Child Care for Low-Income Families Summary of Two Workshops (1995) / Chapter Skim
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Choices or Constraints? Factors affecting Patterns of Child care Ues Among Low Income Families
Choices or Constraints? Factors affecting Patterns of Child care Ues Among Low Income Families
Pages 4-15
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From page 4... ...
. Single employed mothers rely to a much greater extent on nonrelative arrangements (notably family clay care homes and centers)
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From page 5... ...
l ~l I ~, 'i_' ' . , ~ ~ ~.-~ V In-home 3% Low-Income Children Other 6% Relative 22% In-home 2% Parent 46% Parent 48% FIGURE 1 Main child care arrangements of all children and low income children un' der age 5.
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From page 6... ...
state welfare reform initiatives have raised concerns regarding parents' ability to place their children in care arrangements that they fee! assured are safe, nurturing, and support' ive of their children's growth and development while they strive Lo meet work requirements.
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From page 7... ...
Care Survey also asked parents why they chose their current child care arrangement and fount! discernible differences by family income.
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From page 8... ...
Indeed, poor quality was cited slightly more often by low-income parents seeking to change than by parents of all income levels who sought a change, 60 percent of whom mentioned quality concerns. By way of comparison, only 3 percent of low-income families mentioned burdensome child care fees as a reason for preferring alternative arrangements.
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From page 9... ...
In sum, the evidence presented at the workshop suggests that all parents report a primary concern with the well-being of their children when choosing and rearranging child care for their young children. Characteristics of the provicler are viewer!
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From page 10... ...
In a related finding, 65 percent of the respondents who had worked or gone to school in 1990 reported difficulties finding care that they were confident was safe, and a comparable share reported difficulties finding care "that is good for my child." Other studies of low-income families have also reported that onethird or more of mothers express a clesire to switch arrangements (Kisker and Silverberg, ~99T; Sonenstein and Wolf, ~99~. In sum, low-income single mothers who are combining work and childrearing with neither the financial nor the social resources to facilitate access to suitable child care indicate substantially lower levels of satisfaction and stronger desires to change arrangements than do other mothers.
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From page 11... ...
Structure of Low-Wage Work. The structure of low-wage work and its lack of fit with the structure of more formal chilcl care options restricts the access of low-income families to child care centers and many family clay care homes.
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From page 12... ...
Across all families, in 1993, for example, approximately 90 percent of those using center-based and family day care arrangements paid for care; 17 percent of those using relative care paid for care (Bureau of the Census, 1995~. When AFDC recipients in Illinois were asked about practical constraints on their child care choices (Siege!
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From page 13... ...
and Loman reported that 67 percent of the families in their AFDC sample had no friend or relative, inside or outside their immediate househoicI, who could provide child care; only 25 percent lived in households in which there were other adults present. Transportation issues and city codes that prevent the establishment of child care centers in public housing projects were also cited by those who study AFDC populations as limiting the child care options that are acces' sible to low~income parents.
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From page 14... ...
Taken as a whole, the data presented at the workshops suggest that, when informal arrangements are available, work well, and are dependable, they can offer working Tow-income families reassurance about their chilct's safety and the trustworthiness of the provider, as well as the low fees and flexibility that their jobs clemanc3. When these arrangements prove difficult or unreliable, and as chilciren grow past infancy, many of these parents shift (or want to shift)
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From page 15... ...
Other low~income parents whose first choice would be to place their children in a child care center or more formal family day care home cannot avail themselves of these options clue to their higher costs and standard hours of operation. The question this raises for public policy is whether these inequities in access to various chilc!
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