Recent U.S. Child Care and Family Legislation in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

This article reviews the history and content of recently passed U.S. child care and family legislation. This legislation is compared to the child care and family policies of four European nations in terms of five major policy objectives: (a) increasing supply, (b) supporting maternal employment, (c) easing the burdens of child rearing, (d) permitting parental choice, and (e) raising the quality of programs. All four European nations have been concerned with promoting childbearing and assisting parents to balance work and family responsibilities. They have also increased national responsibility for the care and education of children ages 3-5 and employer responsibility for parental leave. In contrast to the state-run systems in France, the United States has a market-based system with middle- and upper-income parents making the choices and being reimbursed by the state for part of those expenses. Low-income parents receive targeted subsidies. Recent parental leave legislation brings the United States only slightly closer to Europe because the leave is unpaid.

A cross-national look at married women’s earnings dependency

“…Sweden, for example, provides a fifteen-month-parental leave, permitting either the father or the mother to stay at home to care for the infant. A portion of this leave reimbursement is salary related, and a portion is payment based on a flat rate (Hofferth and Deich, 1994). Affordable public child care has also been a high priority in Sweden since the 1960s.…”

“…In the United States, for example, benefits that would facilitate the combination of paid work and child rearing are typically left to the discretion of employers (Hofferth and Deich, 1994). Depending on their employer, some Americans have been able to take advantage of such benefits as part-time employment, work at home, flex-time, and on-site child care.…”

“…However, many Americans are not able to benefit from the new policy, which allows parents to care for a newborn or ill child for a maximum of twelve weeks, because only companies with fifty or more employees are mandated to allow this leave, and the leave is unpaid. In contrast to the state run child care systems typical in social welfare states, in liberal countries, such as the United States, child care support is typically provided in a form of a tax credit (e.g., the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit) that theoretically helps parents cover a part of child care costs (Hofferth and Deich, 1994).…”

“…In these regimes, the provision of child care services tends not to be as highly developed as in the social democratic welfare states. For example, in Germany kindergartens served 80 percent of three-to six-year-olds in 1987, but the majority provided only part-day programs, making it difficult for mothers to have more than a part-time job (Hofferth and Deich, 1994). Income tax exemptions and monthly child allowances are also available to German families to cover at least some of the child care costs.…”

Still Caught in a Trap: The Continued Povertization of Women

“…Over 100 industrialized countries have developed national programs to increase the well-being of families and to decrease the existence of poverty. For example, France and Hungary provide child care services to approximately 90% of their preschool children, and Canada and Belgium give financial support to every family (Hofferth & Deich, 1994;Rodgers, 1990). The federal government of Norway pays for hospital stays (citizens are not charged for these services) and Great Britain provides periodic home health visits for children under age 6 (Kamerman & Kahn, 1993;van Wormer, 1994).…”