Roni gave me a heads up about the NOW Family Initiative and asked what I thought of it. Well, I am again frustrated with their presentation of the issues. The front page of their site reads:

The Family Initiative seeks to educate, engage and mobilize people from all walks of life to support major public investment in quality child care, preschool and afterschool. Our goal is to assure that quality care is available to every child who needs it and every parent who wants it. We believe this is critical to families, to the education of children, and to business.

The Family Initiative is building toward federal and state legislation that will increase resources for programs for all our children. We will also be reaching out to candidates running for public office, including those in the 2004 presidential race, asking them to present their plans for universally available child care and preschool.

These are laudable goals however, as usual the feminist institutions are leaving moms-at-home and wannabe moms-at-home in the dust. Childcare is critical, absolutely but getting more of it and even getting more funds to it is not going to — in my not so humble opinion — solve the problems that are inherent to our childcare system.

Also, when we talk about childcare as if it’s a universal solution, we are not addressing the more important but less practically urgent (because whatever my philosophical concerns are, kids need better daycare options IMMEDIATELY), which is that the raising of children is undervalued and this drives those problems in the first place. What I would personally like to see is an initiative like this that includes a commitment to change the way we view child rearing, parenting, and the basic rights of our kids.

Deeper in their web site (here) you will find the following:

Improving the availability and quality of care for infants and toddlers is essential, not only because it enables parents to work, but because of its impact on the physical, cognitive and social development of the child. Research shows that quality care, which is stimulating and responsive, enhances the development of infants. Unfortunately, care is often inadequate.

Enabling parents to work is not as important (and is not the same) as enabling parents to feed, clothe and shelter their families. Also, it again confirms the belief apparently held by NOW that raising children is not work. For the sake of this argument, let’s give them some leeway and assume that by “work” they mean “earn money.”

Research does show that quality care enhances the development of infants but quality care does not always equal institutional childcare. In fact, knowing what I know about the needs of infants (and having looked at the research of which they speak myself), I don’t think there’s any way to create enough quality childcare centers to meet the demands of our country. Further down the same page, they do finally make mention of the needs of at-home and wannabe-at-home parents:

Until we have better infant and toddler care options, families will continue to face difficult choices: to place their children in mediocre care; to pay a high price for quality care, if it’s available; or to forgo wages, career advancement opportunities, and future income security. We must continue to expand and improve infant and toddler policies so that better options are available for families.

Great! Finally! We do need better options so that we don’t have to forego our careers to care for our kids. We also need more creative solutions that will allow us to get paychecks and job fulfillment even if we want to be the primary care providers in our families. But remember on the front page is no mention of parental leave or policies that allow more parents the option to care for their own children. That this isn’t a goal is clear when you check out the Preschool initiative page:

While these programs are a step in the right direction, the limitations diminish the accessibility of quality care that all [emphasis mine] our children deserve. Quality preschool programs must be available to all Americans.

They also use the term “universal pre-kindergarten.”

The assumption that every kid needs to be in preschool or that pre-kindergarten must be universal undermines the idea that in fact, the work of raising children is work even when it happens at home instead of in a center. You get that? Remember that NOW is the same organization that blasted the AAP when it said that babies should get breastmilk for the first year of their lives. Instead of seizing the opportunity to demand mothering rights, NOW made a fuss about how moms shouldn’t have to feel guilty.

Under the guise of empowering women to work, NOW perpetuates the notion that kids are best raised in institutional settings rather than at home. While the initiative at its heart is well-intentioned (creating better institutional care) and understands that the need is immediate, their solution is still based on the patriarchal idea that real work only happens away from home. It’s my firm belief that until raising children is a seen as the valuable contribution to society that it is, any solutions we create to deal with these issues will be inadequate.

Interestingly, the Family Initiative addresses the sorry state of affairs for those employed to care for other people’s children in their .pdf report Family Initiative: Better Child Care, Preschool and Afterschool:

The Center for the Childcare Workforce estimates there are 2.3 million individuals in the child-care workforce, and has investigated how much they are compensated. The results: it’s not a thankless job, but from a financial point of view it comes pretty close. Of the childcare workforce, 97% are women. In 2000, their median income was $15,430 per year. In contrast the poverty level for a family of three that year was $13,874. … The benefits are equally dismal. Only 19% of child-care providers get health coverage from their employer. … To assure the quality of care we want for our children, we must attract better educated and qualified people to the field, and keep them in it. That means salaries and benefits must be improved.

I agree. Childcare workers must be paid more but here are my problems with the above paragraph:

  • The focus is on creating higher-paid childcare jobs, right? Better that the emphasis would be on allowing more families to care for their children. This would give families the freedom to make choices that best suit their wants and needs. As an added bonus, it would also open up more space in many childcare centers as those who are there by necessity and not choice take their kids home;
  • As childcare becomes further professionalized, more and more regular folks feel unequal to the task of raising their own children. Early childhood educators are a valuable resource but implying that they are the best people to care for children is a little like arguing that psychologists make the best spouses. Besides, daycare is not nor should it be considered school; it is an extension of basic parenting and unless we recognize that, we won’t do right by our kids when we try to create care situations that best meet their needs;
  • Right now many poor women put their own children in substandard care in order to get jobs in daycare centers. Professionalizing childcare will essentially put them out of work. While those women deserve good pay and benefits, tying that to education is unfair unless we’re going to create educational opportunities for them.

    Finally my reluctance to get involved with initiatives like these (despite my proud ownership and display of a “worthy wages for childcare” button) is that when there is a push for “universally available child care and preschool,” it makes my decision to be an at-home mother fundamentally harder. After all, if there’s lots of good childcare available, why bother to stay home? And if kids seem to do “better” educationally when they go to preschool programs and afterschool care, then it’s harder to justify my decision to care for own son and makes it even less likely that I will ever receive government support (social security, for example).

    This is when I feel abandoned by institutional feminism.

    It makes me think of the way Meredith Viera is supposed to represent moms on that stupid show The View. I remember sitting there nursing Noah one morning in my hideous burnt umber nursing sweatshirt and in the previews they made a big fuss about how they’d be doing a work wardrobe for fall fashion segment. Now call me crazy but who did they think was watching their show at 11am on a weekday morning? No matter how much she talks about her minivan, Ms. Viara does not represent the moms at home watching her chat with her coffee mug in hand. In the same way, the mothers of young children working at NOW fail to see my needs as a mom-at-home. I can see that the need for childcare is at the forefront of their minds because that’s their day-to-day reality. At home mothers are by definition not at most think tanks or policy meetings or initiative task forces so our voices are essentially missing from the discussion. Let me reiterate that it is not my intention to in any way imply that the pressing demand for better childcare options doesn’t exist; it’s just that NOW forgets that at-home moms have immediate, dire needs, too.

    All of my mom-at-home friends are self-identified feminists; we do exist. So why are we invisible to NOW or Ms? From my vantage point, they still seem tied to that patriarchal, industrial notion of what work is and in their admirable efforts to give women career opportunities, they’ve forgotten that some of us have never wanted to work “like a man.” Forget the pseudo power ties we roped around our neck in the 80s; maybe it’s time to quit trying to bring a little women’s intuition into the boardroom and instead tell the board they’ll have to meet by conference call ‘cuz mama’s telecommuting.

    I believe our next challenge as feminists is to take back our rights as mothers. Mothering is important work. It is irreplaceable. Childcare can be a tool as we do our work as mothers but it is not a substitute for our presence in our children’s lives on our own terms and not the dictates of a 40-hour grind. We should not have to justify our need or want to be primary caregivers for our children. We should be able to utilize appropriate childcare when it suits our family’s needs without compromising our strength and importance as mothers.

    This is long; I’m hitting save. Hope I caught most of the typos.

    Bookmark
    SubscribeBloglinesDiggdel.icio.usFacebookStumbleUponTechnorati

    Related posts