Des Moines Register
06-11-06
Where's the support for families?
ANDIE DOMINICK
REGISTER EDITORIAL WRITER
I'm not a farmer. Neither is my husband. So when "summer break" hits, my three
children aren't working the fields or milking cows. Just like thousands of other
Iowa kids, they're heading to day-care programs and summer camps.
The 100-year-old school calendar, implemented when people were riding in
horse-drawn buggies on mud roads, is outdated. And unfortunately there is too
little public pressure to implement a year-round school calendar that could
improve learning, help kids retain information and accommodate working
families.
So parents are left scrambling for summer care. And they pay through the nose
for it.
In Des Moines, programs and camps for school-age kids range from $100 to
$185 per week.
That's after parents spend a small fortune for care during a child's preschool
years. In Iowa, preschool care costs an average of $5,373 a year, according to
the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies. That's
more than 8 percent of the median two-parent family income and more than 25
percent of the median single-parent income. It's also about the same cost as
tuition and fees at Iowa State University this year.
Just ask anyone with kids what they pay, and you'll be astounded. A woman in
the editorial writers department pays $165 per week for her son's day care. My
next-door neighbors have two children and pay nearly $1,100 per month for child
care, more than their monthly mortgage. This year, just summer care for my
three school-age kids will cost about $4,000.
Day-care costs impact the life, work and financial decisions of every family with
children.
How do families afford it?
Maybe they don't. Maybe that extra day-care expense is just another one of the
variables that drives people deeper into debt or forces them to forgo saving for
retirement and future college costs. Or worse.
Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi have written a book about the
financial stresses on today's families, "The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class
Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke." Among many troubling truths they
explore: Married couples with children are more than twice as likely to file for
bankruptcy as their childless counterparts. Families with children are 75 percent
more likely to be late on credit-card payments. And they're also more likely to
experience a home foreclosure.
How is it that in a country where politicians preach "family values," the family unit
isn't valued? If it were, quality day care would be more affordable, and the people
caring for kids would be paid a living wage. Why can't this country help families?
Other countries do.
France and other European countries provide publicly financed child care for
children under age 3 and preschool care until a child enters the public-school
system. Sweden makes it easier for a parent to stay home the first 15 months of
a child's life by guaranteeing paid parental leave and mandating the option of
working shorter days until a child is 8.
Those countries value families and children.
Instead, American politicians choose to focus their campaigns on gay marriage,
abortion and other hot-button "family" issues. The real problems facing families,
such as low wages, lack of health insurance and high child-care costs, don't get
much attention.
Spending more than $25,000 on day care before a child reaches kindergarten
affects typical families more directly than whether the two women living next door
want to tie the knot.
Instead of thinking of children as an investment in the future, those in power harp
about the aging population and the looming crisis facing Social Security.
Well, the high cost of raising a child may be discouraging young couples from
having the children who will eventually become workers and pay taxes to support
entitlement programs for the elderly. When I asked my neighbor if she and her
husband were planning a third child, she said no. Cost was one of the reasons.
Marcia Meyers and Janet Gornik, writing in The American Prospect Magazine a
few years ago, calculated it would cost the United States as little as $115 billion
per year to provide a generous package of paid family leave and child care
comparable to what exists in France or Sweden.
That's about one-third of what American taxpayers will pay for Medicare this year
to cover seniors.
Why not a little more investment in the well-being of our children and families?