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In this issue:

Quality Child Care

High Quality Child Care
Helps Strengthen Families

• It increases self-sufficiency
• It reduces parental stress
• It provides lifestyle choices
• It builds support networks

Child Care Helps Strengthen Families

The family is a basic institution--the most natural, effective way to rear children. But society also plays an important role in creating nurturing environments for children. We can choose to provide support that strengthens and promotes families so parents can succeed in raising healthy, well-adjusted children.

Child Care is a support service many families need in order to function well in today's world.

Access to Quality Child Care Can Serve To:

1. Help the family be self-sufficient

More than 46,000 Minnesota children under age 6 live in families receiving AFDC payments.

When high quality child care is made affordable, mothers are able to work, study or train for jobs. These families are less likely to become long-term welfare recipients.

2. Reduce parental stress

Research has shown that children are often the victims when parents live in high stress situations.

A safe and reliable child care placement during the times parents are unable to be with their children can go a long way toward reducing parental stress and promoting sensitive, responsive parenting.

". . child care is . .needed to support, not supplant, the family. "

(Stipek & McCroskey, American Psychologist,
Special Issue on Children and their Development, February 1989)

We need government and workplace policies to respond to social and economic changes which affect the American family. Child care must be viewed as an integral part of our economic system.

3. Help parents improve their skills in raising children

This year, hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans will be expected to properly care for their children, yet they were never trained for parenthood.

Well-trained child care professionals can help mothers and fathers become competent, confident parents.

Through example or discussion, good child care providers can:

• suggest alternative solutions to child-rearing problems,
• suggest toys and activities appropriate for different ages,
• provide information about health and safety, and
• offer objective insights into a particular child's behavior.

4. Create a social support network for parents

Research shows that when parents have a good support network they are more effective parents.

Child care professionals can help parents make contact with community resources and other parents who can:

• lend comfort, encouragement and help,
• share information and talk about problems,
• help alleviate parental stress, increase parental self-esteem and well-being,
• facilitate development of child-rearing skills in parents.

5. Provide families with the potential for improved health and safety

Many families cannot afford adequate housing, nutrition, and health care. More than 13,000 Minnesota families with young children live in poverty.

Child care can serve these needs by:

• providing a safe place for children while their parents are working or in school, and
• screening children for problems in health, vision, hearing, nutrition and development.

6. Allow families to have choices

The cost of child care is so high that it may be prohibitive for poor and single parents, leaving them with little choice in the way the family is managed. Even for those with higher incomes, finding high quality child care is difficult, reducing options for these parents as well.

If quality child care were available and affordable:

• mothers who want to work would not be forced to stay at home--families could choose the quality and style of child care they wish for their child, and
• aging grandparents would not need to lend financial and child care support to their adult children.

The American culture promotes the rights of all individuals to live their lives as they choose. Equal access to child care may be a key factor in having freedom of choice of lifestyle for people of all income levels.

Recent research has provided us with the following information:

• 71% of parents referred for child neglect do not have enough money to pay a babysitter.
• only 11% of parents referred for child neglect use day care services .
• 67 % of single AFDC mothers say difficulties locating adequate child care interfered with their finding and keeping a job.
• 76 % of AFDC mothers who eventually gave up looking for work cited child care difficulties as the reason.

Fact Find is published by the Center for Early Education and Development (CEED), University of Minnesota, 1954 Buford Avenue, Suite 425, St. Paul, MN, 55108

ceed@umn.edu (email)
http://cehd.umn.edu/ceed (Web)

CEED provides information regarding young children (birth to age eight), including children with special needs, in the areas of education, child care, child development, and family education. CEED activities include research, training, and publications geared toward improving professional practices, supporting parents, and informing policy development.

The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity employer and educator. The College of Education and Human Development is committed to recruiting, enrolling, and education a diverse population of students who represent the overall composition of our society. This publication is available in alternate formats upon request.

Copyright © 2004 by Center for Early Education and Development

These materials may be freely reproduced for education/training or related activities. There is no requirement to obtain special permission for such uses. We do, however, ask that the following citation appear on all reproductions:

Reprinted with permission of the Center for Early Education and Development (CEED), College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota, 1954 Buford Avenue, Suite 425, St. Paul, MN, 55108; phone: 612-625-2898; fax: 612-625-6619; e-mail: ceed@umn.edu, web site: http://cehd.umn.edu/ceed.