A few weeks ago, I wrote about the child care crisis in America.   Working parents have difficult times finding quality day care- at reasonable prices- for their kids.  It is not atypical that the costs for child care swallows up the net pay (after taxes) of the lower paid spouse.

This is one of the major reasons why the US birth rate is at its lowest point in 30 years.  This is not conjecture-  in a recent survey, Morning Consult found that 64% of those surveyed stated that child care costs were the primary reason young folks were having fewer kids, with 31% stating that they don’t have kids for that same reason.  By the way,  almost half (49%) of those surveyed were worried about the economy and 44% couldn’t afford more children were additional responses in that survey.

Then, there’s the New York Times today (thankfully, I read this at 3 AM, before this post was released).  Reporting on a new study that i had not yet seen that was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, written by I. Kuziemko and  J. Shen (both from Princeton), J. Pan (National University of Singapore), and E. Washington (Yale).

It describes the problem as not just one of monetary concerns, but time- time to breastfeed,  time to develop (and execute) educational and enriching activities, and (this is one I hate) the time to perpetually oversee children’s activities. (I wrote about my childhood and the problems government is now providing parents who let their kids have free play here.)

And, we can’t forget that it’s not just the high cost of child care- it’s also the lack of viable options to obtain child care  (waiting lists are the norm for child care spots) that make this a crisis.   This is despite the fact that our country’s leaders always complain about the labor participation rate (how many of our eligible adults are actually working- or seeking a job).  (The NBER study uses the time constraints to explain why women’s participation in the labor force has been stagnant for some 25 years (for women between the ages of 25 to 54).

It’s not clear to me why we aren’t reverting to the system that was developed during World War II.  With the need for troops sucking up a good portion of our male population, women were impressed into the job force.  (6.5 million women, almost 10% of the 18-64 year old population, were employed to help the US war effort. About 600,000 of these women had children 10 or younger.)

Instead of leaving children home unsupervised, the Lanham Act (1940) was passed.  These war- related grants provided federally subsidized child care across the US.  It was not just play spaces, but included provisions for medical clinics and infirmaries- even personal shoppers to fill out the working women’s grocery lists, with the food bagged and tagged, ready to be taken home at the same time one retrieved her child(ren).

While this program was useful, it only serviced about 25% of the working women’s children (130,000 were enrolled).  The split was interesting- the feds picked up $ 52 million of the program’s costs; parent’s shelled out $ 26 million for the care.  (This would be equivalent of $10 a day in today’s dollars- or less.  That would make the annual cost about $ 2000- not the typical $20,000 in annual fees today’s parents pay for child care.)

Despite the pleas of parents (and Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as the Child Welfare League), this program ceased operations after the war.  Despite the facts that the children who participated in this program were more likely to have been employed, at higher wages, with less need for government subsidies after they reached working age.

In 1971,  Congress passed (in a bipartisan fashion) the Comprehensive Child Development Act, a program that would provide federally subsidized child care.  The program would entail free care for the poorest of children, with a sliding scale of tuition as one’s family income increased.

But, a campaign by the vitriolic (and anti-Semitic) Pat Buchanan, then an aide to Tricky Dick (Richard Nixon) proclaimed this would be fiscally irresponsible- but, more importantly (and less truthfully)- it would impose the “moral authority” of the government and weaken the nation’s families.  So, this program was killed as one of  Nixon’s 26 vetoes of Congressional laws.

We do have a program of sorts for child care for kids in families at or below the poverty line (as well as foster and homeless children).  It’s called Early Head Start, covering kids from birth to 3 years of age. Of course, this program also has a healthy (meaning very unhealthy if one is seeking such care) waiting list, because of insufficient funding.

And, there’s the Military Child Care Act (1989)  to support child care for children whose parents are serving the US.  (The Army found a significant number of parents skipped training because they lacked adequate child care.)    Costs for child care are set at 10% of salary (the norm for child care costs in the US is 20% of family income- or more), and the children are cared for on-base, local to the military parents.

And, these centers are accredited (National Association for the Education of Young Children), while only about 10% of civilian child care centers have such a designation.

Isn’t it time for Congress to pass the 2019 version of the Comprehensive Child Development Act?

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