History of child care in the United States

In reading about child care options both in the U.S. and in other countries I came across this article A Brief History of Federal Financing for Child Care in the United States
which discusses (as implied by the title of my post) the history of out of home child care, how/why it started, and the original funding sources. If you are interested in reading it this is the link, however, if your not interested I'm gonna share the parts which were the most interesting or salient to me personally.
First was that child care (for all family structures) is not a new issue. Out of home child care has been offered from a variety of sources and for several reasons. Inlcuding increase of maternal employment due to economic need.

However, due to the very individualistic nature of our society there hasn't been (until recently) much support for federal involvement in funding child care. The general attitude has been that individuals are responsible for the care of their own children. In fact According to the 1930 report issued by the White House Conference on Children, “No one should get the idea that Uncle Sam is going to rock the baby to sleep.” (See attached article)
It has only been in the last 60-70 years that as more middle class women have entered the workforce, that attitudes have changed to be more supportive of child care in general.

Federal funding (while it does exist) has been very difficult to structure and still lacks the criteria of being organized, consistent, and structured. The intertia behind the original organization of federal funding for childcare did not outlive the depression which had necesitated it in the first place. Currently our federal care financing system is really no system at all, but is actually a collection of funding streams.

The article discusses at length the various social policies (which concern child care) which have been put in place during the last 70ish years. It's not my intention to recap what I read (so I didn't) just to share a brief glimpse of what I've learned in order to comment on it. My views on social policy and government involvement are (admitedly) still forming. The readings that we've had and some of the discussions in class, combined with my ever increasing realization of the enormous responsibility of careing for a child are sparking some very interesting debates... with myself! These questions have invited me to examine my own values (i.e. indiviudalistic) and the values of my subculture (in particular my family and religion) and then try to sort out what my opinions are... which ones are flexible to change... and why my opinions are what they are! I can not say that this is a comfortable process ( I get in fights with me frequently these days) however, I am excited to form opinions on policy issues (such as child care) which I had not really considered before.
Now that was a little bit of a personal rant (hope you'll forgive me) but the purpose of this blog (as I understand it) is an open forum to express our opinons and thoughts. Currently these are my opinions and thoughts. Tune in for more at a later time.

Child Care Options in the U.S.

I am interested in this topic for several reasons. Initially I realized how inadequate the options are for working mothers when my little sister (a single mom) went to work after a divorce in order to support her and her son. However, the high cost of child care makes it impossible for her to make enough money to pay other bills. As discussed in class on Wednesday the options for child care which are currently available are highly inadequate.

In fact according to what I read a single parent who makes an average of $19,000 a year can expect to pay 41 percent of that income or an average of $7,800 a year to pay for child care. A single parent family with two children needing child care (these numbers are specifically for North Carolina but are fairly typical) will pay about $14,556 on average or 76.6 percent of the median family income. With costs like this it would actually be cheaper to send your child to College than to pay for childcare or kindergarten.

There is an interesting article on this if you are interested in reading. The information is good but I have to admit to being a little discouraged by the whole thing. I am not a family finance/consumer science person (although I do like money) and yet can't help seeing the really negative repercussions financially of the high cost of child care. Honestly, No wonder the birth rate in the U.S. is negative there are lots of reasons to not have children (the discomforts of pregnancy being only one=) and there are TONS of reasons to delay having children or significantly limit the number you have. The financial burdens are high for a two parent family... The cost to a single parent is comparatively astronomical. On a more positive note, hopefully there are policies that could be implemented to alleviate the burden of child care for both single parents and the two parent families.

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