Dear Editor
Dear Editor Day Care "The Case Against Universal Day Care," in your April 3 issue, was not really an article about child care and its author is neither a disinterested nor an impartial observer....
...He apparently staunchly believes that men with dull jobs or no jobs are entitled to have wives and children who will act as ego servants, providing "identity and ambition" in return for bread...
...There are thousands of these children in our country...
...In the January issue of that publication, Gilder also expounded his views against the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which the President had recently vetoed...
...I and my colleagues in the House and Senate who supported the Comprehensive Child Development legislation feel differently...
...The bill could result in possibly 90 per cent of public assistance recipients being worse off than under the present system...
...Reid's familiar arguments do not change the fact that there are not now and will not be for the foreseeable future enough valuable jobs for all men and women, let alone so-called "meaningful careers" conveniently located for couples...
...Thus we need comprehensive child development programs that will provide educational, nutritional, health and other developmental services for these children in the crucial early years of life...
...Negro women earn less as a group, and have a higher unemployment rate, than Negro males...
...1 expect it to be amended to this effect...
...The plight of poor women justifies a program of income maintenance and other social services...
...Necessarily low or not, though, FAP in its original form prohibited reductions in current state effort...
...The source...
...I would like to assure Representative Reid that I did read those 1.715 pages of testimony plus copious other materials, and found in them the same absence of relevant argument that I find in his and Ms...
...The bill also took the needs of the poor into account when it provided for parent participation in the policymaking decisions related to the program...
...A few statistics will illustrate this point...
...Unfortunately, while raising the spurious issue of whether white or black women should be working, Gilder completely overlooks the needs of children...
...The median earnings of full-time nonwhite females in 1966 were only 65 per cent of median earnings of non-white males, etc...
...In New York City, there are less than 11,000 spaces for 825,000 preschool children of working mothers...
...In general, Ms...
...Edward Ziegler, director of HEW's Office of Child Development, has estimated that only about 20 per cent of existing Federal day care programs are developmental or comprehensive...
...It is simply a vehicle for him to attempt to defend the Nixon Administration's antihu-manist actions, and to perpetuate certain myths that are used to keep women as second-class citizens...
...Where have you been for the past 28 years, Mr...
...the economy of scarcity dictates that broad-based social programs, such as universal child care, be foregone in favor of other more pressing needs (such as an $83 billion defense budget...
...Abzug's and Mr...
...Today, one out of every three mothers with preschool children is working, compared to one of eight in 1948...
...About 3.4 million women had husbands with incomes between $5,000 and $7,000...
...It's not that he pinpoints any similarity between the other programs and child care...
...This need for services was recognized by a bipartisan majority of Congress when it adopted a comprehensive child development bill, which included a number of provisions of the model bill introduced by myself and Shirley Chisholm...
...The vetoed bill includes statutory safeguards to give the poor priority in receiving funds under the program...
...the plight of poor children calls for specific programs for neglected children, by a variety of home care, nutrition, health, and guidance services, as well as by income maintenance for their parents...
...After contending that child care programs would be anti-poor people, Gilder shrugs off as congressional "fetishism" the punitive work requirement that FAP would impose on indigent women...
...Three-fourths of all Negro families are headed by males, and those headed by females are persistently poorer than husband-wife families...
...The competition, therefore, would not be among those fighting over child care funds, but between supporters of child care and those who prefer to throw funds into new military toys for our generals and farm supports for agribusiness...
...By authorizing a program that is not exclusively for the poor, Congress was attempting to save it from the underfunded fate of our present poverty programs...
...Day care will fail...
...He sees day care as breaking up family units...
...His credentials aside, Gilder's article constitutes his very private male-oriented view of the way he would like the world to be...
...Our program is voluntary, directs the majority of funds to the poor, provides for a broad socioeconomic mix, and involves parents at every level in a quality care program...
...Representatives Reid and Abzug both supported regressive lax exemptions of $2,400 for day care of one child...
...In addition, the bill makes increased funds for the nonpoor dependent on increased funds for the poor...
...Another 2.5 million children under six also live in families with incomes below the poverty level...
...I cannot understand how providing barely a third of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' lower standard of living annual budget would make a dent in the poverty in this nation...
...Perhaps most distressing is the experience of "latch-key children"??very young children left alone without any supervision...
...Consider these facts: - In March 1970, in addition to 6.9 million single working women, there were 5.9 million working women who were widowed, divorced or separated from their husbands...
...That is true, unless??as I passionately hope??Ms...
...In 1971, 43 per cent of the nation's mothers worked outside the home, compared to only 18 per cent in 1948...
...Furthermore, the President's own White House Conference on Children made comprehensive child care the first priority...
...Bella S. Abzug Member of Congress George Gilder's "thoughts" about day care were indeed as provocative as you promised...
...Shall we allow them to grow up roaming the streets, turning to drugs and crime...
...Gilder's view of the experience of the average American family would be very touching in a Victorian novelist, but it is totally unrealistic in the modern world...
...Abzug seems more interested in scoring debater's points with rhetorical flourishes than in dealing seriously with the most critical problem of our society: the plight of the poor...
...We could not turn our backs on them simply because society has changed and new roles exist for women...
...I called them "morally inexcusable...
...Only a program which gives the poor more than it gives the middle class is likely to be progressively distributive...
...In his zeal to defend the President, Gilder criticizes the program on the grounds that it would work against the interests of the poor by including children of the nonpoor, creating unfair competition for funds...
...He was subsequently repudiated by the Ripon board for using the Forum to aii his private viewpoint...
...Gilder's article, which never mentions the needs of children or of working mothers, is not a "Case Against Universal Day Care...
...their mothers do not work, but could if they had a place to leave their children...
...I suppose I should have pointed out that even though I am a Republican, I do not support actions I regard as morally inexcusable...
...While Gilder assumes that men work out of altruism, because they wish to ""exempt their family from the marketplace," he assumes that women work because they put themselves above their families and "confuse means and ends and subordinate the central experiences of life to the functional provisions for it...
...The simple fact is that mothers have been entering the work force in increasing numbers despite the absence of comprehensive child development programs...
...These figures fluctuate dramatically...
...3,600 for two,and $4,800 for three or more under age 15 in families making up to $20,000 (with graduated benefits for families making up to $27,000...
...It is a pity they so seldom dealt with the facts...
...In fairness, I should take note of one other generalized objection that Gilder seems to have to child care...
...As I said many times, I do not support the work requirements in FAP...
...Abzug and her allies succeed in massively cutting the defense budget and fail to enact a day care program that would cost over $20 billion even in its own inadequate terms...
...In a relatively inelastic job market, expanded and intensified female participation in the work force will successfully come at the expense of those least able to compete, namely the poor and lower-middle class...
...Finally, Ms...
...George Gilder is a former speechwriter for Governor Rockefeller, was at one time loaned by him to Richard Nixon, and is now the editor of the Ripon Forum...
...Washington, D.C...
...Although this issue deserves much fuller exploration, suffice it to say here that black women earn a much higher proportion of total black income than white women do of total white income...
...As to the first point, if Gilder had read the 1,715 pages of congressional testimony, he would have found it replete with incisive statements as to the urgent need for day care...
...Day care is a social program...
...The theory of the Negro matriarchy was discussed in an article by Professor Pauli Murray of Brandeis University in the Harvard Law Review of March 1971...
...If Gilder had checked the records, he would have noted that the architects of the national day care program were thoroughly aware of the strengths and weaknesses of such programs as AFDC and Head Start, and that the legislation was precisely drafted to close the gaps that these programs left in our child care system...
...Women aren't home canning fruits and vegetables??they are part of the labor force and are out of the home for most of the day...
...In his view, women do not require reinforcement of their self-identity because they have children to take care of and are thus fulfilled...
...Because of this and other regressive features in the bill??which, in essence, would turn poor women into a source of forced, cheap labor??I voted against it, and the National Welfare Rights Organization and other responsible groups oppose it...
...There she pointed out: "Both the theory of the Negro matriarchy and the notion that Negro women enjoy an economic advantage over Negro men are myths...
...In fact, it is the black female who has suffered the dual discrimination of our society...
...Gilder...
...Abzug begins by misrepresenting me and proceeds by misrepresenting most of my arguments, I can best refer my readers to my original article...
...There is a lot of emotionalism on both sides of the day care issue...
...It is not easy to cut through the vague generalities of his arguments to specific issues, but I believe that his basic objections to day care can be boiled down to two points: 1. There is no "incisive" statement of the social and economic arguments for the program...
...I do not wish to imply that the black male has not been brutally victimized by our racist society...
...There are fewer than 700,000 spaces in licensed child care centers to serve more than 5 million preschool-age children of working mothers...
...One million more living in near poverty (incomes between $4,000-$7,000 a year) have mothers who work...
...There are 1 million children under six living in poverty (family of four with an annual income of $4,000) whose mothers work...
...Day care won't change family structures??family structures have already changed...
...Washington, D.C...
...What kind of normal family structure exists here...
...But he need not have pushed the cause of scholarship so far...
...It is rather that he draws up the following syllogism: Some social programs are not 100 per cent successful...
...As an example of the problem...
...2. Families ought to follow a set pattern with a mama at home washing dishes, cleaning house and caring for children, while the husband works...
...Consider this: "So critical is the matter of early growth that we must make a national commitment to providing all American children an opportunity for healthful and stimulating development during the first five years of life...
...And what about the 1.3 million single parents bringing up children without a husband...
...He discusses a highly selective list of social programs that have failed in one way or another to achieve their goal...
...For example, women should be kept in the home so that they will not seek jobs and thereby make the unemployment statistics even gloomier...
...And just as relevant to the discussion of child care is Gilder's failure to show how FAP would eliminate the need for low cost quality child care services...
...I said the current levels of FAP are "necessarily low...
...Since the absence of child care programs has not kept more and more mothers from entering the work force, one cannot assume that denying them child care facilities will stem this flow, particularly when the high cost of living is forcing so many women to seek to add to their family incomes...
...None other than Richard M. Nixon, and made on February 19, 1969, just 39 months before the President vetoed the legislation to redeem his pledge...
...Unfortunately, Nixon vetoed the bill...
...Ogden R. Reid Member of Congress George F. Gilder replies: Since Ms...
...From this he seems to deduce that child care will fail...
...I think existing Federal and state work requirements can be effectively enforced only if a universal day care system is established...
...However, I find it appalling that Gilder should resurrect and innate the old Moynihan myth by suggesting that black women have been any less victimized by this society...
...We, too, believe in the family as the keystone of our society, and thus we want to do what we can to help preserve indigent families by giving them the kind of assistance they need...
...In 1971, half of the 1.3 million mothers bringing up children under six years old without fathers in the house worked...
...Somehow Gilder's theories have the ring of a Nixon Administration apologia rather than of a serious social essay...
...Thus in order to demonstrate "massive increases in the number of women entering the job market" she ctompares the 1948 figure, the postwar nadir of their participation, with the recession-influenced figure of 1971...
...Since female participation tends to be highest in times of economic distress, I believe the current trend is an index of great suffering for millions of men, women and children, and I would like to reverse it by a generous income maintenance program for all the poor...
...Are we to deduce that blacks are happier and more liberated than whites...
...The most dangerous emotions are not those of the people who want to devise a program to help meet the needs of women and children in our society, however, but of the people who attempt to block such programs by appealing not to reason and fact but to fear and dogma...
...Abzug quotes statistics from an article by Pauli Murray which support my contention that preservation of the family should be a paramount national priority...
...Abzug's letters...
...In 1969, 4.4 million married working women had husbands with incomes of less than $5,000 per year...
...This provides a built-in incentive system for the nonpoor to lobby for funds for the poor...
...If Gilder had ilone any homework, he would know that, like men, most women work because they have to support themselves and/or their families...
...Moreover, it is merely snobbish lo suppose that women in the home lead less interesting and valuable lives than do women in offices and on assembly lines??or their husbands...
...Gilder's other theories are equally questionable...
...Thus, after falsely criticizing the measure, Gilder recommends Richard Nixon's veto on the grounds that it has paved the way for passage of the President's Family Assistance Plan (FAP...
...Gilder contends that FAP would eliminate the worst poverty, although he admits that the income maintenance levels ($2,400 per year for a family of four) are "necessarily low...
...Gilder fails to establish any causal relationship between the availability of child care and massive increases in the number of women entering the job market...
...I would, however, like to correct a few misrepresentations that are so pervasive among the responses (see also Herbert J. Gans and Sally V. Allen, "Dear Editor," NL, May 15) that they may reflect some failure of clarity on my part...
...Citation of the problems of the poor as a rationale for universal programs represents the most fundamental and persistent error of American liberalism...
...And while Gilder states that "many men desperately need their wives at home to provide a refuge," many men need their wives working to make ends meet...
...statements from experts from every related field and even from representatives of the Nixon Administration...
...And in most cases, they have to work to maintain the economic well-being of their families...
...The President's program, on the other hand, is mandatory and custodial...
...But just the opposite is true...
Vol. 55 • May 1972 • No. 11
