Although major new programs are proposed, crucial spiritual questions go unanswered.
After years of being an issue reserved for Christian education committees and baby sitters, day care is suddenly hot. At the July Democratic National Convention, it was the topic de rigueur. The same month, George Bush made the headlines of the New York Times with his day-care proposals. And Congress at this minute is doing legislative battle over day-care specifics highlighted in the bills masterminded by presidential candidates Michael Dukakis and George Bush.
Several crucial issues converge in the concept of day care. Feminists see it as one more way to free role-bound women. Economists see it as either creeping socialism or a logical extension of the welfare system. Family activists, depending on their perspective, see it as a threat to the traditional family unit or an opportunity for government to serve beleaguered, unparented children.
Indeed, several crucial concerns must be taken into account in deciding the wisdom of national day-care legislation: It is very expensive, with little government money currently available to pay for it; the positive economic impact on impoverished families could be considerable; and it could relieve pressure on welfare agencies currently strapped with the lion’s share of the problems generated by single-parent families.
But three distinctly spiritual questions beg for answers, and Christian citizens must insist on their inclusion in any debate about proposed day-care programs:
• Are provisions for day-care legislation further tipping the balance against the traditional family unit? Mothers who wish to stay home and raise children full-time should not be discriminated against at the expense of those who work.
• Is government control of religiously sponsored day care minimal (addressing such matters as physical safety) and in no way co-opting the right of religious organizations to organize and staff day-care centers?
• Is the quality of child care uncompromised? Children learn more than facts at any care facility—they learn values and attitudes, and need more than food and shelter.
In order to get a handle on this question of quality and its spiritual implications, Christians need to be concerned with what it does to children to be cared for outside the home for 40, 50, or 60 hours per week. Existing research such as that done by Dr. Jay Belsky, a Penn State authority on child care, warns that infants seem to be most at risk, although he says, “I have no doubt that when the quality of infant day care is good, risk is reduced. Whether or not risk disappears when quality is good awaits further research.”
Good quality is usually defined as trained care givers in settings where the infant/care giver ratio is no higher than three to one. Christians would want to add that part of the quality of a day-care setting is its lack of bias against religious concerns.
The Programs
Two major approaches for day care have emerged in this election year. Each needs to be evaluated against the above concerns. The Act for Better Child Care Services of 1987 (ABC, for short), sponsored by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), is strongly supported by Democrats and endorsed in principle by Michael Dukakis, the Democratic presidential nominee. It would cost $2.5 billion and would reserve 75 percent of that money for low and middle-income parents. Parents would have to use the money to pay for care at state-regulated centers that would be required to meet minimum federal safety and staffing standards. The other 25 percent of the money would be used by the states for capital improvements of centers, to train and pay staff members, and for administrative costs.
The Republican nominee, George Bush, has proposed a plan that would cost $2.2 billion. It would provide low-income families a tax credit of up to $1,000 for each child under four years of age—even if one parent in the family stays home to take care of the child.
Both programs would cost a great deal of money, and neither candidate has offered much clue as to where the money would come from, since tax increases do not make good pre-election promises. But there do appear to be pros and cons on each program when evaluated against our spiritual concerns.
The Programs Evaluated
The Bush proposal scores well in recognizing that some parents of low-income families would like to stay home—at least part-time—and care for their children. A tax credit is available to all and does not discriminate in favor of mothers who work outside the home.
It also allows parents to choose what kind of child care they would like, should they decide to work. Religiously sponsored centers are as much an option as state-run centers or private sector day-care center chains. Even if parents choose more traditional options such as relatives and baby sitters, they still get the tax credit. The decision about child-care options remains where it should remain—with the parents.
This particular strength of the Bush proposal may also be its weakness, however. The quality of care must somehow be insured. Although Christian parents cannot allow total federal control over choice of teachers and the atmosphere of religious day-care centers, they must recognize that some kinds of safety and quality standards are necessary. It is possible that when the Bush legislation reaches final form this will be handled in an acceptable way. We must insist on it.
The ABC bill, supported by Michael Dukakis, is not as sensitive to the traditional family unit. It favors low-income mothers who want to, or must work. It provides no relief for the low-income parents who want to stay home during their child’s crucial first three years. Financial support is only available if parents send their child to a federally funded day-care center.
Thus, federal day-care centers become the only financially subsidized game in town. And stringent guidelines rule the operation of those centers. As currently written, those regulations unfairly discriminate against religious day-care centers. A day-care center in a church basement, for example, cannot be involved in “advancing or promoting a particular religion.” And “all religious symbols and artifacts” must be covered or removed. Such a blatantly antireligious bias is unbecoming any legislation in a country that advocates religious freedom. Adequate state guidelines can be written to allow for the spiritual concerns of religiously sponsored day-care centers.
One of the ABC bill’s strengths is its attempt to insure the quality of care givers. Money is set aside for training day-care workers, and good standards for care givers (if we could be sure they would be religiously neutral) would go a long way toward improving overall child-care quality.
Both bills recognize that the federal government can do something to provide for overworked parents and their disadvantaged children. But Christians must insist that if more than $2 billion of our country’s money is to be spent, it must be spent in a way that does not discriminate against their values.
By Terry Muck
Gustavo’S Surprise
Proponents of liberation theology celebrated three birthdays this summer. The conference of bishops held in Medellín, Colombia, at which Latin American Catholic leaders committed the church to the liberation of the poor, turned 20. A Theology of Liberation, the seminal work that launched a movement, turned 15. And the book’s author, Gustavo Gutiérrez, turned 60.
In interviews with the news media and addresses to well-wishers, Gutiérrez made some significant assertions about liberation theology:
• It has become more sophisticated and nuanced in recent years, no longer depending on a simple Marxist analysis of politics and economics to understand the plight of the poor. Racial, cultural, and gender factors have been added to the mix.
Although Gutiérrez claimed that liberation theology had never accepted Marx’s materialism, atheism, or economic determinism, many critics believe it has been impoverished by its general reliance on Marxist analysis. Perhaps as liberationists continue to discover the complexity of life, their program will begin to appreciate more the ways in which God works through personal spirituality as well as political history.
• Although liberation theology remains bitterly opposed to the Third World capitalism it knows (an economic system that philosopher Michael Novak says more closely resembles feudalism than democratic capitalism), Gutiérrez says he is willing to entertain the idea that, if the evidence showed capitalism effectively relieving poverty, there could be a capitalist liberation theology. In his 1986 book, Will It Liberate?, Novak lauded Gutiérrez’s spirituality while criticizing his economics. Perhaps the door is finally opening for a dialogue that can create a capitalist theology with a preferential option for the poor.
• Liberation theology is not an ideology. “I don’t believe in liberation theology,” Gutiérrez said. “I believe in Jesus Christ. I was a Christian before liberation theology and will be a Christian after liberation theology.” Gutiérrez claims that liberation theology has never reduced Christianity to politics. But its effect has often been to produce political activists who focus almost solely on the problems of structural sin to the exclusion of personal sin.
Theologies that apply the radical gospel of the kingdom of God to this business-as-usual world appear to be subject to a politicization that can kill the spiritual motivation behind them. For instance, some pacifist organizations that were once agents of Christ’s peace have turned into hotbeds of revolutionary politics.
No doubt some of this is inevitable for liberationism as well, because of a basic flaw—it defines theology as praxis, or application of truth, downplaying the orthodoxy that undergirds any solid grasp of the truth. Nevertheless, Gutiérrez’s public repudiation of the worst aspects of Marxism, along with his growing political and economic openness, are signs of hope for a host of Latin Christians who are, after all, willing to give their lives for their fellow humans.
By David Neff.
