June 2001 • Vol 1, No. 2 •

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What’s the big mystery? If all the childcare studies were laid end to end they would circle the globe and then continue on up to Mars. So is it that difficult to see that parents who work full time need childcare services? That children need quality childcare to develop to their highest potential?

The latest study showed that 17 percent of children who had childcare services were aggressive compared to only 6 percent of children who stayed home with their parents. That’s one study. Another one, to be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reports, “Poor children, who attend intensive preschool classes are more likely to graduate from high school than poor children who have not participated in such programs.”

They were talking about “good” preschool. Most of the childcare services in this country are not “good.” Children are in warehouses or in private homes where they spend too much time in front of the television.

The San Francisco Unified School District has childcare services that have Early Childhood Development teachers. They used to be required by law to have one adult for every four children and, moreover, outdoor play facilities as well as indoor. They must have a sleeping room for naptime, and food. Children can enter the childcare center at the age of two and one-half. They are taken care of from eight a.m. until six at night. However, there is a long waiting list to get into the centers and even then slots are reserved for the children of low income or single parents.

Childcare centers in all public schools

Why can’t we expand childcare centers into all public schools, middle schools and high schools? Public schools are located in every neighborhood. Parents could drop their children off and pick them up easier. Middle school and high school students could take part in the preschool center and at the same time develop parenting skills that would come in handy in the future.

A few years ago when we were fighting for childcare expansion in San Francisco we had a poster that read, “It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need and the Navy has to hold a bake sale to buy a ship.” We spent too much time organizing bake-sales to buy supplies for the childcare centers. That slogan is still valid, unfortunately, because the major portion of our tax money goes for defense. It does not go to the schools, hospitals for medical care or to good housing for people who need it. It goes into new planes that can fly thousands of miles and drop bombs on women, children and men who are unarmed and helpless.

What are the numbers of children who need either preschool or after school care? In 1990 seventy percent of this nation’s children were living in homes where every parent was in the labor force. What we still have is a nation of latch key children. We have parents who have to make a living while worried about their children. We do not live in that period where we lived in the same neighborhood as our parents or where uncles or aunts could serve as childcare providers. Parents are isolated and must bear the burden of full care for their children. No one is there to help lighten the load. Almost all primitive societies took responsibility for all the children. It is this capitalist system that has placed the full responsibility for the family on parents.

Capitalism is about profits. Nothing else matters—not children, not families. Only by building an economic system where we produce for use instead of for profit can we build a world that’s good for children and other living things.