with children under three, were in the labor force...
...Policies that Would Help Helping children in poverty requires more than simply transferring resources to them, although that is certainly important...
...Government Printing Office, 2004...
...http://www.census.gov/prod/ 2004pubs/p60-226 U.S...
...These figures represent a sea change from the situation in 1966, when the BLS first began publishing data on mothers' labor-force participation by age of child...
...This argument has had little traction in our increasingly selfish world...
...Absent public subsidies, they may not be able to spend enough to assure the high quality of their children's child care...
...Depending on the ages of their children, between 55 percent and 80 percent of mothers are employed...
...The notion that children are a private good leads to the conclusion that their economic and emotional care is the sole responsibility of their parents...
...Much of the research on the effects of the recent Temporary Aid to Needy Families (aka "welfare reform") legislation indicates that women are not being trained for the higher paying jobs—that is, for jobs that traditionally have been filled by men only...
...If, instead, we thought of children as public goods, we would behave far differently toward their economic and emotional needs...
...Jerry Jacobs has suggested that we deal with the extraordinary demands for long work hours for highly educated professionals and managers in certain industries by amending the Fair Labor Standards Act so that currently exempted workers are covered...
...Most child advocates, coming from an equity perspective, argue that treating children well is the right thing to do...
...Helburn and Bergmann estimate (without even considering that child-care workers need higher wages), that the United States FEMINISM AND FAMILY would have to spend an additional $26 billion a year on child care...
...Mothers balance the needs of their children for care and income by using child-care services—either informal (unpaid) or formal (paid...
...I want to spell out several critical areas DISSENT / Fall 2004 n 57 FEMINISM AND FAMILY in which children's needs are not being met and argue for public investment to remedy that situation...
...Working part time is one of the ways that mothers balance raising children and earning money...
...Among white children, 14.3 percent live in poverty, but among black children, an astounding 34.1 percent are poor...
...In dual-earner families, wives provide about 40 percent of family income, and in about 25 percent of those families, wives earn more than their husbands...
...In some countries, the probabilities triple or quadruple...
...One could also argue that child care outside the home may offer benefits not to be found in the home—also the topic of another discussion...
...Or, consider the case of the city of Fremont, California, which defeated a 1989 measure asking taxpayers to approve a $12 per year property tax levied on all residential dwelling units to pay for childcare services...
...Moreover, in recent years, while men's average earnings have failed to grow (not even keeping up with a modest rate of inflation), women's average earnings have grown, so that the increases in average family income are attributable to women's earnings...
...It would be easy to add a prohibition against discrimination in earnings and benefits for part-time workers to the Fair Labor Standards Act...
...Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) indicate that in tests of children in the fourth and eighth grades, those who live in poverty (as measured by being eligible for the National School Lunch Program) score lower in several subjects as compared to betteroff children...
...A report by the Urban Institute, based on the 1999 Survey of America's Families, provides information about the primary child-care arrangements for children under the age of thirteen while the adults "most responsible for their care" (most often their mothers) were employed...
...If such a penalty for long hours were enacted, children might well get to see more of their highly educated parents and, presumably, the public interest would be better served...
...Such a movement may one day emerge, but one problem with childhood as a basis for a social movement is that people grow out of it rather quickly...
...In the United States, the probability of being in poverty in 2000 was 15 percent for children in two-parent families, but almost 50 percent for children in single-mother families...
...HOW WILL these changes come about...
...NAEP data for twelfth-grade students show that Title I Schools (those with the highest levels of poverty) have a much higher proportion of students who score below basic skill levels in reading, writing, and civics, and especially in math and science...
...Further, instead of viewing parents with professional careers as irresponsible workaholics, we should appreciate the incredibly hard work that parents do when they are simultaneously holding jobs and raising children...
...For example, in Finland, the probability of being in poverty in 2000 was 2 percent for children in two-parent families, but 8 percent for children with a single mother...
...To get the change we need, children should be viewed as a public good...
...Among preschoolers, age zero to four, there were three equally prevalent types of care, which together accounted for slightly more than 80 percent of all the primary-care arrangements of preschoolers: center-based care, care by a parent, and care by a relative...
...Public schooling confers such externalities...
...She has found that such changes produce win-win situations...
...We could afford it, if we didn't spend it elsewhere—or if we stopped reducing taxes...
...http://www.nea.org/lac/bluebook/priority/html Freya L. Sonenstein, et al., "Primary Child Care Arrangements of Employed Parents: Findings from the 1999 National Survey of America's Families," Occasional Paper No...
...among those with children under three, the rate was 61 percent...
...Using either measure, child-care costs for two children represent a significant fraction of income...
...Although it found that the majority of classrooms provided minimally adequate care, only about 25 percent of preschool care and less than 10 percent of toddler care was rated as "good" or "developmentally appropriate...
...Freedom from Poverty What are we doing about child poverty...
...As an economist, I argue that children must be considered a public good whose welfare and education need to be addressed collectively...
...Dept...
...Similarly, in 2000, families with children under eighteen accounted for 36 percent of Americans who were homeless...
...Because mothers now provide for their children's need for emotional and physical care and their need for money income (including, often, access to employer-sponsored health insurance), families face serious issues about how to meet these two sets of needs...
...The role of wives in providing for the money income needs of their families has become exceedingly important...
...In other words, it really does take a village to raise a child...
...The search costs of finding good quality child care are high, particularly because parents are generally not well informed about what to look for when they interview potential proDISSENT / Fall 2004 n 59 FEMINISM AND FAMILY viders...
...Although Americans have not (yet) taken that tack, government and employers should act now to enable us to meet the emotional, physical, and economic needs of future citizens and workers...
Vol. 51 • September 2004 • No. 4
