Raising concerns about US child care

'Child Care Today," whose subtitle could more accurately read, "Getting It Right for Everyone (Except for the US, Which Is Still Getting So Much of It Wrong)," is not a how-to book for parents on choosing child care (if it were, the best advice would be, Move to Sweden!).

Rather, it's "an examination of Western child care in the first decade of the second millennium," an exhaustive amalgam of research findings, options for child care, public policy initiatives, a vision of superlative child care that is a reality in Scandinavia, and a condemnation of the US government's policies on how we care for our children in the first years of their lives.

Penelope Leach is the author of the international bestseller "Your Baby & Child" which, with its hands-on, compassionate advice, has sold more than 2 million copies in the United States alone. "Child Care Today" draws from wide-ranging data on how industrialized countries and regions - notably Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Europe, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the United States - care for their young children.

What she discovers is deeply concerning: While some policies regarding child care are good (Europe), improving rapidly (the UK), and superlative (Denmark and Sweden), "The vast majority of American child care is of unacceptably low quality and in the first 3 years of life does not meet even minimal recommended guidelines."

As anyone with young children knows, choosing child care is probably the most emotionally fraught and important decision new parents must make, consisting of "a jigsaw puzzle of people and places, family and nonfamily, paid and unpaid, in the child's home, in someone else's home, or in a professional setting."

Many of the countries cited have instituted policies on parental leave and access to affordable day care that support Leach's contention that babies need consistent, one-on-one care from an unchanging adult, preferably a parent, and that toddlers and preschoolers have a (part-time) need for stimulating social and cognitive development in group settings. Paid leave ranges from 14 weeks in Germany to 52 weeks in Norway and Denmark, and an astonishing 68 weeks in Sweden. The United States' tally: 0. (A quibble here: the data provided is from the year 2000. Surely there are more up-to-date figures?)

In many other countries, family day care and child care centers/nurseries are regulated by the government; child care workers have mandatory training; and parents' costs for day care are covered or capped. In Scandinavia, integrated children's centers encompass both care and education from birth to the secondary school years, with "extended" schools providing "wraparound" care. In contrast, 90 percent of US family day care is unregulated, most day care is paid for solely by parents, and "the required qualifications and pay for child care assistants are both shockingly low."

But the news from the United States is not all bad: Leach says that Head Start, and Early Head Start, have been getting it right for years, though they're "tragically few and far between." Kentucky's Family Resource and Youth Services Center, Georgia's universal access to pre-kindergarten programs for 4-year-olds, North Carolina's Smart Start, and Ohio's Families and Children First initiative "could be pathfinders for the nation."

"Child Care Today" is a masterful work by a luminary in the world of child development. If implemented, Leach's findings would revolutionize the way America cares for its young children and bring about a radical improvement in the lives of children and their parents - and in the economic, social, and intellectual well-being of our country.

Virginia A. Smith is a freelance writer.