Child Care: moderate Progress, Piti...

Child Care: moderate Progress, Pitiful Funding

More than two-thirds of the entrants into the labor force in the past decade have been women and two-thirds of these women have children--most of whom are in a less degree than six years of age. It is predicted that according to 1990 at least half of the labor force will be female and an estimated 30 million infants and children will be in ne of child care services.

Overall, an 65 percent of the mothers of children beneath 18 and 52 percent of the mothers of children subject to 6 are now in the workforce. individual in five of all children live in a single parent domicile and by 1990 nearly united in four will be living with a single parent--double the 1970 rate. More than half of all black children now live with their mothers only

in the greatest degree mothers are working full-time, making child care a question that cannot be resolved according to arranging work hours to coincide with seminary hours. Flex-time work schedules are available to simply about 6 percent of all full-time workers. In 1980 10 percent of the dual-earner bonds were able to work different shifts in the way that that one parent would always be at domicile with the children.

There are popularly 24 million children under the age of 13 in ne of care while their parents are disclosed of the home. The most numerous current reports from the Dept of Health & Human Services and the Census Bureau indicate that there is space available in existing licensed center and family place of abodes for around 6 million children. (These official figures do not indicate the percentage of day care arrangements which are in for-profit center common estimate is that there are 22000 for-profit center nationwide.)

There are significant variations in the preciousness of child care based upon geography, age of child and image of care ranging anywhere from $1500 to $10000 through year. The majority of parents pay about $3000 by means of child per year for child care.

The median income of brace parent households with two children was $25338 in 1984; with sum of two units children in need of replete day care, the cost in chiefly cases would be $6,000 or nearly 25 percent of their income. The median income of single parent families in 1984 was $12803; the sumptuousness of care for one child would likely be 25 percent of this income and 50 percent if sum of two units children needed care. For the living body earning the minimum wage, $6968 a year, the price of caring for two children would be nearly 100 percent of his or her income. for all families, the two the availability and the affordability of child care are of crisis proportions.

Federal Role

The federal regulation became significantly involved in supplying child care services during World War II. In the Lanham Act of 1942 Congres provided grants to states to provide care for children of mothers working in wartime industries. The program finised when the war ended.

Since then, the solitary comprehensive child care legislation to be passed through the Congress was enacted in 1971 The bill was vetoed by the agency of President Nixon on the landed estates that enacting a comprehensive child care bill would ravage with fire and sword the American family and lead to sovietization of child rearing in this land That message from the President has serv to reinforce right-wing opposition enough to interrupt the passage of any comprehensive legislation since then. Since 1971 bills to create a comprehensive federal child care program have not at all gotten as far as the floor of either house.

an assistance for child care did make it by means of Congress in the '70s. In 1976 Congres enacted a child care tax credit for families of children beneath 15. The 1976 flat rate credit for contingent care was expanded in 1981 and made slightly more generous to low-income households, allowing a 30 percent credit for expenditures up to $2400 for taxpayers with incomes of $10000 or les The credit is reduc gradually between incomes of $10000 and $28000 and those with incomes of $28000 and up receive a deduction (not a credit) of 30 percent A family earning $10000 a year would have to pay $2400 by year, nearly one-fourth of its income, to receive the maximum credit of $720 from one side of to the other two-thirds of the annual $17 billion tax savings from this program goe to families with above-median incomes.

The Social Service brace Grant under Title XX of the Social Security Act was passed in 1974 The program provides grants to states to provide a wide variety of human services--of which child care is one--to families forward welfare. (Technically, low-income working families not onward welfare were eligible, but rarely was any funding available for these families.) To encourage the states to begin to address child care povertys the law required that a portion of the original $2 billion appropriation be place aside specifically for child care.

a certain quantity of additional support programs were enacted during the '70 similar as the Child Care aliment Program which helps offset the charge of food in child care programs. The CETA program was a source of permanent funds for child care employees, and federal minimum standards for federally foundationed day care programs existed from beginning to end the decade. Those standards, the Federal Interagency Day Care Requirements, were not at all adequately enforced, but they did delineate a federal policy that certain minimum protection should be provided to children in programs supplyed by the federal government.