Flexible and Quality Childcare - a Tool to Succeed

Over the past few decades, women have achieved a rising equality and presence within the workforce. This phenomenon has prompted policymakers to drastically change their approach to creating and implementing the nation’s welfare programs. For instance, social welfare programs like the 1996 Temporary Assistance for Families with Children (TANF) have imposed work requirements for single mothers who apply for welfare and other forms of public aid. These prerequisites include an 8 week job search, followed by an assessment, and participation in an authorized activity or community service for a limited timeframe. (www.spdp.org) Logically, this amendment is proactive and fair because it makes welfare-recipients in some sense earn their publicly-provided benefits. However, they also fail to fully recognize and commit to the needs of their children. Young children, especially, need constant supervision and attention; but with the work requirement, single mothers are often unable to provide their children with constant care. Therefore, in addition to these public benefits, welfare policies should also provide flexible and quality childcare for their applicants.

Extended and formalized childcare gives single mothers the freedom to maintain higher-paying jobs for their families. Sometimes these jobs require one to work irregular hours, which could force some single parents to either give up the offer or find a babysitter willing to work at odd hours of the day. For instance, any single parent working the night shift as a pizza deliverer will most likely have no means of attaining quality childcare at such late hours of the night. He or she will probably have to depend on a neighbor or a family member if lucky; but these people can sometimes act abusive or negligent towards the child. Therefore, it is imperative that policies, which have work requirements, give parents more flexibility and formalized/professional childcare for their children. These policy amendments could include universal preschool for low-income children, increased access to high-quality out-of-school programs for youth, experimentation with longer school days or year, and paid-parental leave and at-home infant child-care programs for low-income parents during the first year of the child’s life.

One might wonder how a country, with an already staggering deficit, will be able to afford such transformational and “radical” public assistance programs. There is only one answer to that. It will pay for itself. By providing low-income, single mothers with flexible and quality childcare, their children will have exponentially better chances of succeeding and attaining stable lives. For instance, the Perry Preschool Project, the longest-running study on the effects of preschool, has shown that youngsters who undergo quality preschool turn out to be more law-abiding, earn high incomes, and have more stable lives than children who were not enrolled. This study took 123 children from poor, African-American families living below the poverty line and placed them into a preschool curriculum in order to see the short- and long-term effects of universal preschool. After approximately 36 years, these children, who are now 40-years-old have higher IQ’s, earn higher incomes, and have less incarceration rates. Furthermore, many economists show that the country will experience a $13 dollar economic return for every $1 spent on universal preschool and other youth-oriented programs. Also, studies have also shown that it is cheaper to pay single mothers to stay at home with their infants than to give them in-kind benefits while working. Because programs like the Perry Preschool Project create all-in-all better citizens, less tax dollars will be wasted on maintaining the nation’s corrupt prisons and fighting crime. Now, the nation’s money can be spent on education, health care, and the like.

Contrary to popular belief, creating a better society does not start with tax dollars or work requirements. It starts with our children. Fostering a more nurturing, challenging, and proactive environment for them is paramount to achieving this goal. As a country that prides itself on its freedom of opportunity, we should provide our citizens with exactly that. Imposing work requirements with insufficient childcare on low-income single mothers is unfair and unrealistic. We need to care for all our citizens, even the ones deemed at risk for failure. Providing more flexible and quality childcare to low-income single parents helps parents maintain their careers, benefits children and most importantly, builds a better country.

Jinyoung Chang
Advocacy Intern
Crittenton Women's Union