Time To Care: Redesigning Child Care To Promote Education, Support Families, And Build Communities

TIME TO CARE TIME TO CARE REDESIGNING CHILD CARE TO PROMOTE EDUCATION, SUPPORT FAMILIES, AND BUILD COMMUNITIES Joan Lombardi A CENTURY FOUNDATION BOOK Temple University Press PHILADELPHIA The Century Foundation, formerly the Twentieth Century Fund, sponsors and supervises timely analyses of economic policy, foreign affairs, and domestic political issues. Not-for-profit and nonpartisan, it was founded in 1919 and endowed by Edward A. Filene. Board of Trustees of The Century Foundation: H. Brandt Ayers Peter A. A. Berle Alan Brinkley, Chairman Joseph A. Califano, Jr. Alexander Morgan Capron Hodding Carter III Edward E. David, Jr. Brewster C. Denny Charles V. Hamilton Matina S. Horner Lewis B. Kaden James A. Leach Richard C. Leone Jessica Tuchman Mathews Alicia H. Munnell P. Michael Pitfield Richard Ravitch Alan Sagner Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Harvey I. Sloane, M.D. Theodore C. Sorensen Kathleen M. Sullivan David B. Truman Shirley Williams William Julius Wilson Richard C. Leone, President Temple University Press, Philadelphia 19122 Copyright © 2003 by The Century Foundation All rights reserved Published 2003 Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lombardi, Joan. Time to care : redesigning child care to promote education, support families, and build communities / Joan Lombardi. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-59213-008-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-59213-009-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Child care—United States. 2. Child care services—United States. 3. Early childhood education—United States. 4. Family services—United States. I. Title. HQ778.63 .L66 2003 362.71'2'0973–dc21 2002073201 To my family, for always having time to care, and To all the parents and child-care providers across the United States who get up every morning and try to make it all work for children Contents Foreword Preface ix xiii 1 Reframing Child Care 2 Looking Back: Child Care in the United States in the Twentieth Century 29 A Good Beginning: Redesigning Child Care as Early Education and Family Support 54 The New Neighborhood: Redefining Education After School 94 The Caring Community: Rekindling a Commitment to Our Children 128 Toward Redesigned Child Care: A Call for Investment and Reform 166 Notes 193 Index 219 3 4 5 6 vii 1 Foreword n the years immediately after World War II, just 12 percent of American women with children under six years of age were in the labor force. Over the next half-century, that share multiplied more than fivefold. At the same time, the laborforce participation of women with school-age children also soared, from just over one-quarter to slightly more than three-quarters. The lion’s share of those increases occurred during the past generation, but the trends have been evident for long enough that one might reasonably have expected the nation to have responded in significant ways to such a fundamental social transformation. As most other developed nations experienced comparable increases in the number of working mothers, they adopted a variety of public policies that enabled families to gain access to reliable child care. In the United States, however, the role of government at all levels with respect to child care has remained limited, fragmented, and underfunded for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most significant has been the long-standing and still politically potent ambivalence toward m