PUBLIC POLICY
By the mid-1990s, an estimated two-thirds of all preschool-age children will need some type of nonparental child care, due to the increased number of working mothers and single-parent families. Two bills addressing this situation—and commanding attention from conservatives—are working their way through Congress.
The measure receiving the most attention so far has been the Act for Better Child Care, or the ABC bill. Introduced last fall by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Rep. Dale Kildee (D-Mich.), the bill is designed to establish a comprehensive federal child-care policy.
Observers say the bill appears to favor middle-class families. For example, under the proposed legislation, most of the allocated federal funds would go toward child care for families making up to 115 percent of their state’s median income. (The median income in Mississippi is $29,573, and in Alaska it is $49,102.)
In addition, states would receive federal grants and loans to expand child-care services, train child-care workers, and develop resource and referral programs.
The bill would establish the first set of national quality standards for day care, including maximum staff-to-child ratios, a cap on the number of children one adult (nonparent) could care for at home, training requirements, and health-and-safety regulations. It would also provide strict regulations for any religious groups desiring federal funds. For example, all religious symbols in day-care centers would have to be covered or removed from the premises, no money would be allowed for “sectarian purposes or activities,” and all grantees would have to comply with federal hiring rules and state and local licensing laws. Because of this provision, many conservatives say the bill is antireligious.
Such a bill would not be cheap, ABC calls for a start-up cost of $2.5 billion for fiscal 1989 and “such sums thereafter.”
A major proponent of the ABC bill has been the nonprofit Children’s Defense Fund (CDF,) which regards child care as one of the most crucial issues on its agenda. “We are going to sacrifice a whole generation of children if we wait much longer [to address the child-care issue],” a CDF statement said.
The Washington-based Family Research Council (FRC,) however, says the ABC bill does not give families “full freedom of choice” because it offers assistance to parents only “if they choose certain options.” An FRC memo says that under ABC, no funds would go to a mother who chooses to stay home or to a grandmother or other relative who provides child care but has not been trained and licensed in a government-approved program. The memo asks, “Why should families which do not benefit from ABC subsidize [via taxes] the child care costs of others—especially when you consider the fact that the median income for a two-parent, single-income family … is considerably less than the median income for two-income families?”
A Republican alternative to the ABC bill was introduced earlier this spring by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.). Called the Child Care Services Improvement Act, the measure would provide some $300 million annually to expand child-care programs, give tax credits to employers that establish on-site child-care centers, and lower the liability costs for child-care providers. Like ABC, the Hatch-Johnson bill would establish national standards, but it does not have an income limit or strict regulations for religious child-care providers.
This bill has also drawn considerable criticism from some conservatives and profamily groups who fear that any federally subsidized day-care centers will have an unfair advantage over private centers, especially religious ones that voluntarily refuse government money.
Some critics charge that both bills would ultimately increase the overall cost of child care and favor middle-income families rather than the poor. And the FRC points out that the alternative, like the ABC bill, offers no help to “the woman who might prefer to stay at home and raise her own children.” Religious groups, often considered a primary provider of child care, are divided over the issue. The National Council of Churches has taken a strong stance in support of the ABC bill, while the National Association of Evangelicals and the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights oppose it as currently written. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has not taken any official positions on the issue, but a spokesperson said the denomination has “real concerns” about ABC’s implications for religious day-care programs.
For its part, the FRC is advocating a third approach: reforming the current tax code so that the child-care tax credit is available to all parents, including stay-at-home mothers and families that have a relative providing child care. Rep. Clyde Holloway (R-La.) has proposed such a bill.
By Kim A. Lawton.
World Scene
mexico
Palau Weathers Media
Evangelist Luis Palau has proclaimed his recent “Festival of the Family” crusades in Mexico successful despite hostile local press coverage. According to the Palau team, the Argentine-born evangelist preached to some 94,000 people and saw more than 6,000 public commitments to Jesus Christ during his nine days of crusade events.
Prior to the crusades, Palau was the target of much media opposition, including press reports that he is financed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). At press conferences in Mexico, Palau dismissed allegations that he has any CIA connections, quipping that if that were the case he could stop spending time on fund raising.
Palau said the negative coverage actually backfired on the media. “The viciousness of the attacks and the saturation that was achieved as a result of the opposition gave us a sweet victory for the gospel of life in Jesus Christ,” he said.
Palau will return to Mexico next month for the Congress ‘88 evangelism conference, cosponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and an organization called Conedes.
WORLDWIDE
Religious Intolerance
A report to the United Nations (UN) on religious liberty has found “infringement of freedom of religion or belief being committed in various forms and in practically all regions of the world …”
The second major report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance specifically cited instances of religious persecution in seven countries: Albania, Bulgaria, Burundi, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, and the Soviet Union. The report also endorsed the formation of an international convention on religious intolerance.
THE VATICAN
Abortion Policy Protested
The Vatican has gone on record criticizing the Italian courts for allowing a married woman to have an abortion without her husband’s knowledge or approval.
According to an editorial in L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, “A child which has already been conceived has the right not to be left to the whims of a single parent.” The editorial said, “The weakness of a solitary and unilateral decision is an inadmissible offense to the integrity of the person to be born.”
The editorial was apparently prompted by a recent case in northern Italy where a man sued his wife after she had an abortion without his knowledge.
Pope John Paul II, a staunch supporter of prolife efforts, has long been critical of Italy’s liberal abortion laws. The L’Osservatore Romano echoed his stand, proclaiming that the legislature “does not have the right to claim for the woman a presumed precedence in the decision as to whether or not to bring a child into the world.”
ISRAEL
Children Show The Way
Amidst growing tensions in the Israeli-occupied West Bank (see p. 34), children from a Palestinian Christian school in the region have collected money to help a nearby Muslim village under military curfew.
According to teachers with the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC,) students from the Latin Patriarch School in Zababden collected $1,500 by going door to door for donations.
The money was used to buy rice, sugar, powdered-milk biscuits, and other food. The MCC workers said the food was sent to Muslim families along with the message, “With love, from the children of Zababden to a child in Qabatiyeh.”
SOUTH AFRICA
Confronting Apartheid
Christians in South Africa are increasingly being drawn into their nation’s political battles over apartheid. Last month, a group of more than 40 theologians told President P. W. Botha that churches have a biblical basis for protesting apartheid.
In an open letter published in a Cape Town newspaper, the theologians said that for too long the pleas of the church on behalf of victims of apartheid have gone unheeded, hence the need to “put words into action,” the letter said.
The letter appeared after Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu drew criticism from Botha for attempting to organize a march protesting the banning of 17 antiapartheid groups.
The South African president asked Tutu to be a messenger of “the true Christian religion and not of Marxism and Atheism.”
The Dutch Reformed Church, which condemned apartheid in 1986, has joined Botha in criticizing the attempted march and the “political preaching” of some “activist clergymen.”
Meanwhile, earlier this spring some 200 Christians participated in an exchange in which black families stayed with whites in the suburbs of Pretoria and white families stayed with blacks in the black township of Mamelodi. The week-long exchange was sponsored by the interdenominational group Koinonia Southern Africa.
