The Child-Care Dilemma

The smell of wet paint wafts through the house on a tree-lined street on Chicago's North Side. Marena McPherson, 37, chose a peach tint for the nursery: a gender-neutral color. But the paint had a will of its own and dried a blushing shade of pink. Ah well, no time to worry about that. With the baby due in less than a month, there are too many other concerns. Like choosing a name, furnishing the baby's room, reading up on infant care and attending childbirth classes. Above all, McPherson must tackle the overriding problem that now confronts most expectant American mothers: Who will care for this precious baby when she returns to work?

An attorney who helps run a Chicago social-service agency, McPherson has accumulated two months of paid sick leave and vacation time. She plans to spend an additional four months working part time, but then she must return to her usual full schedule. So for several months she has been exhaustively researching the local child-care scene. The choices, she has learned, are disappointingly few. Only two day-care centers in Chicago accept infants; both are expensive, and neither appeals. "With 20 or 30 babies, it's probably all they can do to get each child's needs met," says McPherson. She would prefer having a baby-sitter come to her home. "That way there's a sense of security and family." But she worries about the cost and reliability: "People will quit, go away for the summer, get sick." In an ideal world, she says, she would choose someone who reflects her own values and does not spend the day watching soaps. "I suspect I will have to settle for things not being perfect."

That anxiety has become a standard rite of passage for American parents. Beaver's family, with Ward Cleaver off to work in his suit and June in her apron in the kitchen, is a vanishing breed. Less than a fifth of American families now fit that model, down from a third 15 years ago. Today more than 60% of mothers with children under 14 are in the labor force. Even more striking: about half of American women are making the same painful decision as McPherson and returning to work before their child's first birthday. Most do so because they have to: seven out of ten working mothers say they need their salaries to make ends meet.

With both Mom and Dad away at the office or store or factory, the child- care crunch has become the most wrenching personal problem facing millions of American families. In 1986, 9 million preschoolers spent their days in the hands of someone other than their mother. Millions of older children participate in programs providing after-school supervision. As American women continue to pour into the work force, the trend will accelerate. "We are in the midst of an explosion," says Elinor Guggenheimer, president of the Manhattan-based Child Care Action Campaign. In ten years, she predicts, the number of children under six who will need daytime supervision will grow more than 50%. Says Jay Belsky, a professor of human development at Pennsylvania State University: "We are as much a society dependent on female labor, and thus in need of a child-care system, as we are a society dependent on the automobile, and thus in need of roads."