Top Concerns

The White House Conference on Child Care aims to stimulate discussion about the quality and cost of child care. Among the concerns:

13 million American children spend all or some of their day being cared for by someone other than their parents.

Child-care providers earn an average of $6.89 an hour.

One-third of all child-care providers quit their centers each year.

45 percent of children under age 1 regularly are in child care.

Nearly 5 million school-age children spend time after school without adult supervision in a typical week.

Children between ages 12 and 17 are most at risk of committing violence or being victims between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.