With sops to big business and unions representing child care workers, the president’s proposal would empty parents’ pockets and give their children little in return. The tax credit for businesses isn’t intended for employees of Joe’s Auto shop; it’s corporate welfare for big businesses that have already established child care programs. And it is hard to believe that the president could be serious about offering scholarships to child care workers who, on average, are more highly educated than the average American.
The truth about child care is that it is both widespread and affordable. That may be why 96 percent of parents in America, in a study co-sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services, reported that they are satisfied with their current child care arrangements.
Many families pay nothing for child care. In 1993 half of all arrangements for preschoolers with working mothers did not require a cash payment. The average weekly expenditure of employed mothers who have incomes below the poverty level and pay for child care for preschoolers is $50. Mothers above poverty pay $76. And child care fees have risen less than 5 percent in real terms since the late 1970s. No wonder 9 out of 10 parents say they would be willing to pay more for their current child care arrangements.
Affordable child care is not scarce. In fact, in 1990 there was roughly a 12 percent vacancy rate in child care centers, a figure that was remarkably similar across regions and urban, suburban and rural areas. That estimate does not include the nearly 1.1 million nonregulated family day care providers, 40 percent of whom say they have room for more children. Employers, unions and local communities have also responded to working parents’ demands for affordable child care. More than half of all families report having some employer benefit or policy that helps them manage child care responsibilities.
What drives the Clinton child care proposals? The assumption that parents can’t be trusted, because they are just too ignorant and too incapable of caring properly for their children. According to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, parents don’t know what constitutes quality child care. As she puts it, parents often “don’t know what is quality. If somebody’s nice to them, it doesn’t matter that they don’t know the difference between caring for a 1‑year-old or a 4‑year-old.”