AMERICAN CHILD-CARE TODAY

Child care has 2 purposes: mothers' employment and children's developm ent. These are conflicting goals, because the first focuses on the qua ntity and affordability of child care whereas the second favors expens ive quality services. Affordable child care fosters maternal employmen t and gender equality. With welfare reform demanding more child-care p laces to move mothers from welfare to work, the pressure for larger qu antities of child care is great. Demanding regulations raise the quali ty of care and give more assurance of children's well-being, but they also increase the cost. More expensive regulations price more working parents our of licensed care and force them to use unregulated home ca re. Widely varying qualities of child care have been shown to have onl y small effects on children's current development and no demonstrated long-term impact, except on disadvantaged children, whose homes put th em at developmental risk. Parents have far greater impact on their chi ldren's development through both the genes and environments they provi de. Thus, greater quantities of affordable, regulated child care may b e possible.