Parent Talk / May 2006
Dollars and Sense in Child Care
Almost 12 million children under age five in the US are in some type of child care arrangement every week and more than six million of them are in the care of someone other than a relative. On average, children under age 5 spend more than thirty hours a week in child care.
Results of a series of nationwide focus groups revealed that parents have similar definitions of what constitutes high-quality child care and desperately want their children to have it. But, parents say that they cannot afford the quality of care that they desire, even if they can find it.
The National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (NACCRRA) conducted fourteen focus groups in seven cities around the country. They found that parents wanted their children to be in clean, safe, and loving environments and wanted their children to learn new things. But cost, distance, and lack of choices often kept parents from finding child care that fulfilled their wish lists.
The high cost often forces parents to place children in less than optimal care.
“For millions of parents across the US, finding child care that is high-quality and affordable is incredibly difficult,” said NACCRRA’s Executive Director Linda Smith. In fact, in 42 states the cost of care for an infant exceeds the cost of college. Since 90 percent of brain development occurs between birth and age 5, the issue has significance for more than just immediate families.
The last 30 years have shown a substantial increase in labor force participation by women with children. Currently, only 23 percent of families with children younger than 6 have a parent who is not in the labor force. With working mothers making ever greater contributions to household incomes, access to child care has become an essential work support for families.
In 1975, 40 percent of women with children younger than 6 held a paid job. In 2004, 62.2 percent of women with children under 6 were in the workforce. Currently, 70.7 percent of women with children work. Three out of four working mothers work more than 30 hours per week and children of working mothers spend almost forty hours a week in a child care arrangement. In 2002, over half of American women with a child under age 1 were in the labor force.
Even religious conservatives, who believe the family suffers when a woman has a full-time job, are more likely than average to be in dual-earner families. Two-parent families, who believe having a stay-at-home parent is the best option, in reality may not be able to afford to support a stay-at home parent.
Mom’s earnings matter. In families who earn under $60,000 annually, her pay can account for more than half of the family’s income.
In the focus groups, almost half of the participants said they had considered stay-at home parenting, but decided against it. The reason given by nine in ten of them was that they could not afford to stay home.
As one single mother said, “I’m the the head of household. If I don’t work, we have no home.”
Finding clean, licensed child care facilities with trustworthy caretakers in a price range they can afford may be the biggest challenge for parents, but there are others. Those with special needs children also faced difficulties in locating places that would accept their children. Having children of different ages can be an additional predicament. Parents who work non-traditional hours face even greater difficulties.
Policy makers at every level of government should be searching for ways and means to elevate the quality of child care and make it more accessible for working parents.
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