oll, only 8 percent of Americans "feel that the present childcare system works very well" (Reynolds 1).
The problem is nearly as great for the parents of school-age children between the ages of 5 and 14, of whom more than 5 million are estimated by the Children's Defense Fund, to be home alone after school on a daily basis ("Women's Issues"). And these children are in the care of schools for less than 75 percent of the year. In addition to the long summer breaks and occasional illness, therefore, working parents must also accommodate "planned events such school closings or vacations" (Sprague 13). These numbers clearly are not limited to middle-class families and, as the General Accounting Office found, 65 percent of poor working mothers are kept in poverty by the high cost or unavailability of adequate childcare--which often accounts for as much as 25 percent of their salaries (Reynolds 1).
Working parents' dissatisfaction with childcare ranges from the fact that facilities are inadequate, inconvenient and over-expensive to the strong feeling
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