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Seventy percent of parents with children under age six find it extremely difficult to find affordable, high-quality day care.

Nationwide concerns about the quality and availability of day care are on the rise. Seventy percent of respondents in a recent survey of parents with children under six by the Children's Defense Fund said they found it extremely difficult to find affordable, quality day care. Translated to legislators, this concern has spurred an unprecedented flurry of state and federal initiatives, including recent proposals to give tax breaks to businesses who help their employees with day care and to extend federal day-care subsidies to more families. Some conservative lawmakers are even countering with proposals to give small tax breaks to families who would keep one parent home with the children.

Despite all the public concern about day care, the situation is not improving. "Child care in our country is becoming more and more uneven," says Michael Kalinowski, associate professor of family studies and former director of the UNH Child Study and Development Center, who has observed child care at more than 400 facilities. "While huge advances in child care have been realized in Europe and even in some third-world countries, child care in the United States has actually gotten worse."

Early childhood care and education should be the most sophisticated of all because the youngest children have the greatest needs. Yet Kalinowski notes parents often can't afford the cost of that care. In France, for example, early childhood workers are paid by the government, with local communities paying for the facilities. These workers have paid benefits and paid leave as well as standing in the community. Our early child care workers, on the other hand, subsidize the cost of child care with their low salaries, often out of a sense of commitment to children. Eventually the low pay and lack of benefits result in caregiver burnout and high staff turnover--a disaster for children.

Low pay and staff burnout, Kalinowski says, has led to a desperate shortage of high-quality child care. Many parents, he says, will take anything they can find, for lack of better alternatives. The two other major considerations beyond that are expense and location. Often parents piece together child-care arrangements and simply hope for the best. He suggests that luck then plays a huge role in the quality of care many children, even infants, receive.

One solution, Kalinowski recommends, is that parents start earlier in their search for child care and carefully evaluate how they will feel about leaving their children with these caregivers.

"Safety is important," he says, "but you also need to consider how caregivers will contribute to your child's care. Are they sensitive to children? Do they respond to their questions? Do they provide a stimulating environment? What is your gut level of trust?"

Quality is Key

My children attend UNH's Child Study and Development Center (in our house we call it "Buddies"). Buddies has a reputation for being among the best, and if the happy parents I see there are any testimony, it deserves its reputation. I know my children's teachers love them, and my children are delighted to be there. These insights alleviate my guilt only fractionally.

Although intellectually I know my children are fine, in my core doubt still whispers: I am weak. I am a bad mother. I would rather slink off to my calm, grown-up office than nurture the two people I love most in the world. Because no matter that day care costs more than my mortgage, no matter that I have quit every other activity outside my home life, that I spend every weekend and evening with my children, it never, ever seems to be enough. I read articles about women professionals who quit their incredible jobs, move to smaller houses and raise their babies themselves. Society's condemnation of employed mothers cuts me. My children would never be so judgmental. Or would they?

In a society where two-thirds of the mothers work outside the home, is it possible that our response to day care will eventually shift from wrangling over whether it's right or wrong to simple acceptance? The two-parent, one wage-earning family isn't likely to reappear, and rather than lamenting our cultural loss, how can we shift our focus to make the best of it?

"To begin with, whether children are raised at home or in a care situation, more emphasis needs to be placed on the quality of that care versus who's giving it," says Kathleen McCartney, professor of psychology and director of the Child Study Development Center (CSDC). McCartney is one of the principal investigators in the largest child-care study ever undertaken in the United States, funded through the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Over the course of the last seven years, McCartney and her colleagues have studied more than 1,350 families in nine states all born within the same 24-hour time period. The results have provided a snapshot on the evolving face of childhood in our culture.

I broach the question to her as impassively as possible. "Is child care outside the home the risk factor it was once considered to be?"

"Not usually," says McCartney. "For example, we have very good evidence that child care, even 40 hours a week, when it's good, poses no risk to children. When we do see an effect, the results are positive; but, again, this depends on the kind of care. We've learned that quality matters: good-quality child care fosters language and cognitive development as well as better peer relations and socialization."

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