Sep. 10, 2000

WHAT PARENTS WANT FROM CHILD CARE

Parents of very young children overwhelmingly believe that the best way to care for them is to have one parent at home.

No surprise, that, and a new survey by the research group Public Agenda confirms it. Among its sample, 70 percent thought it was best to have one parent at home if the family could afford it.

An additional 14 percent said best was to have both parents working, on different shifts, and 6 percent chose care by close relatives.

All the rest of the choices combined garnered only 10 percent: quality day-care center, neighborhood mom, baby-sitter at home.

What people want is not necessarily what they get, or can afford; Public Agenda titled its report "Necessary Compromises."

Slightly less than half of these families with children under 5 had a parent at home and a quarter were using professional day care, while the rest had made some other arrangement.

The families using day care aren't necessarily unhappy about it; 62 percent of them say it's their ideal choice. That could be because day care turns out to be better than they expected, or just because of the natural human impulse to make a virtue of necessity.

When my son was an infant, I was running a small print shop in my basement.

That was fine as long as he stayed where I put him. But once he was self-propelled, it wasn't safe. So for two years he went to a succession of neighborhood homes, and then for two years to a nonprofit day-care center with a parents' board of directors.

I thought then, and think now, that it was a good thing for an only child with no cousins living nearby to spend time with other children, and he seemed to look forward to it. But for us it was a choice, not a necessity.

Parents told Public Agenda that families should have that choice. By better than 2-to-1, they said it was more important to make it easier and more affordable for one parent to stay at home than to improve the cost and quality of child care. And 53 percent thought bigger tax breaks should go to families where one parent stays home, more than the 33 percent who favored bigger tax breaks for families that use professional child care.

But that's not the direction public policy is taking. In Denver, Mayor Wellington Webb has proposed a "kids' tax," which will be on the ballot in November. The sales tax of 2 cents on each $10 purchase will funnel some $35 million a year (for starters) to such things as early childhood education, improved day care, before- and after-school programs and school-based health clinics.

Commendable ideas, no doubt, especially if they are targeted to low-income single parents who do have to work. But they do nothing to help traditional two-parent families who would like to have one parent stay home and can't afford it.

Policymakers are undoubtedly swayed by professionals, whose views are strikingly at variance with parents'. Public Agenda surveyed more than 200 people "affiliated with the nation's leading children's advocacy groups."

Eight in 10 parents agree with the statement that "no one can do as good a job of raising children as their own parents."

But among the child advocates surveyed, only 33 percent would even agree that "most parents know what's good for their kids."

Responding to the statement, "When children go to a top-notch day-care center, the care and attention they get is just as good as what they would get from a stay-at-home parent," 78 percent of the children's advocates agreed, while 63 percent of parents disagreed.

Most parents (71 percent) believed that families should rely on a day-care center only when they have no other option, while only 14 percent of child advocates believed that.

Though a majority of parents wanted tax breaks to allow them to stay home with their kids, only 6 percent of child advocates agreed, while 16 percent thought the tax breaks should go toward making child care more affordable and an amazing 68 percent believed the best policy was "to move toward a universal child-care system."

Sound policy choices are unlikely when parents and the people who claim to be their children's advocates are so at odds. Politicians should be listening to parents. (718 words)