two views.(US tax policy)

PRESIDENT BUSH WANTS TO DOUBLE THE CHILD TAX CREDIT. LIBERALS WOULD RATHER SPEND THE MONEY ON DAY CARE. SOME CONSERVATIVES WOULD RATHER USE IT FOR TAX CUTS THAT STIMULATE THE ECONOMY.

How to Help Childraising Families Prosper?

Charles Siegel

The dramatic growth of day care in recent decades is the final step in a long process of modernizing away the family. In the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution moved men's work out of the home and into offices and factories. In the twentieth century, most women's work also moved out of the home. Not only childcare and homemaking, but also community projects that relied on female labor--like charitable, educational, and local anti-poverty efforts--were taken over by corporations or government.

Progressive social reformers argued that this modernization was inevitable: The money economy would ultimately take over all the responsibilities of the family; so our only choice was to spend more money on day care. Thanks to their efforts, we adopted social policies that give the "inevitable" plenty of help. Government and corporations now subsidize day care, rather than helping parents to care for their own children. For example, the federal child-care tax credit goes only to families who pay others to care for their children. It ignores families who reduce their income to raise their own children. Half of these credits go to the wealthiest 30 percent of families; only 3 percent go to the poorest 30 percent of families.

Is it inevitable that the modern economy will take over child care, as it has taken over other work of the family? In reality families should have ample time to care for their children, thanks to another shift everyone considered inevitable: the trend toward shorter work hours.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, work hours declined dramatically from the traditional six-day, 72-hour work week. Then this "inevitable" trend suddenly stopped. During the Depression, the 40-hour work week was established. During the postwar period, corporations stepped up their advertising. The federal government built freeways, promoted suburbanization, and stimulated demand. Thanks to these policies, the long trend toward shorter work hours stopped dead during the prosperous 1950s and `60s. And work hours have increased since the 1970s.