Single mothers moving out of public assistance, and low-income families searching for affordable child care, will applaud the $4 billion increase in stimulus funds for programs like Head Start, Early Head Start, and Child Care Development Block Grants, which support state programs for subsidized care. But it's far from certain whether the children who actually receive these services will be better off, and that's Penelope Leach's particular concern.

This British child development expert, the best-selling author of Your Baby and Child: From Birth to Age Five, has earned an international reputation for helping readers consider their offspring's point of view on matters like infant sleep disturbances and potty training. This new volume also offers a child-centered perspective, but Leach has moved out of the nursery and stands ready to make her mark on an entrenched ideological debate that asks whether nonmaternal child care helps or harms young children.

Actually, she thinks that's the wrong question to initiate a discussion on a contentious subject. Readers must first consider, she says, "what kind of care, where, by whom, for which children, from what age, for what hours, paid for by whom, and with what results?" ...

Still, she wants readers to come to grips with an unpleasant truth: Much of American day care is just plain "bad." Given the available options, infants in particular are better off at home with their mother, a family member, or a nanny. Working mothers of very young children express greater satisfaction with in-home care, in part because caregiver/infant ratios remain too high in most affordable group programs. That problem can delay the developmental milestones of underprivileged children already at risk because of family instability.

This is especially relevant for American families. About 12 percent of three-month-olds here are placed in day care, and another 24 percent are in family day care, where small groups of children are cared for in private homes. Though British child care practices track most closely with our own, fewer than one percent of three-month-olds attend day care in Great Britain, and just one percent are brought to family day care. Comparisons between American and other Western European practices are even more striking.

Labels: day care, family policy, motherhood, parenting, poverty

VOTE

<< Home