The Emerging Child-Care Issue

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Something has to be done soon to help working parents care for their children -- and the Federal Government cannot avoid playing a role. With those propositions there is suddenly no longer any serious disagreement. Michael Dukakis says so, and so do Jesse Jackson and, mutedly, George Bush. In Congress, legislation is being pushed not only by liberal Democrats but also by Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican who normally cannot be found within miles of any proposal to increase social spending. Most surprising, the Reagan Administration, after seven years of virtually ignoring the problem, is now pulling itself together to develop some sort of pro-child-care position.

So is there a consensus? No. Despite agreement that Washington must do something, the question of what ignites differences that burn beneath mere partisanship to issues of deep ideology. For example, should the Government be encouraging women to work and turn their children over to someone else's care? Thus child care is potentially one of the hottest topics of the presidential $ and congressional campaigns. Unlike debates over the budget or trade policy, this one hits millions of voters directly where they live. "The issue of child care is politically ripe," says Secretary of Labor Ann McLaughlin, who has almost single-handedly prodded a lethargic Administration into starting to take a position.

Nearly 20 million mothers of minors are working, including 57% of those with children under six. Many are unable to find anyone to care for their offspring at a price they can afford: an estimated 7 million latchkey children spend all or part of the day alone because their parents cannot get somebody to mind them. Those who can find care are frequently bitterly disappointed with its quality.

All three presidential candidates are dropping in on day-care centers to dramatize their concern. Jackson proclaims in every speech, "We can either fund Head Start and child care and day care on the front side of life, or welfare and jail care on the back side of life." He offers a program of federal subsidies and tax credits calculated to extend day care to 2.6 million additional children, more than double those who would be helped by the most ambitious proposal advanced by other Democrats.

Dukakis has found child care a big help in humanizing his rather aloof image. On the eve of the Ohio primary last week, he visited a center in Cincinnati and led children in a rousing chorus of Itsy Bitsy Spider. Though he has not spelled out a detailed policy, he points to the state-sponsored program he developed as Governor of Massachusetts, the most comprehensive in the nation. Over the past three years, it has increased placements in state- licensed centers by 20%, to 117,000 Bay State youngsters.

Bush, for the moment at least, is in a bind. Asked for his views on child care recently, the Vice President quipped, "I'm for it," before more seriously voicing deep concern. Right now all he can do is promise to make a major speech on the issue in June and put forth some guidelines (no new federal bureaucracy; help only to the poor, not the middle class) that will shape his position once he has one.