Mary Poppins Won’t Take Peanuts

Why doesn’t the market work in child care? Hillary Rodham Clinton asked Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who’s charged with getting business, labor and community leaders to do something about the shortage of high-quality, low-cost child care.

Actually, the market works just fine. The market says you don’t get what you don’t pay for. You don’t get high-quality child care at low cost.

Some enterprises can be reinvented, downsized, automated and continuously improved. Child care is done by people.

Offer long hours and low wages for a demanding job, and you’ll have a hard time attracting and retaining Mary Poppins. Those who stay in the job will either be ultra-dedicated or unable to qualify for anything else.

The average child care center teacher earns $6.70 an hour, according to a 1995 study. One third earn the minimum wage. Family care providers earn even less.

Not surprisingly, half the child care workers in America quit each year.

If we want better child care, we have to be willing to pay for it.

Most parents say they can’t afford to pay more. Currently, 70 percent of the costs are paid by parents, and it’s a very heavy burden for families that use centers, family day care homes or baby sitters.

Most low-income parents use “kin care,” which varies from very good (the loving grandma) to mediocre (the TV-addicted aunt) to dreadful (the short-tempered cousin with the druggie boyfriend).

Employers want to be “family-friendly,” so they can hire the best workers, but they run into equity issues if they offer child care money to a minority of workers and no equivalent benefit to the majority without young kids. Regulations and liability have scared most employers away from starting child care centers. Who wants to be the “deep pockets” defendant when the next wave of child-abuse hysteria hits?

So “we” is we taxpayers. We’re already spending more to subsidize child care for mothers leaving welfare, and some states are guaranteeing aid to all low-income working parents, so that people who have avoided welfare aren’t penalized.

Creating a high-quality system of tax-funded preschools, like the French creches, is the dream of early childhood educators. All it takes is billions of dollars.

As a Bill ‘n Hillary production, the White House staged a conference on child care last week, and President Clinton proposed $300 million in $1,500 scholarships for child care workers who promise to stay on the job for a year after they finish their course work in early childhood education. They’d get bonuses from employers and the government to compensate for their training.

More training without paying more money - a lot more money - means more turnover. A teacher at the top of the scale, who’s likely to have a college education and years of experience, averages $8.94 an hour, the 1995 study found.

California’s college-educated child care teachers are leaving for jobs as kindergarten teachers, a big step up in pay and prestige.

Clinton also proposed that states agree to share data on the criminal record of anyone who applies for a child care job.

Treating child care workers as suspects isn’t a great way to recruit more caregivers. And it won’t screen out the real threats: People who lack the energy, patience, common sense and maturity to care for other people’s kids for nine hours a day.

A criminal background check wouldn’t have weeded out Louise Woodward, 19, the British au pair convicted of killing the 8-month-old baby in her care. Nor would training in child care have given her the temperament to cope with a fussy baby.

Clinton will offer more child care ideas in his State of the Union address in January, probably including tax credits for middle-class parents and for employers who open day care facilities. He’ll tinker.

The sign of seriousness will be how much he proposes to spend on funding state child care initiatives and on expanding the hours, availability and quality of Early Start (for low-income babies and toddlers) and Head Start (for low-income preschoolers).

We can buy better child care, but not on the cheap.

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