Tuesday, April 06, 2004

For those of you who wonder why I have a link to the very non-dad-sounding M.O.T.H.E.R., take a gander at this nice letter they sent along to Time magazine. What more could I possibly add.

And I don't mean to ding Full Time Father twice in two weeks (still I owe Mike lunch), but he takes a rather narrow view of the good news that the Senate has approved $6 billion for additional child care as part of the ongoing welfare reform efforts. FTF sees this as incentivize parents to leave their kids in paid care, I see it as a reality of working today.

I am lucky that I can stay home, and a huge chunk of why I can is economic. Most working parents don't have that choice. They can make staggering financial sacrifices and stay with their kids, or they can work in a work world that is hostile to families (see item one, above) to keep the family afloat, fiscally. And if you make that second choice, your day care choices are probably either staggering expensive (when we were looking at day care, it was upwards of $1,000 a month) or worryingly poor in quality. Dumping more money into that system -- especially one that requires "workfare" -- can't help but serve as a net benefit for kids.

I don't have my almanac of family-friendly nations and their policies in front of me, but it seems to be that the countries with the best quality, best funded day care centers are also the ones with the best work/family balance and the most parental involvement. Not a bad model to aspire to.

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