Facts In Action

Parents for United Child Care, 2000

In the winter of 1999, Parents United for Child Care commissioned the Center for Survey Research at the University of Massachusetts Boston to develop and conduct a first-of-its-kind telephone survey of over 500 Massachusetts families with at least one child aged 12 or younger to ask them about their child care arrangements. The survey asked parents to describe the type of care they used, their satisfaction with it, and what the care cost them. In addition, parents were asked to discuss the personal and professional choices they encountered in arranging care, maintaining employment, and securing the financial well-being of their families. The findings (some listed below) shed light on the choices and tradeoffs parents in Massachusetts face in finding child care:

• 42% of infants, 65% of toddlers, 80% of preschool children, and 48% of school-age children were in some type of child care arrangement;
• Low-income families with at least one child aged 12 or younger in non-parental care were more likely to use informal, unpaid, unlicensed, and/or unstructured child care arrangements than higher-income families;
• 28% of all low-income families who had used a child care arrangement reported that they had gone on welfare in order to pay for their child care needs;
• 25% of children in child care had a parent who indicated that during the past year, they had looked for new child care arrangements (see table for reasons parents cited as obstacles for finding new care.)

Source:
Choices and Tradeoffs: The Parent Survey on Child Care in Massachusetts: A Report for Parents United for Child Care, Randy Albelda and Carol Consenza, University of Massachusetts Boston, 2000.

For more information on Choices and Tradeoffs:
The Parent Survey on Child Care in Massachusetts: A Report for Parents United for Child Care, contact Parents United for Child Care, 30 Winter Street, 7^th Floor, Boston, MA, 02108 or by telephone at (617) 426-8288.

Facts in Action, May 2000