Healthy start: an interview with Marian Wright Edelman

Christian Century, July 15, 1998

Marian Wright Edelman is founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund, a national child advocacy organization. CDF monitors federal and state policies concerning children and provides information and assistance to state and local child advocates and to providers of services to children. The organization will mark its 25th anniversary with a November celebration in Washington, D.C.

Edelman was the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi bar and in the mid-1960s directed the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Mississippi. Before founding the CDF she served for two years as the director of the Center for Law and Education at Harvard University. She has received the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize and is the author of several books, including: Children in Peril: An Agenda for Social Change and The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours. Her most recent book is Guide My Feet: Meditations and Prayers on Loving and Working for Children. We spoke with her recently about the work of the CDF and the politics of the family.

Over the years you and the Children's Defense Fund have pressed for reforms on a number of issues that affect children, from child health care and development to improved education and youth employment. Lately you've been pushing for improvements in child day care. Tell us about the day care situation.

We need to make sure that every child whose parent has to work has safe, high-quality, affordable care. That is not being provided now. I should say immediately that we are not interested in mommy wars. Some on the fight have accused us of advocating child care to the point of diminishing parents' role in rearing children. I would love to live in a country in which parents could choose to stay at home and not have to risk poverty.

Our nation is now insisting that all poor mothers should go out to work, and that there be time limits on safety nets. Obviously, the best thing for children is parents who can afford to stay at home. But most of the parents who are out in the labor force are working because they would be in poverty if they didn't.

Two minimum-wage workers now make about $21,000 together. It is hard for a family to make ends meet on that amount of money. And 29 percent of children are being raised by single parents who earn even less. Over 70 percent of mothers of school-aged children are working; nearly 60 percent of mothers with preschool children are working. Day care has become a necessity. The question is, then, what is the quality of care that those children get? In 32 states you can open up a child center and take in children without a day or even an hour of training. By contrast, your hairdresser or your barber and manicurist have to have 1,500 hours worth of training to open up shop.

Why are there no federal laws regulating day care?

A significant number of religious providers of day care, as well as many, probably most, for-profit providers, have resisted standards. The more caregivers a day-care center has to employ and the more training it has to pay for, the more costs go up and the profit margin goes down. I should add that churches are the largest deliverers of group child care. The figure I have seen is that for every child in church on Sunday eight are there for day care during the week.

What improvements do you want in child care?

The CDF wants four things this year. We want at least $20 billion in new money. Since children have been targeted by cigarette companies, we think that $20 billion from any tobacco settlement or any tobacco tax should be funneled to the states for child care. Communities can best decide how to spend the funds, although we think there should be money targeted for infant and toddler care, since we now know the importance of brain development in the first years of life.

I would also like to see that money put into the childcare block grant to make care more affordable for many parents. Good child care costs about as much per year as a year at a public university. If you are earning only $14,000 to $20,000 annually, you cannot afford that amount of money.

Second, we want to talk about the quality of day care. Scientists and educators know about the importance of brain development in children before the age of three. We need to make sure that children's development during those crucial years is not ignored. If children aren't ready for school, we are not going to meet other educational goals we set for them.

Third, we want to stress the importance of training care givers. Child-care workers make about $12,000 a year, without benefits, so there is a lot of turnover in the field. That's less than we pay our dogcatchers and parking lot attendants. It says a lot about what we value.

Fourth, we are trying to get at least a billion dollars for after-school care and summer programs, because we know that most youth crime, teenage pregnancy, smoking and drug and alcohol addiction begin between three and seven in the afternoon when children return to empty homes. Community institutions, including religious congregations, ought to be able to run these programs. Drug dealers are available to do business 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but our congregations and community institutions are often unavailable to children. After-school programs are key.