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AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

Public Policy, Work, and Families:
The Report of the APA Presidential Initiative on Work and Families

  RECOMMENDATIONS
  For Employers
  For Public Policies
  For Schools &
    Communities
  For Working Families

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The following recommendations are based on a review of many studies of the interaction between family life and employment. for the specific studies that support the recommendations, see references.

Recommendations for Schools and Communities

Child care, and, increasingly, elder care, is THE CENTRAL ISSUE for working families. Low-wage workers cannot afford quality care unless it is subsidized. The savings to society have been calculated by numerous groups, including the Children's Defense Fund. The lack of available child care, especially sick child care, is the top reason why women fail to stay off welfare--they cannot get the children to day care before work starts, and if a child gets sick, they lose their jobs. Child and elder care services need to be available at hours when working adults need them. This is not rocket science, but we are losing money and failing families at rocket speed because we fail to coordinate the needs of work and family. The need for elder care over the next two to three decades is projected to rise exponentially, yet there have been few systematic preparations. Communities need to offer services for older adults now and plan to increase their capacity over time based on local demographic projections. Innovative plans for elders to provide child care should be considered.

Advocate for Universal Quality Early Childhood Programs Near Public Transportation
Early childhood education and preschool (for ages 0 to 5 years) have substantial, persistent long-term benefits for children, including large positive increases in academic performance, better social relationships, better emotional and psychological well-being, and happier parents and families. Current research shows that quality early childhood programs can be beneficial for children, especially for children from low-income families because these programs can close the huge gap in children's readiness to start school, in their vocabulary and literacy and in putting them on more equal footing with their more affluent peers. Children benefit from early childhood programs when

Teachers and caregivers are well trained, warm and receptive, and want to be in their job

The program focuses on children's social, emotional, and intellectual learning and all areas of development (developmentally appropriate)

It follows a fairly regular and stable schedule

The hours are not excessive (e.g., over 40 hours per week)

Disabled children who require special education benefit from preschool experiences, which also increase the psychological well-being of their parents. Given that the minimum wage in the United States is $5.15 an hour and that child care costs can range from $4,000 to $10,000 a year, low-income parents cannot afford quality child care. According to the Children's Defense Fund, child care problems often interfere with parents' getting or keeping a job; when families receive financial assistance for child care, they are more likely to work.

"High-quality, educational child care and preschool for low-income children by age 15, reduces special education placements and grade retentions by 50% compared to controls; by age 21, more than doubles the proportion attending four-year college and reduces the percentage of teenage parents by 44%" (U.S. Department of Education, December 2003, p. iii). We recommend that families who receive welfare cash assistance, those transitioning off of welfare, or low-income working families get the child care and early education programs they need to find and keep a job. This is critical to securing their financial independence. Good-quality, center-based child care is beneficial to all children, but children in poverty have the most to gain from these experiences. In addition, follow-up studies show that the gains last for many years.

Entwisle, D.R. & Alexander, K. L. (1993). Entry into school: The beginning school transition and educational stratification in the United States. Annual Review of Sociology. 19, 401-423.

Hart, B. & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experiences of young American children. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brooks; 1995.

Support After-School Programs
With so many adults at work, many youngsters are alone and unsupervised when the school bell rings at the end of the day. A large number of juvenile offenses occur during these afternoon hours, and recent studies show that working parents with unsupervised children worry about this situation. The obvious solution is a quality after-school program that combines academic enrichment with physical activity and physical safety until parents retrieve their children after work. There is a considerable body of research that shows many positive outcomes for children and adolescents who participate in organized, high-quality after-school activities (Brooks & Mojica, 1995). These data show that compared to children and adolescents who do not participate in such activities, children who participate report less depression and greater psychological well-being and more positive emotional experiences across the entire school day, demonstrate greater academic achievement and social competency (including more positive peer relationships), are described more positively by teachers, and engage in less misconduct.

But, there are contradictory data on the effectiveness of after-school programs as well. A recent large-scale study funded by the Department of Education failed to find any appreciable gains in academic achievement, involvement in drugs, or feelings of safety. In addition, it seems that the after-school programs reviewed by the Department of Education did not reduce the number of children who were unsupervised after school because participation was voluntary, and those children who participated were not the ones who were unsupervised when the after-school program was not available (U.S. Department of Education, 2003).

The controversy over these data leaves us with the recommendation that after- school programs are needed for young children who cannot be left unsupervised. Physical activity programs are needed because of the growing obesity problem, especially among inner city adolescents. After-school sports activities offer opportunities to prevent and reduce obesity in children and adolescents. A quality program for children in need of academic help is required under the No Child Left Behind Act and could be offered during after-school hours. We have good evidence that additional time spent in directed learning tasks results in better academic performance. After-school programs also reduce parental stress, which peaks during the after-school hours. Recent studies suggest that parental after-school stress may reduce performance at work. For these reasons, we believe that after-school programs are important and defensible public policies. Better designed programs that do not permit "drop-ins" (which were allowed in the programs assessed by Department of Education and resulted in low attendance rates by many adolescents) and require parents to sign out children at the end of the day and combine sports and tutoring should have better success in meeting the multiple goals of increasing physical activity, keeping children safe, improving academic achievement, and reducing parents' after-school stress.

Align School and Work Calendars
The long summer break in the school year was designed for agrarian societies, where children were needed to pick the crops. This calendar is no longer functional, and the long summer break has been shown to be particularly disadvantageous to students in poverty because they have less exposure to academically stimulating experiences during the summer months. Students from low-socioeconomic status backgrounds who participate in summer programs do not show the increasing annual gaps in academic achievement relative to their richer peers, which are found with low socioeconomic students who do not participate in summer learning programs. Thus, there are many reasons to abandon the current school calendar to bring it in line with their parents' work schedules.

Arrange Multiple Services at Sites and at Times When People Need Them
Working families need routine well-child health services at or near school sites at times that do not conflict with work schedules. Routine government services can be made available at times that do not require time away from work or family. Low-wage workers lose needed income because government services--even services for aid to needy families--are still based on a model of a family with a single wage earner with two adults by only offering services during standard work hours. Medical and other services need to be near public transportation, at or near schools, and offered to coincide with the close of the school day, in the evenings, and on weekends.

Next: Recommendations for Working Families

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