Child Care
by
Christopher Dodson
Executive Director
North Dakota Catholic Conference
August 2008
North Dakota, like many states, faces a
child care shortage. Looking at the causes of the crisis
might help us find solutions.
While parents look for affordable quality child care,
business and government leaders struggle to respond to the
demand. Questions arise about who is responsible. Who is
responsible for dealing with the child care shortage? Is it
the local government, the state government, the federal
government, local businesses, or all of them? Should
parents, businesses, or government pay to encourage more
child care opportunities?
Child care raises particularly difficult questions for
Catholics. On the one hand, in ideal environment where one
spouse provided all a family’s needed income, child
care would not be needed. On the other hand, that
environment rarely exists today and our Catholic values
compel us to respond to the child’s needs.
When looking for causes, we should avoid broadly
characterizing and judging families with regards to their
need for child care. Some families do not need child care
and do not use it. Some families do not need child care,
but use still use it in order to maintain a chosen
lifestyle. Some families need child care, but would rather
not have to use it. It is very difficult and to judge
another family’s actual need for child care.
Moreover, whatever the family’s situation, the
child’s needs are paramount.
One source of the present child care crisis goes back
several decades to when women first began moving into the
workforce. No - I am not blaming working mothers for
creating the child care problem. Instead, I am noting an
historical economic development. As both spouses entered
the workforce, wages -- especially their buying power --
diminished. Whether this was a conscious response by
employers a function of the market is something about which
economists and philosophers can argue. What is important
for this discussion is that the economy began to be shaped
around a system with both parents working for an overall
less valuable wage. In other words, just as the need for
child care was created the ability of parents to afford it
diminished.
The next trend was the divorce culture that tragically
created too many families who truly needed child care. At
the same time, a decrease in the number of extended
families and an increase in the number of older workers
(grandparents) contributed to greater demand for child
care. Growing professionalization and regulation over child
care options helped better ensure quality child care, but
may have contributed to an inability of communities to
quickly respond to new child care needs.
With all these trends, the present child care crisis may
have seemed inevitable. However, more recent trends
exacerbated the problem and are particularly relevant to
the search for a solution.
Contrary to what many people think, the welfare reform
effort started in 1996 was not designed to get people out
of poverty. Instead, with very few exceptions, the entire
effort was designed to get people working. For example, the
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program requires a
single mother to work once an infant turns 5 months old.
The program has been successful at getting people into the
workforce, but the verdict is out as to whether it has
helped lift people out of poverty. One thing it has
undoubtedly done is create more demand for child care. To
some extent, the federal government tried to respond to the
problem by providing additional funding for child care. The
funding, however, has not been adequate and is not
necessarily permanent.
The other recent trend, particularly in North Dakota, that
has exacerbated the problem is the use of economic
incentive programs to recruit industries and businesses to
locate in the state. Many of the jobs resulting from these
government-sponsored recruiting efforts -- such as food and
ethanol processors, call centers, and manufacturers --
require non-traditional work hours. Child care is already
in short supply. Child care for weekends and nights is even
harder to find.
Some of the child care crisis, therefore, comes as a result
of decisions made by government and business leaders. The
Catholic Catechism reminds us that business and political
leaders are responsible for the consequences of their
actions. Some foresight and a commitment to the common good
might help ensure that children do not pay the price for
progress and economic development.
