ONE MOTHER'S SEARCH FOR CHILD CARE

...As individuals, we find ourselves making difficult choices: not to have a second child, not to buy a house, not to work...

...The tax credit for child care, expanded under Reagan, now returns to parents 20 to 30 per cent of child-care expenses, up to a total of $2,400 for one child and $4,800 for two or more...

...It would cost too much: between $75 billion and $100 billion a year...

...She is already planning her future...

...Frantically, the parents and staff searched the area for a substitute the co-op could afford and a landlord willing to rent...

...Nearly half of all working mothers of children under five depend on relatives, including fathers, for child care...

...Three-fourths of the money (match( by the states) would have been set asi< for subsidies: immediate relief for a si nificant number of parents...

...Left alone in a room, they pulled floor lamps down on their heads or strangled themselves with the cords...

...I was surprised by the cost, although I shouldn't have been...

...Republicans main suspicious of entitlement prograi and of Federal regulation...

...She would be joining an occupational group ranked in the lowest 10 per cent of all wage earners, even though its members have a higher-than-average education level...

...If the greater social good does not compel us to act, we have a strong private motivation...

...Suppose that one well-organized person can maintain reasonable standards of safety and health, which is not easy...

...If relatives are not available and parents cannot afford even low-quality family day care, they arrange their work schedules so that older siblings—not even that much older—can babysit...

...I was about to learn my second lesson in the economics of child care...

...In California, infant-care costs average about $4,200 in centers and $3,300 in family day care—the term used for a woman caring for children in her own home...

...I tried leaving her a couple of times with a woman who took care of a friend's baby, plus several toddlers, but I was depressed by the small, dim house and the grime ground deep in the carpets and furniture...

...they can't afford it...

...Support was generally f larized along party lines...

...And even that shack was about to be taken away...

...We sat on folding chairs while our babies lay or crawled on quilts on the floor in front of us or sat on our laps...

...Suddenly the solution to my problem seemed simple...

...Once they are past, it is easy to heave a sigh of relief and forget about the problem...

...There was a cost, of course, which they paid—the cost of two round-trip plane fares and apartment rental...

...If all a parent can pay is $2 an hour, then four infants bring in only $8 an hour, before expenses...

...Over the next couple of weeks, we strolled our babies to the lakeside park and visited each other's apartments...

...Sitting next to me was a mother with a baby the same age as mine...

...The deal closed with the understanding that the landlord could evict at any moment and use the property in another way...

...I watch my two-year-old, who now goes to nursery school at a cost of $5,000 a year, putting her five dollies to bed in the cradle her grandmother bought her—lining them up in a careful row, covering them head to foot with blankets and quilts...

...She called Bananas and was told that $3.50 an Carol Polsgrove is a member of The Progressive's Editorial Advisory Board...

...to live in an unsafe neighborhood, to have an abortion, to suppress the fear that our children are unsafe and neglected...

...If we cannot pay them what they ought to get right now, then at least we can try to see that they and others like them are paid better in the future...

...And so, one Saturday morning, off I went to Bananas, our renowned Oakland child-care referral center, for a seminar on looking for child care...

...hour was really the most she could expect to ask, considering the market...

...If the best that we lawyers and teachers could offer these small children of ours was a rotating cast of care-givers in a shack in a ghetto, what can restaurant workers and sales clerks hope to find...

...And she wanted to delay going back to work a while longer by taking care of someone else's child along with her own...

...A stateme approved by the U.S...

...They did a superb job, and my daughter thrived...

...The state of Georgia, for example, serves only 8,000 of the 76,000 eligible for subsidies...

...With so much of child care dependent on relatives, neighbors, and part-time or temporary workers who are always looking for something better—and with children themselves outgrowing one situation and needing another—no child-care solution seems more than provisional...

...Or they leave their babies alone at night, when they are presumably sleeping, with someone in a neighboring apartment listening out for them...

...The less they can afford to pay, the less the tax credit helps them...

...I could not imagine how my child, who seemed to take 150 per cent of my time and energy, could be happy sharing a care-giver's attention with another baby and two or three toddlers...

...Jessica McClure, the Texas toddler who fell down a drill-hole, was one of nine small children being cared for by one woman, unlicensed to provide child care...

...A few low-income families are able to get subsidized care, but very few, and 90 per cent of those are single mothers...

...The 1988 Presidential campaign has placed hild care high on the national agenda...

...What about standards for mental and emotional growth...

...Whichever way the Presidential elec-ion goes, great numbers of us will have o summon more political energy than we ave shown in the past...

...Or are they simply bored—tired of lying alone in a crib while their care-giver changes the diapers of three other babies...

...We mustn't...

...We began by going around the half-circle, saying our names and reasons for being there...

...The adults taking care of them have to figure it out: Are they crying because they are thirsty or hungry...

...Federal funds for direct day-care subsidies have dropped under the Reagan Administration...

...By the mid-1980s, the only children who were assured of access to a subsidized place in care were children in need of protection against .neglect and abuse," write Alfred J. Kahn and Sheila B. Kamerman in their book, Child Care: Facing Hard Choices...

...If we women buy our economic freedom by exploiting other women, or men, we have bought it dear indeed...

...back in Kentucky, we would call it a shack...

...Those of us, especially, who find satisfaction in our paid work owe a long-term debt to those who share our work as parents...

...Then she gets on her rocking horse, calls out, "Bye, bye, see you after your nap," and rides off to her job...

...Families with incomes between $8,000 and $12,000 would receive the credit beginning the first year it's in effect, with the income ceiling rising over four years to $20,000...

...Their suspicions have the nearly una imous backing of business...

...Under AB families earning up to 115 per cent of tl state's median income would be techi cally eligible for subsidies, on a slidi] scale, with priority for those on the be torn...

...She, accustomed to a nurse's salary, could scarcely have felt good about her new income as a child-care worker...

...The lection of Michael Dukakis, as a Demo-rat and a governor who made his state a jader in the field, would ease the political /ay for Federal solutions...

...Economically, this was not going to be a great deal for either of us...

...For that reason, the plan proposed by George Bush—a very partial solution—is an improvement over the present situation: It would allow low-income families with at least one wage-earner to get a $ 1,000 tax credit for each child under four, regardless of how much they spend on child care...

...The juries of experts are still out on that question, but experts and parents alike are perceptibly more nervous about child care for the very young, those under a year old, unless the care-giver has the chance to develop a real parental relationship with the child...

...So far, the remedies offered by the Right promise little for low-income families...

...She had not yet determined the fee she would charge, and I held my breath...

...Business also has a stake in this issue...

...It is tolerable neither for parents nor for children nor for child-care workers...

...But even though these arguments will not appeal to all of us, at least one point is getting through: that if parents are to work for their living at the miserable wages set by the market, somebody has to help them pay for their child care...

...Many care-givers do not have that chance...

...As a society, we surely cannot let this situation go on...

...Funds allotted under Title XX of the Social Security Act, the chief source of Federal subsidies to low-income families, are now half what they were ten years ago...

...If the economics of adequate child care dictate that most of us have a hard time affording it, what are we working parents to do...

...About thirty parents were there at Bananas that morning—mostly mothers, with a few fathers, including one by himself with his infant...

...Full-time wage and salary workers earned a median income of $19,396 in 1987, the News reported...

...It amounts to a $3 billion annual subsidy out of a total $6.9 billion the Federal Government spends on child-care subsidies and grants...

...It was housed in what, in Berkeley, is called a cottage...

...Statistics bear out this bias: Fewer than 10 per cent of the families claiming the credit have incomes below $10,000...

...I was lucky: I had retired parents to fall back on...

...The best we could find was the downstairs of a large two-story house, next to a vacant lot in Oakland's vast west-side poverty district—what we would once have called a ghetto...

...Nor is another argument on the right: that welfare mothers need help getting child care because they have no business staying at home if they can be out selling hamburgers...

...The friends who had steered me first to their family-day-care provider—the woman with the dim home—had moved on when she went out of business...

...Chamber of Coi merce in February typifies corporate cc cern: "Although a shortage of adequate a affordable child care may present pre lems in select areas of the country, the Fc eral Government should resist the tem istic...

...Summer came, and my daughter was fifteen months old, well past the age when many children are cared for in groups other than their families, so I thought she might be ready to give it a try...

...But my experience with the co-op reinforced that first economics lesson with my nurse friend: The amount that good child care costs far exceeds the amount that most parents, even middle-class parents, can pay...

...Aside from the issue of safety, how can one person provide the individual attention that four babies need, hour after hour after hour, for eight to ten hours...

...The staffers were paid a relatively handsome $7 an hour, plus health benefits, and parents took regular turns helping out...

...The ABC bill, as it's known, would have s Federal health and safety standards ar provided funds to train child-care worke and increase their salaries...

...Zigler advocates building on the current school system, as some states are beginning to do in limited ways: expanding before- and after-school day care in school buildings and expanding, too, the preschool years...

...Many, many day-care providers are not certified by the state and they take in all the children they can...

...As things turned out, my nurse friend did not take care of my child, not because the economics weren't right—although this may have been an unvoiced consideration—but because she tried taking care of both babies and began to doubt that she could care for them safely...

...But we can't...

...Jut it requires action on several fronts— ocal, state, and national...

...Indeed, in several states, there was a basis for suspicion that this group had grown, in part, because some parents were prepared to label themselves neglectful or potentially abusive to qualify for decent affordable care...

...The evidence was there: Full-time child care averages $3,000 a year nationwide...

...Bananas, one of the private agencies channeling state subsidies to providers, has 100 slots for children under two-and-a-half...

...For them, it was an expensive solution...

...Children under one can do nothing at all for themselves, nor can they say what it is that needs doing...

...For children up to three, Zig-er advocates a patchwork solution: infant-are leaves for parents (another measure jusiness has been fighting in Congress) and jovernment subsidies or a negative in-;ome tax for purchased care in the infant tnd toddler years...

...The landlord, claiming other plans for the property, wanted the co-op out...

...Their toddler now stayed at a parents' cooperative, not licensed but staffed with part-time child-care workers...

...Twenty-two states are actually helping fewer children than they were six years ago...

...half of all mothers with preschool children now work, including half of all married mothers with children under two...

...One of the saddest sights in this past session of Congress has been the fading support for a bill that would have increased such subsidies...

...As the AFL-CIO News has put it bluntly, "Child care costs are out of reach of all but the most affluent American couples...

...In an August article in American Demographics, economists David E. Bloom and Todd P. Steen note the signs that the supply of new workers willing to take low-paying, entry-level jobs is dwindling...

...A minimum-wage worker with two children would spend almost all her income on child care—a no-win proposition...

...I was delighted each time I saw her: She was warm, caring, intelligent, and versed in contemporary wisdom on child-rearing...

...Because the program is limited to such a short time span, there is a fair amount of turnover...

...I have so many children," she says...

...I figure I have twenty years or so to prepare the way...

...Ruth Connijf, an editorial intern at The Progressive during the summer of 1988, provided research assistance...

...Making the room child-proof was no guarantee of safety...

...It seems a sensible idea, grounded in political realism, and it is shared by many...

...By this point, summer was over, and my daughter, never happy in the group setting, cared for by a stream of strange people, was comfortably installed again with her generous grandparents, who had moved back to California to take care of her while I taught full-time...

...I have all these children, and so much work to do...

...ABC would prot bly double the number of subsidized ch dren, which is now about 75,000...

...It would hai paid for expansion of public prescho programs, to provide full-day care...

...They had reached the age when they put everything in their mouths: decaying crumbs, pennies, thumbtacks...

...When they left, and with their financial help, I reduced my teaching load to one-quarter time and, for child care, exchanged a half-day a week with a friend—another If the best that we lawyers and teachers could offer these small children of ours was a rotating cast of care-givers in a shack in a ghetto, what can restaurant workers and sales clerks hope to find...

...Left to their own devices, the states have met a mere fraction of the need...

...The tax credit is only useful, obviously, to families who can afford the 70 to 80 per cent of the child-care costs not covered by the credit...

...They moved from Kentucky to California for a three-month stay, in a separate apartment...

...For the lowest-income families, however, with insecure jobs and low, uncertain wages, direct subsidies are a high and immediate priority...

...She was, besides, a registered nurse and lived in my neighborhood...

...Or she may expand her operation to a more manageable mix of toddlers and infants—say twelve in all—if she can use a relative or teen-ager as an aide...

...they would not feel safe coming to pick up their children after dark...

...And the early childhood years, when the need is most desperate and difficult to meet, are short for families with one or two children...

...Finally, the group settled into a month-to-month lease in an even smaller cottage across the street from the old one, the best choice available...

...We have sons and daughters, do we not...

...Left on a sofa, they rolled off...

...What we have, plainly, is a two-tier system of child care, with low-income families excluded from the market of adequate care...

...Several parents demurred...

...Nearly 30,000 children in Florida are on the waiting list for subsidized care...

...The Act for Better Child Care, supported by Michael Dukakis, would have made available $2.5 billion for states to improve the quality and quantity of child care...

...Even in California, the biggest state spender on child care, the demand for infant-care subsidies far exceeds the supply...

...The numbers are even worse for women alone: Women's median income was $13,008 last year, and child-care costs would consume almost one-fourth of that for each child...

...She seemed so very little to me still—oh, big and sturdy as babies go, but so small and uncertain about life...

...Whom would I find to trust her with, four hours a day, five days a week...

...And still the waiting list numbers 600...

...One reason child are has had difficulty getting on the po-tical agenda is that those who need it most have the least time to spend lobbying for it...

...The ABC bill would have been jusl start at solving the child-care problem, b it would have been a start...

...Not surprisingly, the seminar was popular...

...For my part, I would be paying $ 14 a day for the four hours' work— $280 a month out of take-home pay of $1,000...

...Considering her misgivings, I could not—cannot—imagine how so many licensed family-day-care workers cope with four infants...

...Or because they need a fresh diaper...

...Now would seem he time for parents—past, present, and fu-ure—to muster the energy for that action...

...Child care for two children would use up about 30 per cent of that...

...More available, affordable child care, they say, would bring significant numbers of mothers into the market...

...No wonder, then, that a certified family-day-care worker will try to care for at least four infants—a number allowed by most states...

...they had to be watched...

...An estimated nine million children under six are cared for, at least part of the day, by someone other than their mothers, and there are only two to three million licensed slots...

...But his election rould not be enough, and his defeat would lot be definitive...

...The notion of providing child care so women can take jobs for little profit and honor is not particularly attractive...

...I signed my toddler up there...

...This little co-op, home away from home for eight children under two, was not a fancy place...

...Most imp< tant, it would have put in place a foi dation for a national child-care system The demise of the ABC bill suggests t political shoals stranding any such bro national effort...

...single mother—and paid a college student for the other half-day...

...In California, for example, the state < timates that 20 to 25 per cent of the ch dren who both need subsidies and are < igible for them under existing rules a actually getting them...

...In fact, many low-income families rely for infant care on relatives, as I did, whether or not those relatives are, as mine were, particularly willing or financially, physically, and emotionally able...

...If just half of the women who say they are constrained by child care went to work in the early 1990s, the labor force would gain about 850,000 workers...

...Such repeated reshuffling of child-care arrangements seems common, at least among people I know...