Press Release:  One-Size-Fits-All Child Care Not the Solution for Today's Parents October 1997

The upcoming October 23 White House Conference on Child Care will address the strengths and weaknesses of the present child care system in America.  Historically, our national child care advocacy movement¹ has worked to do far more than merely improve quality and availability for needy families.  Its ultimate goal is to make substitute child care the norm for America's young children and infants.  "Millions of parents, those at-home and those working part-time, are concerned that this conference and any resulting policy initiatives will ignore their preference to care for their own children.  Further, resulting legislation has the potential to make it even more difficult for parents to care for their own children as well as find flexible and creative solutions to the work/family balance," states Heidi Brennan.  Ms. Brennan is the Public Policy Director of Mothers at Home (MAH), the oldest and largest national, non-profit organization supporting at-home mothers.

"The question of what is best for America's children and parents is best answered not by a carefully selected panel of experts at the White House, but rather by the actions of parents themselves.  There is a message to be heard in the unprecedented and growing number of mothers and fathers who are starting and operating home-based businesses, negotiating new work models, and/or having one parent leave the paid workforce for a season of their life to work as the primary nurturing parent," says Brennan.

Although full-time child care is a necessity for some families, and a choice for others, it is not what the majority of America's parents want for their children.²  Parents want respect and support for their decisions about how to care for their children.  Parents don't want their government, influenced by the advice of some well-funded daycare and education interests or so-called "experts," to create and/or fund expensive "one-size-fits-all" solutions.

Mothers At Home urges the President, Congress and legislatures to:

• read the polls:  expanding funding for full-time day care without similar breaks for at-home parents endangers the choice of parental care, and is not what the majority of American parents want or need;
• take alternatives to full-time child care seriously.  Ask parents what they want, and expand government's support of part- and flex-time work, job-sharing and telecommuting options, informational resource clearinghouses regarding part-time child care and jobs, and career re-entry opportunities for parents returning to the paid workforce after rearing their children;
• continue to enact economic and tax reforms in an effort to reduce the pervasive financial burden on families currently rearing dependent children, including corporate incentives for providing family-friendly work policies other than those for full-time on-site day care;
• communicate frankly with the American public about the complexities and limitations of current child care research as it relates to both the developmental and emotional needs of our nation's children; and
• realize that solutions for our nation's highest-risk and neediest families are not necessarily the same solutions required by the majority of American families.

Those attending the White House Conference on Child Care will no doubt hear proposals to increase federal funding for child care.  Gail Richardson, Executive Director of the Child Care Action Campaign (CCAC), has been instrumental in the planning of the conference.  The CCAC is a well-funded coalition of advocacy groups and for-profit businesses, working to increase the number of children in full-time, center-based care.  This does not appear to represent a balanced or scientific discussion of either mainstream parents' or children's needs.

America has finally acknowledged that massive federal spending on welfare did not solve the problems of poverty and that returning the responsibility to states and local communities offered greater hope for solution.  Yet, the federal government now stands poised to promote another big-government solution to the most personal challenges faced by parents.  In the process, they are entirely ignoring what America's parents want and their children need:  more time together.

Footnotes:
¹  "Background/History of U.S. Child Care Lobby" available on request.
²  See "Recent Surveys and Opinion Polls Regarding Work/Family Balance."