child-care

adj.
Of, relating to, or providing care for children, especially preschoolers: a child-care center; child-care professionals.

childcare child'care' n.

Child care has emerged as an important issue for both employers and employees in recent decades. Indeed, a mid-1990s U.S. Department of Labor study observed that, during that period, "America has become a society in which everyone is expected to work—including women with young children. But many of society's institutions were designed during an era of male breadwinners and female homemakers. What is needed is a …reform of the institutions and policies that govern the workplace to ensure that women can participate fully in the economy and that men and women have the time and resources to invest in their children." Researchers, child care experts, and working parents have been heartened by the success that some businesses have experienced in their efforts to assist their employees in this area, but the consensus remains that many child care arrangements are inadequate for working parents. This problem is even more acute for single parents who do not have partners who can carry the childcare load in emergency situations. It is also more prevalent in certain industries; studies indicate that working women in professional occupations (typified by high levels of education and salary) are two or three times more likely to receive child care benefits from their employers than are women who work in service, production, and agricultural occupations.

Child care problems have repercussions for employers as well; analysts have pointed out that problems with child care can be a significant drain on worker productivity, and in some cases can even result in the permanent loss of valued employees. According to some experts, small businesses are particularly vulnerable to such losses, since they often do not have the financial resources to install the on-site child care centers that have proven beneficial to some larger companies in addressing this issue. But observers contend that small business enterprises have a variety of options at their disposal to help their employees deal with the child care issue.

Of course, the first priority for working parents is ensuring that their children are placed in a child care environment that protects them and attends to their physical and emotional needs. "Working parents may differ in family situations and child care needs, but they all immediately voice the same concern," confirmed Personnel contributor Bob Smith. "Parents want their children to be cared for in a safe environment, shielded from the potential dangers and abuses that the media often expose in graphic and horrifying detail. When parents believe their children are safe in another person's care, they feel a sense of relief, the lifting of a burden so prevalent among today's career mothers and fathers."

But Smith noted that while safety is the paramount issue in selecting a child care provider, "they also look at other tangible quality factors such as cleanliness, licensing, staff certification, and curriculum. But parental concerns go beyond the immediate classroom surroundings. Many parents said that they expected day care to be a practical learning experience for their youngsters." Unfortunately, the state of professional child care in the United States all too often leaves much to be desired. As David Whitman remarked in U.S. News & World Report, "the warped dynamic of the child-care market is all too plain: There are too many parents chasing too few day-care openings in settings where there is too much turnover of providers who receive too little training and pay." This state of affairs naturally serves to further exacerbate the concerns of working parents seeking to juggle home and office responsibilities.

INTERGENERATIONAL CARE. Changing demographics in the United States have also created a situation wherein increasing numbers of working people find themselves dividing their time, energy, and financial resources between two sets of care demands. On one end lie small children, while on the other can be found elderly parents. This phenomenon has given rise to the still modest but growing success of socalled "intergenerational care" centers, in which working parents who also have obligations to care for their own elderly parents can place both categories of dependents in a single facility, where they will be cared for. Most experts expect that, given the continued rise in participation by women in the work place—and the track record of success enjoyed by intergenerational care programs in hospitals, nursing homes, and child care centers—the concept of intergenerational care will continue to increase in popularity in the business world. In fact, some studies indicate that demographic trends practically ensure the continued growth of intergenerational care facilities.

Given all of these considerations, observers believe that businesses looking to provide some measure of child care assistance to their employees will factor the elder care issue into their analysis of options with increasing frequency. "Companies that aren't doing anything at all probably could not envision doing on-site intergenerational care, or even elder care," admitted one executive—whose company opened an intergenerational care facility for its employees—in an interview with HR Focus. "But we're finding that companies that are either planning or thinking about on-site child care now are rethinking their space [to accommodate elder care in the future]."

Benefits of Child Care for Employers

Discussions of child care nearly always center on the desired benefits of such programs for working parents and their children. But some analysts believe that employers can also reap significant benefits from good child care arrangements. This accounts for the steady growth in the percentage of companies that offer some manner of child-care assistance to their employees. In 1999, for instance, Hewitt Associates conducted a survey of U.S. employers that indicated that 90 percent of respondents offer child-care assistance to workers.

This increase in child-care assistance can be directly traced to concerns that employees who are grappling with child care issues are less productive than those who are so unencumbered. These workers spend sometimes large amounts of company time on the issue (calling about possible providers, checking on the well-being of sick children, etc.), may fall victim to tardiness, and typically miss several days of work each year due to child care situations. Indeed, studies conducted in the early 1990s indicated that one out of three sick days taken by a working parent is actually due to child-related illnesses that preclude the child's presence at school or their usual day-care provider, and that other child-care problems can siphon off another seven or eight days of employee attendance on an annual basis.

Some businesses, meanwhile, allow parents to occasionally bring their children to work with them when child care plans fall through. In some business environments, this may not result in dramatic reductions in productivity, but in other settings—such as office environments—this can result in significant productivity downturns for both the parent (who has to divide his or her time between work and child supervision) and co-workers, who are often distracted by the presence of the youngster. Finally, some businesses permanently lose valuable workers who decide, after having a child, that the expense and hassles associated with day care make returning to the workplace a questionable strategy.

Given the above factors, many experts believe that small and large businesses alike should investigate ways in which they can help their employees secure acceptable child care arrangements. By doing so, they may well reap increased benefits in the realm of worker productivity. In addition, they are likely to find that having a program of child care assistance in place can be a tremendous boon in recruiting efforts, and that child care provisions can help companies retain employees who might otherwise stay at home or leave for a competitor that offers meaningful child care benefits.

Finally, companies may find that providing child care programs to workers is not nearly as expensive as they believed, since the provision of child care assistance is tax-deductible to employers. "From a company standpoint, assisting your employees with their child care needs is good business," summarized Smith. "Child care saves a company more money than any other employee benefit. It allows a company to recruit employees more effectively, improves turnover, reduces absenteeism, and increases the productivity of employees."

Researching Employees'child Care Needs

Prior to settling on a methodology by which to help working parents in their employ, businesses should first do some research to learn which alternatives will do the best job of meeting the needs of both the company and its workers. HR Focus contributor Karen Matthes wrote that before doing anything else, "employers should take a close look at their organizations and determine what their corporate goals are, what type of corporate culture exists, and how much money they're willing to spend." A child care plan that does not adequately integrate these considerations will almost certainly perform inadequately or fail. In addition, small business owners should make sure that child care is a pressing issue before investing time and money into finding solutions for it. "Make sure that you have a problem in the first place," wrote Dayton Fandray in Workforce. "And if you find that a problem exists, measures its dimensions in terms that you can quantify—before you try to fix it."

Employers should consider disseminating a questionnaire or find some other means of assessing the needs and desires of their work force. In addition, business owners and managers should take a good look at the demographic make-up of their employee roster. After all, a company that employs relatively few people under the age of 40 is far less likely to need a comprehensive child care assistance plan that is a business that employs large numbers of women under the age of 35. "Ask how many would be involved in some kind of child care arrangement, the ages of their children and their current arrangements for having those children taken care of," one management consultant told Nation's Business. Employee impressions of various child care options and the amounts they are willing to contribute to employer-assisted child care programs should also be solicited.

From there, said Matthes, businesses should investigate the community in which they operate: "Companies should check out what programs the surrounding communities already have to offer, as well as determine both the resources and barriers to starting new ones." As one executive told HR Focus, "It doesn't make sense to reinvent the wheel. If there's already really good existing services in the community, take advantage of them or subsidize them. Work with the community to build the infrastructure." Finally, companies should try to find ways to accurately evaluate return on investment in their child care policies. This return on investment can take many forms, from increased loyalty and productivity to growth in employee retention rates.

Child Care Assistance Options for Small Businesses

In the past, business enterprises have associated child care almost exclusively in terms of on-site centers, which have been viewed as excessively expensive to build and operate. But proponents of such facilities contend that those opinions are based partly on misconceptions. In addition, child care experts and business consultants alike point to several other options that may be viable for employers, including those of small size. These options include company consortiums, outside referral services, salary reduction plans, and reimbursement plans.

ON-SITE FACILITIES. Providing on-site child care facilities is the most expensive option for businesses. It requires significant up-front costs and in some cases increased operating costs in such areas as payroll (states have various guidelines on the necessary qualifications of day care facility managers/professionals, which may necessitate hiring new personnel), utilities, and liability insurance (although companies in some areas may be able to avoid increases in this area). But this option also usually provides the greatest peace of mind to employees, who can visit their children during lunch breaks, etc., and dramatically reduces logistics complications that workers face with off-site facilities (routine drop-offs and pick-ups, picking up kids who are sick, etc.). Moreover, the presence of an on-site day care facility is a terrific attraction to prospective employees. And as mentioned above, the expense of establishing an on-site facility can be deducted from taxes. Understandably, however, most of these types of arrangements have been established by larger companies with healthy bottom lines rather than smaller businesses with more modest assets.

CONSORTIUMS. Consortiums are among the most popular child care alternatives for small businesses with limited resources that nonetheless want to assist their workers in securing good care for their youngsters.

In these programs, several small companies in a geographic region pool their resources to support an off-site day-care center that is operated by a qualified day-care provider. By combining resources, companies can realize significant cost savings while also meeting the child care needs of their employees. They simply pay for a certain number of slots and make the openings available to their employees (unused slots are usually made available to parents who are employed outside the consortium).

OUTSIDE REFERRALS. Companies that pursue this option contract with an outside agency to provide their employees with community day care information. This information includes rates, locations, and openings at various licensed facilities. This "information clearinghouse" approach is obviously the least expensive option for businesses, but it may also be the least satisfactory for parents who must still research these various options.

SALARY REDUCTION AND REIMBURSEMENT PLANS.

A favorite of business owners, who like its minimal expense, salary reduction plans call for the establishment of a flexible spending account that permits employees to reduce their pre-tax incomes by a specified amount and place that money in an account that is used to reimburse them for child care expenses. Reimbursement plans, meanwhile, call for tax-deductible payments that are either paid directly to the child care provider or to the working parents by the company.

In addition to these child-care assistance options, business owners can institute other policies that can have a beneficial impact on their employees' ability to balance work and family responsibilities. Flextime, job sharing, work-at-home options, and extended maternity or paternal leaves have all been touted as policies that can be helpful to working parents.

Backlash Against Child Care Benefits

In recent years, American companies have discovered that new child-care (and other family-oriented) policies for working parents have not been universally embraced by their employees. Certainly, these sorts of programs have been applauded by workers who benefit from them, and they are increasingly popular in virtually every industry. But some single and childless employees have expressed resentment over this state of affairs. In fact, a 1996 Confederence Board survey of companies with "family-friendly" policies in child care, etc., reported that 56 percent of the companies admitted that childless employees feel resentment about perceived bias in favor of employees with children.

This point of view should not be ignored by small business owners, because it can negatively impact morale just as surely as perceptions that their company is not family-friendly. And the majority of the work force is actually comprised of single or childless employees who do not benefit from child care packages. As Forbes reported in 1999, more than 60 percent of America's labor force have no children under the age of 18, and women with children under the age of 6 represent only 8 percent of the labor force (of course the percentage of parents—men and women—in the labor force with children under the age of 6 is much higher).

The primary complaint of these single/childless employees is that they are expected to work longer hours and accept lower levels of compensation (in the form of fringe benefits) than co-workers with children. As Dan Seligman explained in Forbes, "The tales are of singles who have plans for the evening but are expected to alter them and cover for the mother whose child has a temperature, and are expected not to ask for the prime-time summer vacation slots, and don't benefit from day care centers, and take it for granted that th emoney invested in the centers is ultimately coming out of their own pockets."

Further Reading:

Allen, Eugenie. "Home Sick No More: When Mom and Dad Simply Have to Be at Work, Where Do Their Sick Children Spend the Day?" Time. April 24, 2000.

Fandray, Dayton. "What is Work/Life Worth?" Workforce. May 2000.

"Few Employers Provide Direct Childcare Help." IRS Employment Trends. September 15, 1997.

Leveen-Sher, Margery. "Flexibility is the Key to Small Business Benefits." Washington Business Journal. February 16,1996.

Matthes, Karen. "A Coming of Age for Intergenerational Care." HR Focus. June 1993.

Reece, Barry L., and Rhonda Brandt. Effective Human Relations in Organizations. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

Seligman, Dan. "Who Needs Family-Friendly Companies?" Forbes. January 11, 1999.

Smith, Bob. "On the Outside Looking In: What Parents Want From Childcare." Personnel. September 1991.

Vaeth, Elizabeth. "Child Care Presents Challenge, Expense for Working Parents." Atlanta Business Chronicle. September 6,1996.

Whitman, David. "Waiting for Mary Poppins." U.S. News & World Report. November 24, 1997.

See also: Career and Family; Flexible Spending Accounts

Each weekday, approximately 13 million infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in the United States spend part of the day being cared for by someone other than their parents. This number represents three out of five young children in the United States. During the last decades of the twentieth century, increased employment of mothers outside the home significantly increased child-care demand.

Child care is provided by both not-for-profit and for-profit entities. Child care can be divided into two types: center-based child care (e.g., child-care centers, Head Start, preschool) and home child care (e.g., care in a provider's home, babysitter or nanny in the child's home, relative care).

Child care creates challenges and opportunities for public health. Increased use of child care has significantly changed the epidemiology of illnesses and injuries among young children. For example, children enrolled in child care have increased exposure to common, highly communicable childhood diseases such as common colds and other infections (e.g., respiratory tract infections, skin infections such as impetigo and ringworm, and intestinal tract infections). Common behaviors by infants and toddlers promote the spread of germs, such as sucking on fingers and toys. Child-care-associated illnesses have substantial economic impact through direct medical costs and lost workdays for both staff and parents.

However, quality center-based child care can also benefit public health by increasing the quality of nutrition, raising immunization rates, and stimulating child development. Out-of-home child care provides venues for teaching and reinforcing health-promotion and disease-prevention behaviors such as hand washing or exercise. In addition, child care can serve as a link connecting families to community health services such as immunizations, lead screenings, dental education, and injury and violence prevention.

Child care is regulated at the state level, and much variation exists between states. States regulate topics such as child/caregiver ratios, employee background checks, and caregiver training in early childhood development. In-home child-care providers are much less regulated than center-based child-care providers. For example, only eleven states require home child-care providers to have training in early childhood education prior to serving children.

(SEE ALSO: Child Health Services; Child Welfare; Head Start Program; Regulatory Authority)

Bibliography

Capizzano, J.; Adams, G.; and Sonenstein, F. (2000). Child Care Arrangements for Children Under Five: Variation Across States. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (1995). CDC Child Care Health and Safety Action Plan. Atlanta, GA: Author. Available at http://www.cdc.gov/nadad/hib/Child/child.htm.

Children's Defense Fund (1999). Overview of Child Care, Early Education, and School-Age Care, 1999 Key Facts, 1999. Washington, DC: Author.

— LINDSAY B. GOODMAN

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In modern industrial societies, child care is recognized as an essential social service for women seeking to enter the paid labor force or pursue education or training and, along with paid parental leave, as an essential component of gender equality. Today, the majority of mothers in the United States work outside the home, yet despite decades of advocacy on the part of American children's experts and feminists, there is still no comprehensive, publicly supported system of child care. Instead, provision is divided between the public and private sectors, with the bulk of public services linked to antipoverty "workfare" programs, and provisions vary widely in terms of form, quality, affordability, and accessibility. This "patchwork" system may be explained by the history of American child care, which has its origins in the seventeenth century.

Colonial and Nineteenth-Century Child Care

Both Native American hunter-gatherers and Euro-American farmers and artisans expected women as well as men to engage in productive labor, and both groups devised various methods, such as carrying infants in papooses or placing toddlers in "go-gins," to free adults to care for children while working at other tasks. Notably, neither group considered child care to be exclusively mothers' responsibility, instead distributing it among tribal or clan members (Native Americans), or among parents, older siblings, extended family, and servants (European Americans). Some of the colonies also boasted "dame schools," rudimentary establishments that accepted children as soon as they were weaned.

As industrialization moved productive work from farms and households to factories, it became increasingly difficult for mothers to combine productive and reproductive labor, making them more economically dependent on male breadwinners as they assumed sole responsibility for child care. As this role gained ideological force through concepts such as "Republican motherhood" and the "moral mother," maternal wage earning fell into disrepute, except in times of emergency, that is, when mothers lost their usual source of support. Female reforms sought to facilitate women's work in such instances by creating day nurseries to care for their children. The earliest such institution was probably the House of Industry, founded by the Female Society for the Relief and Employment of the Poor in Philadelphia in 1798. Throughout the nineteenth century, female philanthropists in cities across the nation (with the exception of the South) followed suit, establishing several hundred nurseries by 1900.

With few exceptions, nineteenth-century child care institutions excluded the children of free black mothers, most of whom were wage earners. Slave mothers, however, were compelled to place their children in whatever form of child care their owners devised. Slaveholders on large plantations set up "children's houses" where older slave children or older slaves no longer capable of more strenuous work cared for slave infants, while female slaves, denied the right to care for their own offspring, worked in the fields or became "mammies" to planters' children. After Emancipation, African American women continued to work outside the home in disproportionate numbers, prompting Mary Church Terrell, the founding president of the National Association of Colored Women, to remark that the day nursery was "a charity of which there is an imperative need." Black female reformers like those of Atlanta's Neighborhood Union responded by setting up nurseries and kindergartens for African American children.

By the turn of the century, the need for child care had reached critical proportions for Americans of all races, as increasing numbers of mothers either sought or were financially compelled to work outside the home. To point up the need for more facilities and improve their quality, a group of female reformers set up a "model day nursery" at the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago and then founded a permanent organization, the National Federation of Day Nurseries (NFDN).

Despite being the first national advocate for child care, the NFDN made little headway in gaining popular acceptance of their services, due, in part, to their conservatism. Clinging to a nineteenth-century notion of day nurseries as a response to families in crisis, the NFDN failed to acknowledge the growing trend toward maternal employment. Meanwhile, among policy makers, momentum was shifting toward state-funded mothers' pensions intended to keep women without male breadwinners at home instead of going out to work. But many poor and low-income women did not qualify for pensions, and state funding often dried up, so maternal employment—and the need for child care—persisted. The NFDN, however, eschewed public support for nurseries, preferring to maintain control over their private charities, a decision that left them ill prepared to meet increasing demands. At the same time, day nurseries were coming under fire from reformers who compared them unfavorably to the new kindergartens and nursery schools being started by early childhood educators. But few day nurseries could afford to upgrade their equipment or hire qualified teachers to match those of the nursery schools.

The New Deal to World War II

The child care movement was poorly positioned to take advantage of federal support in the 1930s, when the New Deal administrator Harry Hopkins sought to create a Works Progress Administration (WPA) program that would both address the needs of young children who were "culturally deprived" by the Great Depression and provide jobs for unemployed school teachers. Instead, early childhood educators caught Hopkins's attention and took the lead in administering some 1,900 Emergency Nursery Schools. Though the educators did their best to regulate the quality of the schools, to many Americans they carried the stigma of "relief." Nonetheless, they served to legitimize the idea of education for very young children on an unprecedented scale.

The Emergency Nursery Schools were intended to serve the children of the unemployed, but in some instances, they also functioned as child care for wage-earning parents. With the onset of World War II, defense industries expanded, reducing the ranks of the unemployed, and many of the schools were shut down. A handful of federal administrators, aware that maternal employment was on the upswing, fought to convert the remaining schools into child care centers. These met some of the need for services until 1943, when more generous federal funding became available to local communities through the Lanham Act. However, the supply of child care could not keep up with demand. At its height, some 3,000 Lanham Act centers were serving 130,000 children—when an estimated 2 million slots were needed. Mothers who could not find child care devised informal arrangements, sending children to live with relatives, relying on neighbors who worked alternate shifts, or leaving older children to care for themselves—giving rise to the image of the infamous "latchkey" child.

The Postwar Period

Since both the WPA and Lanham Act programs had been presented as emergency measures to address specific national crises, they could not provide the basis for establishing permanent federally sponsored child care in the postwar period. The issue languished until the 1960s and 1970s, when it once again appeared on the public agenda, this time in conjunction with efforts to reform public assistance through a series of amendments to the Social Security Act, which authorized Aid to Families of Dependent Children. Around the same time, Congress also established Head Start, a permanent public program of early childhood education for the poor. Though it proved highly effective, Head Start was not considered child care until the 1990s. Congress did take a first step toward establishing universal child care in 1971, with passage of the Comprehensive Child Development Act, but President Nixon vetoed it with a strong Cold War message that effectively chilled further legislative efforts for the next several decades.

The lack of public provisions notwithstanding, the postwar decades witnessed a significant rise in maternal employment, which in turn prompted the growth of market-based child care services. This trend was aided by several federal measures, including the child care tax deduction passed in 1954 (and converted to a child care tax credit in 1972), as well as a variety of incentives to employers to set up or sponsor services for their employees, beginning in 1962. Market-based services included voluntary or nonprofit centers, commercial services, and small mom-and-pop or family child care enterprises. Quality varied widely and regulation was lax, in part due to the opposition from organized child care entrepreneurs.

Child Care and Welfare Reform

From the 1970s through the 1990s, the link between child care and welfare reform was reinforced by passage of a series of mandatory employment measures that also included child care provisions. The Family Support Act of 1988, which mandated employment or training for most applicants, including mothers of small children, also required states to provide child care; by the mid-1990s, however, the states were serving only about 13 to 15 percent of eligible children. At the same time, efforts to pass more universal legislation continued to meet strong opposition from conservatives like President George H. W. Bush, who believed that middle-class women should re-main at home with their children. In 1990, Congress passed the Act for Better Child Care Services (the ABC bill), a compromise that expanded funding for Head Start and provided forms of child care assistance (including the Earned Income Tax Credit). To satisfy conservative calls for devolution to the states, it initiated a new program called the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG).

The final link between child care and workfare was forged with passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996, legislation that was twice vetoed by President Bill Clinton, not because of its stringent work requirements for poor women, but for having inadequate child care provisions. When PRWORA came up for renewal in 2002, much of the debate turned around the issue of child care and whether proposed funding levels would provide sufficient services so that recipients could meet increasingly stringent work requirements. Among middle-and upper-income families, the demand for child care remains high, with parents relying on private-sector services, baby sitting cooperatives, and "nannies," many of whom are undocumented workers. Despite growing concern about the impact of low-quality care on children of all social classes, prospects for universal public child care remain dim, as the division between public and private child care produces a divided constituency that cannot mobilize sufficient political pressure to bring about the necessary legislative changes.

Bibliography

Michel, Sonya. Children's Interests / Mothers' Rights: The Shaping of America's Child Care Policy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999.

Michel, Sonya, and Rianne Mahon. Child Care Policy at the Crossroads: Gender and Welfare State Restructuring. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Rose, Elizabeth. A Mother's Job: The History of Day Care, 1890–1960. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

—Sonya Michel

This entry consists of the following articles:

• Child Care: Availability and Quality
• Child Care: Cost and Financing

This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

The supervision and nurturing of a child, including casual and informal services provided by a parent as well as more formal services provided by an organized child care center.

Because there are many different views as to how a child should be reared or nurtured, the topic of child care often involves controversial social and political issues. For instance, it may raise complex questions about a child's religious upbringing or whether a child should be disciplined by corporal punishment. Some people believe that providing child care outside the home undermines so-called traditional family structures in which the mother is considered the primary caretaker. Others are concerned primarily with broadening community responsibility for children and removing barriers for women who wish to enter and participate fully in the labor force. In addition, the term child care encompasses a wide range of services. It can include home-based care by a child's mother or father, care by a grandparent or other relative, care by a nanny, or care by an organized licensed facility or family center. It can also involve early childhood education such as that offered by nursery schools, Montessori schools, and kindergarten programs.

Child care has always existed in the United States. Organized child care centers in the early 1800s took the form of infant day schools in parts of Boston and New York. During the industrial revolution, and as a result of increased immigration to the United States, day nurseries were created in the late nineteenth century to care primarily for poor urban children. In New York City, in approximately 1910, eighty-five such nurseries cared for more than five thousand children each day. Day nurseries were privately run and charitable in nature, and were intended to provide custodial supervision, hygiene instruction, and nutrition services. Later, many middle-class parents opted to enroll their children in kindergartens, educational programs adopted in parts of the United States in the mid-nineteenth century.

During World War II, millions of women entered the workforce in war production areas. The need for an organized child care program became acute. Congress responded by including provisions in the Community Facilities Act of 1941, then more commonly known as the Lanham Act, which created Lanham Act centers for child care. (Presently, the term Lanham Act is generally used to refer to the Trademark Act of 1946.) The establishment of the Lanham Act centers marked the first time the federal government became directly involved in providing child care services to children who were not poor: the centers were open to all children whose parents worked in war production areas. The federal government provided 50 percent of the funds needed to operate the Lanham Act centers; states, localities, and parents provided the remaining 50 percent in matching funds. In 1943, the cost to parents for child care in a Lanham Act center was uniformly set at fifty cents a day.

The federally sponsored Lanham Act centers closed in 1946, soon after World War II ended, although California continued them at a state level. After that, direct federal involvement in a national child care program virtually ceased. Although the U.S. Congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1972, which would have in part established a national child care program, President Richard M. Nixon vetoed the bill. Nixon stated that the act would "commit the vast moral authority of the national government to the side of communal approaches to child-rearing over and against the family-centered approach." Nixon's statement reflected the continuing debate about the appropriateness of providing child care outside a traditional family structure.

Although the federal government currently does not have a national child care program, it does provide numerous social programs that include funding for child care services. The Head Start program provides developmental education programs primarily to poor children under the age of four. Welfare programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) provide funds for states to implement child care services for parents — usually mothers— who receive welfare grants. The Family Support Act of 1988 (FSA) (Pub. L. 100-485, Oct. 13, 1988, 102 Stat. 2343) created the federal Jobs Opportunity and Basic Skills (JOBS) program, in which qualifying parents who receive AFDC are required to enter education or training programs to enhance their chances of finding employment. The federal government funds the JOBS program by providing money to the states. The states in turn are allowed to choose the method of providing child care services to welfare recipients. They may provide child care directly, reimburse parents for child care expenses, or make direct payments to child care providers. In 1993, the federal government spent approximately $480 million on FSA child care subsidies.

The federal government also provides funds to states through the Social Services Block Grant, under title XX of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C.A. 1397a et seq., as well as funds for the operation of the At-Risk Child Care Program. The At-Risk Program divides more than $350 million among state governments for child care subsidies to families who are at risk of welfare dependency; the states must match the grants before they can use the money. Finally, the federal government allows families to deduct child care expenses from their taxes in the form of the federal dependent care tax credit.

In response to increasing demands, Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) (Pub. L. 103-3, Feb 5, 1993, 107 Stat. 6). Although the FMLA does not directly provide for child care services, it does mandate in part that employers with more than fifty employees must allow those employees to take up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave for the birth or adoption of a child or in order to take care of a child with a serious health condition. Many states also have parental leave legislation, which allows a parent to take unpaid time off for the birth or adoption of a child. The length of time allowed for unpaid leave varies from state to state, and may be from six weeks to six months.

The regulation of child care services occurs primarily on the state level, with the federal government requiring states to implement minimal regulations for private child care centers. When Peggy McMartin Buckey and Raymond Buckey were accused of sexually abusing children in a day care center in California in the early 1980s, their case (McMartin v. Children's Institute Intern., 212 Cal. App. 3d 1393, 261 Cal. Rptr. 437 [Cal. App. 2 Dist.]) and others like it received national media attention. Out of a stated concern for the notice given to such allegations, the federal government passed legislation in 1985 that appropriated funds to the states to provide training for child care workers and to support licensing and enforcement officials. The federal government also required states to implement procedures that would require child care centers to screen workers for any criminal history. In addition, the Child Care and Development Block Grant of 1990 (CCDBG), which provided funds to state government agencies to subsidize child care services for low-income working parents, required states to develop minimum health and safety requirements for state-licensed child care centers. Amendments to the CCDBG in 1995 removed such requirements but did obligate states to ensure that parents or guardians may visit or have access to a child while the child is in a child care center.

The regulation of child care facilities and caregivers on the state level varies considerably. A state may require a child care center to obtain a license in order to operate, or it may mandate certain minimum standards for all child care facilities. Currently, every state requires that space for a child care facility be "adequate" or of a certain specified size. Most states also regulate how many child care workers must be on duty for a specified number of children, depending on the age of the children: for instance, New York requires one caregiver on duty for every two children under the age of two. Most states also regulate the qualifications and training requirements for child care workers and require child care centers to determine whether a job applicant or worker has a criminal record or has been listed in the state's child abuse registry. Some states, such as Arkansas and South Carolina, in some circumstances allow corporal punishment of children in their licensed day care centers.

Most states exempt certain child care centers from regulations or licensing requirements. Religious or church-based day care centers, as well as small home-based day care programs, are often exempt from regulations or licensing requirements other than basic health and safety regulations. In addition, private day care groups or associations may set goals for quality child care and may provide certification or accreditation programs for member centers.

See: family law; parent and child.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - barnepasning

Français (French)
n. - éducation des enfants, structures d'accueil pour les enfants d'âge préscolaire

Deutsch (German)
n. - Betreuung von Kindern, Kinderfürsorge

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - επιτήρηση παιδιών, κρατική επιμέλεια ανηλίκων

Italiano (Italian)
asilo nido, assistenza per l'infanzia

Português (Portuguese)
n. - assistência (f) infantil

Русский (Russian)
уход за детьми

Español (Spanish)
n. - cuidado de los niños

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - barnavård

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
儿童保育

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 兒童保育

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 육아

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 育児, 児童保護

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮טיפול בילדים‬

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