Caring for Children - Who Cares For America's Children?

School-Age Children

The Forum on Child and Family Statistics reported in America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2003 that about half of children in kindergarten through eighth grade were cared for by someone other than their parents in 2001. Younger children were more likely to receive home-based care or center-based care for before or after-school hours; children in grades four and up were less likely to receive these types of care and more likely to care for themselves. (See Figure 3.1.) Only 2.8% of children in kindergarten through third grade cared for

themselves regularly, while 25% of older children did. (See Table 3.3.)

SELF-CARE—"LATCHKEY KIDS." The phrase "latchkey kids" is used to describe children left alone or unsupervised either during the day or before or after school. These are children five to fourteen years of age whose parents report "child cares for self" as either the primary or secondary child care arrangement. In 1999 6.4 million grade-school-age children cared for themselves on a regular basis without adult supervision. (See Table 3.4.) Most of these children are twelve or older, but 443,000 children eight years of age and younger regularly took care of themselves. And the number of children in self-care may be rising; in 2002 the Annie E. Casey Foundation estimated in Kids Count Data Book: State Profiles of Child Wellbeing that eight million children between ages five and fourteen spend some time alone at home each week.

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY COMMUNITY LEARNING CENTERS. More than half of all families use after-school programs, and in many families parents rely on after-school care to provide a safe and nurturing place for their children while they are working. In response to concerns about the availability of quality after-school programs, the U.S. Department of Education initiated Twenty-First-Century Community Learning Centers (CCLC), authorized under Title X, Part I, of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and reauthorized under Title IV, Part B, of the No Child Left Behind Act. This initiative gives grants to low-performance middle and elementary schools in rural and urban areas to provide after-school opportunities for their students, both educational and

TABLE 3.2

recreational. The budget for the CCLC program was raised from $1 million in 1997 to $40 million in 1998, $453 million in 2000, and $846 million in 2001. In fiscal year 2004 Congress appropriated $999 million in funding for CCLC. According to the U.S. Department of Education's Web site, by 2003 CCLC supported after-school programs in about 6,800 rural and inner-city public schools in 1,420 communities.

However, Duncan Chaplin and Michael J. Puma, in "What 'Extras' Do We Get with Extracurriculars? Technical Research Consideration" (Urban Institute, September 30, 2003), offered a cautionary note about claims that these programs may give disadvantaged students an academic boost. The researchers found that extracurricular activities included in after-school programs that do not specifically target academic outcomes (for example, arts, music, drama, and language classes) had no affect on academic achievement. The authors suggested more rigorous evaluation of after-school programs that target disadvantaged youth be conducted before further money is spent on these programs, as that money might be spent on potentially more effective educational programs for disadvantaged youth.

Children Younger Than Five (Preschoolers)

In 2002 mothers with children under twelve months old were much less likely to be employed full-time than were mothers with children older than twelve months. Roughly a third of mothers with an infant (34%) were employed full-time, compared to more than half of mothers with older children (51%). (See Figure 3.2.) Almost

FIGURE 3.1

half the mothers with an infant were not in the labor force at all (45%), while only a little more than a quarter of mothers with older children (28%) were not in the labor force. Unemployment and part-time employment were relatively equal in the two groups of mothers.

In 2001 52% of children under age two and 74% of children ages three to six were in nonparental care at least some of the time. (See Table 3.5.) These preschoolers were more likely to be cared for in a center-based program (33%) than any other child-care arrangement. Relatives provided care for 23% of preschoolers and nonrelatives for 16% of preschoolers in 2001.

But care arrangements for preschoolers varied greatly according to the age of the child. As their children grow from infancy to school age, working mothers often change child-care arrangements to meet the needs of their children, their families, and their employers. Making child-care arrangements for infants and toddlers is often more difficult than for older children, because fewer organized child-care facilities admit infants and very young children, primarily due to the cost involved in hiring a sufficient number of workers and adapting facilities to care adequately for babies. In addition, many parents prefer, if possible, to keep their infants in a home environment as long as possible. In 2001 only 17% of children under age two were in center-based programs, compared with 56% of older preschoolers. (See Table 3.5.)