High quality children care centers needed

Here is some news that should bring peace of mind to millions of parents who work outside the home and entrust their children to child care. A long-term study sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has concluded that children in high-quality day care are just as well off intellectually as children cared for at home by full-time mothers.

But wait a minute, you say. Just last week, there were news reports about an Arkansas church that decided to close its day- care center to force more mothers to stay at home. Church board members said that working mothers were harmful to the family and neglectful of their children.

What's going on here?

The latest research findings should help ease the confusion about what is best for our children. The study -- the most detailed to date -- shows that the quality of child care has a strong influence on a child's development. Researchers discovered that while home and family are the primary influences in a child's life, a nurturing, stimulating day care environment can indeed have positive effects on our children's cognitive growth. Quality child care in the early years -- care with a high degree of interaction between the adult caregiver and the child -- can also lead to a stronger bond between mother and child. The study did note, however, that children who spend a great deal of time in child care tend to have slightly weaker relationships with their mothers.

In short: Children need love, attention, stimulation and discipline no matter what setting they are in, whether it is with their own parents, baby sitters, day-care workers, preschool teachers, neighbors or relatives. What matters most is the quality of care they receive.

I have seen examples over the years of parents who work full- time and still manage to give their children boundless love and support and others who are stressed out and distracted. And I've seen parents who stay at home all day and are uninvolved, inattentive and emotionally divorced from the children they are raising and others who are models of parenthood. and I, like many working mothers, have seen examples of child care that run the gamut from shameful to superlative.

Put simply, good parenting and good child care are good for children, while lousy parenting and lousy child care are not.

Rather than leap to emotional and impulsive conclusions about the "right" and "wrong" roles for mothers who work in or out of the home, we should focus our energies on ways to help parents ensure that their children's emotional and developmental needs are met, especially during the earliest years.

Most women work outside the home for reasons of economic necessity, not choice. Half of all mothers today return to work before their babies' first birthdays because their families depend on their incomes to make ends meet. And today, the economic and social shifts that have made women valued and essential members of our work force have also made child care a fact of life for most Americans.

As a result, strengthening our child-care system must be a national priority. While there is a variety of child-care options in our country -- from family day-care homes where one adult supervises several children to day-care centers affiliated with churches, universities and businesses -- the quality of care is often uneven.

There are several reasons why: Too many environments for child care do not meet standards of cleanliness, space and size. And too many deny children the affection and attention they need.

Each of us has a stake in changing this situation. As a nation, we need to insist that the training and pay of child- care workers become a higher priority. Businesses can do their part by making sure employees have access to affordable, quality child care through on-site child-care centers, referral services, flexible work schedules and even tax advantages for salary used for child care. And government can play a role in providing subsidies for working parents who are struggling financially and women who are moving from welfare to the work force.

Parents themselves also need to demand better care. Parents can learn a lot about child care by making unannounced visits to a site before and after enrolling their children. They should investigate a site's basic safety, the experience and training of workers, and whether the setting is appropriate for their child's stage of development.

Research and science are telling us more about the kind of care and interactions our children need from the adults in their lives. Now we owe it to ourselves and our children to make good on the reliable new information we have.

-- Creators Syndicate