Financing Child Care

American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care

FINANCING CHILD CARE IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR(Employers and Unions)

The American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care (National)

The American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care (ABC) is a business strategy intended to increase the supply and quality of dependent care services in the U.S. ABC was formed in response to key labor force changes brought about by the increasing number of women and dual-earner families in the labor force and the increasing caregiving responsibilities of employees. Twenty-one major U.S. national and international corporations, called the "Champions," form the core of the collaboration. The collaboration also includes more than 100 regional and local businesses who partner with the Champions in specific initiatives. The 21 Champion companies are: Aetna Life and Casualty, Allstate Insurance Company, American Express, Amoco, AT&T, Bank of America, Chevron, Citibank, Deloitte & Touche, Eastman Kodak, Exxon, GE Capital Services, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Mobil, NYNEX, Price Waterhouse, Texaco, Texas Instruments and Xerox.

The ABC was originally formed in the fall of 1992. The second phase was

launched in the fall of 1995, with dollars committed through 2000.

From 1992 through 1994, the ABC invested over $27 million in a ra

o be of questionable validity. More troubling still is the failure of scholarly proponents to discuss significant contrary findings--as, for example, the ample evidence that for working mothers, the pressures of a job are often more onerous than the pressures of caring for children at home. Indeed, study after study tells of working mothers struggling to cope, to keep their spirits up, but succumbing to depression and anxiety. Though one would never know it from the pro-day-care literature, a substantial majority of mothers themselves, whether or not they work, favor parental care for children under school age, and in some studies this view is all but unanimous. What we have here is the familiar and discouraging story of ideology trumping evidence. In this case, the ideology in question is feminism, with its detestation of the very idea of sexual differences in sentiment, aptitude, or behavior. Feminist thinking, married (if that is a permissible word in this context) to a utopianism that envisions a cost-free end to all the encumbrances and limitations of domestic life, launched us on an experiment bearing untold implications for the health of our children, and has enlisted the sympathies of academic researchers to adjust resul