Teacher Key - Fasttrack to America's Past

Fasttrack to America's Past
Teacher Key

Return to Originating Page

Page 235

Page 235 - Hillary Clinton on Child Care

The reading selection

   In this reading selection, First Lady Hillary Clinton issues a broad call for the government to become more involved in day care issues.

   The rising number of women in the work place had created a growing need for good day care for children. Such care was available, but was usually expensive. Lower cost day care solutions were frequently less than ideal. Reports often questioned the quality of care in overcrowded day care centers.

   Mrs. Clinton and most other liberals favored government action to create better day care facilities. Conservatives generally opposed this idea. They argued that government involvement would create more problems than solutions for the day care crisis.

The picture

   The drawing shows First Lady Hillary Clinton, one of the most active presidential spouses. She went on to win a U.S. Senate seat representing New York State after she and President Bill Clinton left the White House at the end of his second term. In 2016 she ran for president as the nominee of the Democratic Party, but lost to Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Group discussion questions

   Hillary Clinton assembles an impressive array of facts and figures about child day care in the 1990s. Overall, the picture was not good.
   She points out that many more families were seeking day care for their children. (In large part, this was because many more married women with children were taking jobs outside the home, as the chart on page 218 shows.) More than half of all the nation's infants under age one, she says, are in day care.

   Mrs. Clinton notes that the development of a child's brain is greatly influenced by early experiences in life. Bad day care, she says, can limit a child's mental development and natural potential.
   Most disturbing are the figures showing that many children are in day care that is of questionable quality. Mrs. Clinton cites figures showing that "ten percent are in care that is dangerous to their health and safety."

The First Lady cites her husband's view that day care is "the next great frontier of public policy." Public policy here means government action. Mrs. Clinton does not detail just what action would be appropriate. She clearly believes, however, that the government should have a bigger role to "build up and strengthen our families, to give them more support so they can do their jobs both at home and in the workplace."

Copyright 2018 by David Burns. All rights reserved. Illustrations and reading selections appearing in this work are taken from sources in the public domain and from private collections used by permission. Sources include: the Dover Pictorial Archive, the Library of Congress, The National Archives, The Hart Publishing Co., Corel Corporation and its licensors, Nova Development Corporation and its licensors, and others. Maps were created or adapted by the author using reference maps from the United States Geological Survey and Cartesia Software. Please see the home page for this title for more information.