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Making 'Welfare to Work' Really Work
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Child Care
One of the most critical variables mediating the success of work transition and training efforts for mothers on welfare is affordable, quality child care. Research has shown that families on welfare and other low-income families spend a greater percentage of their incomes on child care than do higher income families (Brooks & Buckner, 1996; Cherlin, 1995). In a just and far-sighted society, child care, viewed as child development and education, would be regarded as a public responsibility.
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims that "childhood is entitled to special care and assistance" (United Nations General Assembly, 1989). This suggests, as noted by Kagan (1993) that "entitlement should exist for all...children-rich, poor, urban, rural, handicapped, nonhandicapped, black, brown, white." But the current state of affairs for poor children in the United States is far different and supports the following grim view: "Poor children are cheap. They die as infants in greater numbers, they go hungry, they lack health care, many are homeless.... Born as they are to the undeserving poor, to single mothers, and to women of color, they - like Dickens's Oliver Twist - are 'badged and ticketed' at birth...they are consigned to contingency, to life on the edges . . . They are viewed as the troublesome byproducts of incomplete and problem families, not as the living symbols of the patterned inequities that result from the purposeful politics of distribution" (Polakow, 1993b).
While we in this country accept compulsory schooling as necessary preparation for an increasingly complex society, there continues to be opposition by lawmakers to a comprehensive national child care program. As pointed out by Lubeck (1995), "In the United States, responsibility [for young children] is largely privatized until children reach the age of school entry. When the government does take responsibility for children's well-being, it is nearly always because parents are thought to have failed in their child-rearing duties." This stigmatizes both the parents and the child. Many other major industrialized nations have taken a far different approach, with child care programs offering universal eligibility, in which fees and benefits are scaled according to income and which combine "some form of income maintenance with day-care centers and family day-care programs" (Norgren, 1988).
Australia, Belgium, and Italy, for example, have rejected the welfare model, which uses public funds only for the neediest children, and now provide nearly universal access to preschool opportunities. In France, preschool for children aged 3 to 6 is free to the families. "The French conceive of public support for preschool education, not as a reluctant handout to those whose parents cannot provide well for them, but rather as a `welcoming' of all children into French society" (Lubeck, 1995). Such models recognize that only programs that benefit all families with children are free of the stigma attached to programs for the poor (Stoper, 1998). Such an approach also addresses the fact that a large number of the poor are children. In fact, according to census data from 1991, 40 percent of all poor people in the United States are children under the age of 18 (Spencer, Blumenthal, & Richards, 1995). It is estimated that 13 million children in the United States live in poverty, a phenomenon some have identified as "nationally sanctioned child neglect" (Kagan, 1993, p. 16), and others as "the other childhood" (Polakow, 1993b, p. 158).
Census data from 1995 indicate that 11 million children under age 6 have mothers who work outside the home and thus make use of some form of child care. It has been estimated that this number will increase by almost 2 million when mothers who previously received AFDC assistance are required to find employment (Jones, 1996). A 1986 national study of a large diverse sample of children cited by Baydar and Brooks-Gunn (1991) found that 33.8 percent received "nonmaternal primary care" in their first year, 46.7 percent in their second year, and 53.3 percent in their third year.
There is strong evidence that women's decisions about whether and how much to work depends upon the availability and cost of child care and that these factors are significant barriers to employment for low-income mothers (Bowen & Neenan, 1992; Brooks & Buckner, 1996; Cherlin, 1995; Hernandez, 1993; Kisker & Silverberg, 1991). Mothers working and supporting young children rely on child care. Therefore, their efforts to escape dependence on welfare require a public commitment to supporting their child care needs (D.A. Phillips, 1991).
Data from the National Child Care Survey of 1990 and census data indicate that "[employed] married mothers with low incomes relied heavily on their husbands, who provided 42 percent of the primary child care among married couples below the poverty level...[S]ingle mothers in low-income families were more likely to rely on relative care in the home than were better-off single mothers. Relatives in the home [primarily grandmothers] provided 45 percent of the primary child care for employed, single mothers living below the poverty level. In contrast, center-based care accounted for just 20 percent..., a lower percentage than for better-off single mothers" (Cherlin, 1995). Other studies also find a heavy reliance on grandmothers for child care (Kisker & Silverberg, 1991; Sonenstein & Wolf, 1991). Among the grandmothers who care for the children of their single mother daughters, it has been estimated that one-third are themselves in the workforce, usually working a different shift from their daughters and are thus overloaded and heavily stressed (Cherlin, 1995).
One study of a sample of families in Illinois making the transition from welfare to work (Smith, 1995) found that 70.6 percent of those working less than 20 hours a week used in-own home or family child care compared with 32 percent of parents working more than 32 hours per week. These parents were in a program that provided child care subsidies to them for a limited time of 12 months. Over 74 percent reported that they did not know how they would be able to continue working when their day-care subsidy ended, since, on a wage of $5 per hour, it would take 55 percent of a parent's gross salary to pay for private child care.
Poor families use a substantially larger proportion of their incomes to pay for child care than more affluent families (Brooks & Buckner, 1996). Employed poor White mothers with children under age 5 paid 24 percent of the family income for child care and poor African American mothers paid 17 percent, compared with 8 percent by employed nonpoor White mothers and 10 percent by nonpoor African American mothers. Among AFDC mothers, the average child care expenditure was 32 percent of total income (Bassuk et al., 1996b; Cherlin, 1995).
Low-income families using paid child care services also use family day-care providers disproportionately more than child care centers. The former are characterized by "unregulated, unlicensed setting of unknown quality" (Cherlin, 1995). Family day care (a primarily underground operation) could provide high quality care at affordable rates if providers were trained and standards enforced. In fact, with appropriate training, family day care is an entrepreneurial opportunity that has the potential to develop into a high quality and affordable child care option (Frankel, 1994).
Two basic strategies have informed child care policies at both the federal and state levels (D.A. Phillips, 1991). The first approach is the welfare model, remedial or custodial in its approach to child care, that is geared entirely to promoting adult employment and, as noted by Fink (1995) and others, "has tended to ignore considerations of child care quality" by trading off quality for low costs. The second approach is the Head Start model, which focuses on children and their education and development. This approach is more costly, about $525 per child per month compared with custodial child care costs of about $310 per child per month (Albelda, Folbre, & Center for Popular Economics, 1996), but is associated with clear positive outcomes.
Quality of child care in centers is associated with diversity in backgrounds of the children and with training and salary of the staff. The likelihood of high quality in a child care program is increased by ensuring diversity in ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic levels through the use of sliding fee scales based on family income. This has been recommended by a Children's Defense Fund Report (Chilman, 1988) and by Zigler (1994), who, as director of what is now the Administration for Children, Youth, and Families, administered the National Head Start Program. One study (D.A. Phillips, Voran, Kisker, Howes, et al., 1994) found that upper-income children in child care centers "were more likely than either their middle- or low-income peers to be cared for by better trained, stable, better compensated, and more sensitive teachers in more developmentally appropriate settings."
Mothers on welfare, like other mothers, "consider the developmental aspects of child care to be important-potentially as important as convenience" (Sonenstein & Wolf, 1991). Research findings indicate that, regardless of socioeconomic level, the quality of child care is positively correlated with child development outcomes (Chilman, 1988; Hernandez, 1993). A review and analysis of relevant research by the National Research Council concluded that child care outside the home that is of high quality can promote the intellectual and social development of children (Chilman, 1993). Likewise, data from a large scale national diverse sample (The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth) has documented that low-income children who attended day care in their first, second, or third years had significantly higher academic readiness scores in mathematics and reading recognition than comparable children who did not attend day care (Caughy, DiPietro, & Strobino, 1994). Results specific to Head Start, a quality program for preschoolers, are also consistently positive. The Report of the Carnegie Corporation's Task Force on Learning in the Primary Grades proposes that all 3- and 4-year olds have access to a high-quality preschool program that involves parents and community resources (Report, 1996).
So well documented are the positive effects of quality child care prior to entry into school that some experts in the field are now proposing a new research agenda "that would document the negative consequences of not providing high quality, affordable child care" to all children (Silverstein, 1991). Policymakers must understand that child care is needed before and after the traditional hours of 9:00 to 5:00 or 8:00 to 6:00 to accommodate the needs of poor parents with preschool children (Smith, 1995; Sonenstein & Wolf, 1991), many of whom are working during "alternative hours" (Brooks & Buckner, 1996).
Recommendations
- At federal and state levels, a comprehensive national child care policy should be created and supported that provides all preschool children with access to high-quality publicly funded child care centers
- that focus on child development and education;
- that are funded in part by parental contributions on a sliding scale;
- that are community based and monitored by a local board of parents;
- that compensate child care workers appropriately for their level of education, training, and responsibility; and
- that are available to parents and children over an expanded period of time (i.e., early morning, evening, and weekend hours).
- States should offer incentives to neighborhood groups and to corporations and other businesses to provide high-quality day care for community children and to children of employees, staffed by well-trained and fairly compensated workers.
- Federal legislation should amend PRWORA to
- eliminate the 60-month time limit for assistance to needy families; or
- eliminate from the 60-month time limit such noncash assistance as child care vouchers/certificates, emergency assistance, counseling, etc.
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