Friday, October 24, 1997

Hillary back in public-policy saddle

By Linda Chavez

She's back. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who tried unsuccessfully to revamp the American health-care system, is back in the public-policy saddle. This time, she has her sights set on child care. Her aim is no less revolutionary than it was four years ago -- and perhaps more so since now, it involves restructuring the way families raise their children.

But her tactics and style have changed. Instead of beginning with a grandiose legislative proposal for a new federal child-care system, the first lady says she's simply asking questions and gathering information on the quality, accessibility and affordability of child care in the United States. But make no mistake, if Clinton has her way, Thursday's White House conference on child care will usher in a new era in which Uncle Sam takes on primary responsibility for minding the nation's children.

No one who is familiar with Clinton's role on children's issues should be surprised at this. For years, Hillary Rodham Clinton has worked for greater government involvement in the lives of children. From her early law-review articles arguing that courts should recognize the full legal rights of minor children (including the right to sue their parents) to her work on the board of the Children's Defense Fund, a liberal advocacy group that promotes increased government spending for children, Clinton has championed a greater government role in dictating how families function.

The first lady is part of a growing segment of the feminist movement -- the family feminists -- who seek government programs, laws and regulations as a means to protect and provide for women and their children outside of traditional marriage.

European feminists have longed pushed this agenda. The International Feminist Congress in 1896, for example, declared that "motherhood is the principal social function and deserves to be subsidized by the state." Their goal was to provide a subsidy paid directly to women, making them less dependent on their husbands to provide for them and their children. They also lobbied for state-sponsored universal child care and health care. Indeed, much of what we think of as the modern welfare state in Europe grew out of those early feminist proposals.

But U.S. feminists resisted this agenda, concentrating instead on securing women's right to vote, to equal pay and to equal opportunity in the work force.

But lately, American feminists have begun to rethink their goals and, in recent years, have looked to the European model for guidance. Feminists like author Barbara Bergmann ("Saving Our Children From Poverty: What the United States Can Learn From France") have urged the United States follow France's role in setting up government child-care centers for infants and pre-school children and providing parents with direct government payments to improve living standards for poor and working families.

Of course, these feminists rarely mention that France, Sweden, Denmark and other welfare states have had to pay for these programs with a crushing tax burden on all their citizens and that their productivity lags behind America's in large part because of these higher social welfare costs, regulations and taxes.

But most importantly, the point missed by feminists, including Mrs. Clinton, is that most American women are not eager to trundle their children off to institutional day-care centers in the first place.

American families overwhelmingly rely on family members to care for young children. Parents and other family members account for the child-care arrangements of more than 60 percent of preschool-aged children.

Center-based care accounts for only 31 percent of all child-care arrangements, and that includes all existing private and government programs, such as Head Start, pre-kindergarten and other early childhood programs, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

From everything we know about child development, it's a good thing more children, especially infants, are not being cared for in institutional settings. Babies and very young children need the kind of personal attention and care-giving that is impossible to find in day-care centers, no matter how well-trained or well-meaning the staff.

As Dr. Stanley Greenspan, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at George Washington University, pointed out recently in an article in the Washington Post, "in the rush to improve and increase child care, we are ignoring a more fundamental reality: Much of the child care available for infants and toddlers in this country simply isn't good for them."

It's a warning Hillary Rodham Clinton and her White House conferees ought to consider carefully before they rush to put more kids in day care.

Creators Syndicate, Inc.