The Child-Care Dilemma

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At the moment, though, the American child-care system -- to the extent that there is one -- is riddled with potholes. Throughout the country, working parents are faced with a triple quandary: day care is hard to find, difficult to afford and often of distressingly poor quality. Waiting lists at good facilities are so long that parents apply for a spot months before their children are born. Or even earlier. The Empire State center in Farmingdale, N.Y., received an application from a woman attorney a week after she became engaged to marry. Apparently she hoped to time her pregnancy for an anticipated opening. The Jeanne Simon center in Burlington, Vt., has a folder of applications labeled "preconception."

Finding an acceptable day-care arrangement is just the beginning of the ( struggle. Parents must then maneuver to maintain it. Michele Theriot of Santa Monica, Calif., a 37-year-old theatrical producer, has been scrambling ever since her daughter Zoe was born 2 1/2 years ago. In that short period she has employed a Danish au pair, who quit after eight months; a French girl, who stayed 2 1/2 months; and an Iranian, who lasted a week. "If you get a good person, it's great," says Theriot, "but they have a tendency to move on." Last September, Theriot decided to switch Zoe into a "family-care" arrangement, in which she spends seven hours a day in the home of another mother. Theriot toured a dozen such facilities before selecting one. "I can't even tell you what I found out there," she bristles. In one home the "kids were all lined up in front of the TV like a bunch of zombies." At another she was appalled by the filth. "I sat my girl down on the cleanest spot I could find and started interviewing the care giver. And you know what she did?" asks the incredulous mother. "She began throwing empty yogurt cups at my child's head. As though that was playful!"

Theriot is none too sure that the center she finally chose is much better. Zoe's diapers aren't always changed, instructions about giving medicine are sometimes ignored, and worse, "she's started having nightmares." En route to day care on a recent day, Zoe cried out, "No school! No school!" and became distraught. It is time, Theriot concludes, to start the child-care search again.

Fretting about the effects of day care on children has become a national preoccupation. What troubles lie ahead for a generation reared by strangers? What kind of adults will they become? "It is scaring everybody that a whole generation of children is being raised in a way that has never happened before," says Edward Zigler, professor of psychology at Yale and an authority on child care. At least one major survey of current research, by Penn State's Belsky, suggests that extensive day care in the first year of life raises the risk of emotional problems, a conclusion that has mortified already guilty working parents. With high-quality supervision costing upwards of $100 a week, many families are placing their children in the hands of untrained, overworked personnel. "In some places, that means one woman taking care of nine babies," says Zigler. "Nobody doing that can give them the stimulation they need. We encounter some real horror stories out there, with babies being tied into cribs."