Can we make time for children? the economy, work schedules, and child care

Not only are Americans having fewer children than ever before, they are spending less time with the children they have. This is due in large part to the growth in the labor force participation of women, which is most evident among mothers of young children, and to the decline in the proportion of families with fathers present.' Although we often acknowledge that because of these trends, more and more parents-particularly mothers-mu-st juggle their time between work and family responsibilities, we devote little attention to changes at the societal level that influence their options. The dynamics are far more complicated than we generally recognize. The overall objective of this address is to elaborate on the changing temporal organization of the workplace-its growing diversity and flexibility-and how these temporal dimensions affect the management of child care, including parental care, when mothers with young children are employed. Such an elaboration will present a more complex-and realistic-view than currently exists of the context in which employed parents are making both workplace and child care decisions. This, in turn, should demonstrate the need for broader research and policy agendas on how we care for children-agendas that give more attention to the problems that parents face in managing their time as well as economic resources to provide adequate care and more attention to the consequences for parents and children of the arrangements that are made. Today, more than half of American mothers with children under the age of 6 are employed; about one-fifth of these employed mothers are single parents (U.S. Dept. of Labor, 1989). The problem of limited time that employed mothers have for their children gets translated into two distinct policy concerns: how best to arrange for affordable, quality child care when mothers are employed and whether there are feasible workplace adaptations that allow parents more time to be home with their children when they are very young. (Although reference is often made to parents in this latter regard, it is typically mothers' time with children that people are thinking of when they discuss this issue.) These two policy concerns are in the forefront today-perhaps because employed mothers are no longer mostly low-income mothers but women of all social classes. This broader constituency may be why there is now bipartisan political support for a federally funded child care program, although there is considerable debate about what such a program should entail and the amount of public funds to be allocated. Legislation requiring employers to grant unpaid parental leave is also being debated seriously. There are currently two National Academy of Science panels, one on child care policy and the other on employer policies and working families. Child care and related workplace issues are being given