by Sonya Michel

Was anyone else struck by the ironic juxtaposition of these two headlines on the front page of the March 26 New York Times: "Poor Behavior Is Linked to Time in Day Care" and "Failing Schools See a Solution in Longer Day"? What's a woman--and, more to the point--what is American society to do? American lawmakers have yet to come to grips with the fact that the more mothers enter the labor force, the more we suffer from a "care deficit." The solution is not to force women to stay at home (though a visible minority--those who can afford to--have been marching out of the corner office and back into the nursery), but to come up with policies and programs to compensate for the caring work they once did in the home. It is not that we lack precedents. During World War II, the U.S. government made sure that Richie and Rhonda Riveter had access to child care. But as soon as the war was over, federal support was withdrawn, and it was not renewed, despite repeated efforts on the part of various coalitions of early childhood experts, feminists, labor economists, and liberal lawmakers, until the 1960s. At that point, Congress realized that it couldn't compel women on public assistance to take jobs unless their children were provided for. The child care provisions in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 ("welfare reform") represent the endpoint of that policy shift. But the amount of funding available is still too little to serve all children who are eligible for public subsidies. This, in turn, translates into low pay and few or no benefits for child care providers, making it difficult for centers to maintain continuity in staffing. According to the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development that was the subject of the Times day care story, "keeping a preschooler in a day care center for a year or more increased the likelihood that the child would become disruptive in class." However, as one child care advocate pointed out, the high turnover in personnel and consequent interruption of children's bonds with their caretakers might very well explain children's "disruptive" behavior in later years. Curiously, while early childhood advocates are discouraging parents from keeping children in group care for long hours, public school officials are recommending just the opposite. This contradictory message reflects the bureaucratic and ideological barriers that separate the fields of early childhood and K-12. But while the two groups might argue that they are dealing with children of different ages, the crises detected in both their realms point to a single fact: American women, upon whom responsibility for children from infancy to young adulthood has devolved for centuries, are no longer available. While the need for child care has been grudgingly acknowledged, there has been scant attention to the ways in which mothers enrich the lives of their school-age children. Whether schlepping them to Little League, flute lessons or Girl Scouts, or simply making sure that the television stays off until their homework is done, "soccer moms" have long provided the "extras" that school officials are now proposing to offer in after-school programs. Throughout much of the twentieth century, at least some of these activities--music, sports, cooking, shop, etc.--were a normal part of school curricula, but during the "back-to-basics" Reagan years, most were deemed "frills" and stripped away. Wealthy communities and families filled in the gaps privately, but low-income children went without. Now, in response to the Bush administration's bullying, school officials are beginning to recognize the educational value of such opportunities and, ironically, may end up making them available to more children, regardless of class background. One further irony: for many wage-earning mothers, schools (and, when allowed, public libraries) have often served as a form of child care. By extending the school day, public officials will also be offering those mothers reassurance that for at least a few more hours, children will not have to be on their own. But all of this is nothing more than a piecemeal approach. Children's experts on both sides of the age divide need to come together, along with parents and lawmakers, to develop a comprehensive solution to the care deficit--one that doesn't rest solely on mothers' shoulders.