Thursday, August 28, 1997

Business caring more about child care

By Carol Kleiman /Chicago Tribune

Even before Jasmine Virginia Kerber was born last December, Karen Springen, her mother, began looking for child care in anticipation of her return to work.

Springen, 36, is a reporter for Newsweek magazine. Her husband, Mark Kerber, is an attorney.

"I asked my friends early on if they knew of quality care," said Springen, based in Chicago. "I always knew I could find it -- that I had lots of options."

She compiled a list of day-care centers, ruled out group home care and decided to find a baby-sitter to come to her home.

"I interviewed three excellent candidates and finally hired a wonderful woman who lives one block from our home," said Springen. "We pay taxes and Social Security for her -- and she pays taxes, too."

Springen returned to her job in June. "I feel so lucky," she said. "I can't imagine what it must be like not to have dependable day care. It's anxiety-producing enough just to leave Jasmine in the mornings."

Springen is lucky that she found and can afford the quality child care she desires. Just a decade ago, employed women with children didn't have the choices she has, regardless of ability to pay.

At that time, quality child care, an endless worry for working women, wasn't of much concern to anyone else.

But it was top priority for Barbara Reisman, who was named executive director of the Child Care Action Campaign in 1986.

The advocacy group, based in New York, is a nonprofit organization devoted to expanding the quality of affordable child care.

Reisman, highly respected for putting child care on the national agenda and making it a bottom-line business issue, recently resigned from her post.

She now is executive director of the Schumann Fund for New Jersey, a private foundation in Montclair that focuses on the environment, school reform and early childhood education, including child care.

One of the reasons Reisman took her new job is because it's within walking distance of her home and gives her more time with her two teen-agers, instead of spending two hours a day commuting.

It's the old story of working women wanting more time with their kids. That hasn't changed.

But a lot of other things have, particularly in the area of child care, and especially on Reisman's watch. I asked her to describe some of the changes from 1986 to 1997.

While in-home child care used to be a favorite choice, it's declining, she says.

"Karen Springen's decision to have a baby-sitter come to her home represents only 3 percent of child-care arrangements today," said Reisman. "Instead, there's been a shift toward greater use of child-care centers."

Reisman says 40 percent of all children are taken care of by relatives, still first choice in child-care arrangements. But use of child-care centers now is up to 30 percent. That the latter has grown in 10 years is "anecdotal," she says, because no one kept figures on child-care choices a decade ago. But Reisman has watched nonprofit and for-profit centers increase.

Also, 17 percent of children are in group home care; 8 percent are cared for by their mothers (who work part-time or at home); and 2 percent are in kindergarten and nursery school programs.

"In the last 10 years, there's been a dramatic increase in the number of mothers of young children entering the labor force,Ô" said Reisman. "At the same time, I think the Child Care Campaign has been successful in getting the public and business to understand that child care is both a work force development issue and a child-care development issue."

The scope of the change is dramatic: In 1986, 54.4 percent of women with children under the age of 6 were in the work force, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today the figure is 62.3 percent.

A decade ago, 8.1 million children under 5 needed child care; today the figure is 9.9 million.

A new area of concern, Reisman points out, is that 56.9 percent of women with children under 1 year old -- like Springen -- are in the paid labor force.

"Today, there is more focus on the quality of care given, because it is understood it is critical to the child's ability to enter school ready to learn and to the parents' ability to concentrate on the job," said Reisman.

Lawmakers' heightened recognition of the need for child care is a fallout of recent welfare reform. "They understand women can't get and keep jobs without subsidized child care. And there's a fairness issue involved here: The working poor also need financial aid for child care."

Reisman is pleased about the increase in accredited child-care workers, "but they still aren't paid well."

But child-care options overall have improved in the last decade, Reisman says.

"Child care now is on people's radar screen," she said.

And that's brand new.