Associated Press
WASHINGTON — While Brady Marshall watches prisoners, he relies on his girlfriend, a neighbor and a baby-sitter to watch his kids.
Census 2000 data for 20 states, including Washington, reaffirm a trend of more young children growing up with all parents in their home working. But for people like Marshall, a divorced prison guard, simply putting them in day care is not as option.
A wide range of socioeconomic forces during the 1990s expanded child-rearing options for many working parents. Some won more flexible schedules from their employers or arranged for job sharing with another parent; others decided to open Internet-based businesses at home.
Because of his frequently changing work schedule and his children’s needs, Marshall says flexibility is crucial when finding care for his 1-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter.
Census 2000 data released Tuesday details the number of children under age 6 with all parents either working or looking for a job. However, the broad category did not distinguish between single- and two-parent families, or whether the jobs were full- or part-time.
With Tuesday’s release, 22 states now have data from the 2000 census "long form," which also covered topics such as education and income.
The percentage of young kids who grew up with all parents at some stage of employment increased in each of the 22 states except Nevada and California. Demographers suggest that may in part be due to the increase in those two states in Hispanic families — many of whom have mothers at home full time to care for children or may not be able to afford child care.
Among the state information released on Tuesday:
"Flexibility was important. I didn’t want someone else raising my children," said Jayne Williams, who quit a six-day-a-week office job in marketing when her daughter reached her first birthday. She now sells home-care products out of her house in Naugutuck, Conn., while studying to become a teacher.
"You can’t say that because a mother is working that children will be at risk," said Lilian Katz, a professor at the Children’s Research Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She said interactions must be judged by the quality of the care.
"For some children, if they were at home they wouldn’t be getting the best of care either," she said.
A separate Census Bureau survey completed last year suggests that new mothers are waiting longer before returning to work. The survey found that 55 percent of women who gave birth between July 1999 and June 2000 returned to work during the first year of their child’s life, down from 59 percent in 1998. The declines came mainly among white women, and women with higher levels of education.
A study by the Department of Education found that the percentage of children age 3 to 5 enrolled in center-based early childhood care programs increased from 53 percent in 1991 to 60 percent in 1999.
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