Dealing with an issue that hits close to home: Child care

With the goal of brainstorming solutions to the problem of inadequate early child care in America, a host of state senators, representatives and mayors came to campus on Friday. Inside Steinberg-Dietrich Hall, several dozen leaders from the public and private sectors discussed methods of providing working parents with quality, affordable child care at the Wharton Impact Conference, "Caring for the Young Children of Working Parents." The conference was organized by the Wharton School and the Delaware Valley Child Care Council. This is the first time that Wharton has hosted such a conference, which took more than a year to organize. The event consisted of several panel discussions and the presentation of two new papers entitled, "The Role of the Public Sector in Improving Child Care for Working Parents" and "Private Sector Initiatives on Caring for the Young Children of Working Parents." The panels spent the day exploring available options to working parents. The basic premise, the participants agreed, was that parents could be more productive in their jobs if they could afford to be less consumed by their families. Early in the day, Thomas Langfitt, a senior fellow in Wharton's Management Department, stated clearly the problem that would occupy the officials for the next several hours: poor child care. "Between one-quarter and one-third of children in America are damaged before school age and are considered by their kindergarten teachers as unable to learn," Langfitt said. "The children grow up to be failures.... That cost to society is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars." The participants concurred that, were they to provide their employees with means of dealing with the problem of inaccessible child care, they could then reap significant benefits. Several business officials said that keeping their staff comfortable with their family life would lead to greater productivity. In addition, some saw forming better family benefits programs as a way of attracting talented employees. "As companies become more competitive, we need to explore what kinds of programs we can offer to help working parents balance work and child care," said Linda Julius, a Work/Life and Diversity Consultant with the Dupont Company. "People can't work if they're worried about their children." Indeed, according to Child Care Matters -- a child care collaboration of several Delaware and Pennsylvania advocacy groups -- 74 percent of companies with child care policies report that their programs do not increase costs and often save money in increased productivity. Advocacy groups, in turn, suggested that a main goal of the event was to encourage the private industry to spend more than the 1 percent that it currently contributes to child care. Finally, government officials discussed the state's role in child care. Georganna Sinkfield, a representative to the Georgia State Legislature, described efforts made in her state, such as the creation of Child Care Council in 1991. In addition, she described the difficulties she has experienced in dealing with the issue, stating that the conflicting information from different sources on the issue often leads to frustration instead of solutions. "It is no small measure in coming to grips with what we need to do and what we should do," Sinkfield said. "But in spite of all this, we have to do something."