76-06-B5
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Child Services Act[edit]
Transcript[edit]When Congress returns, among the items they'll busy themselves with is a measure entitled, "The Child and Family Services Act". If you don't know about it, you should. It was introduced in the Senate by the Vice President-elect Walter Mondale. The House version was introduced by John Brademas. One Congressman, Gene Taylor of Missouri, says of these two identical bills, "I can scarcely imagine a worse, or more dangerous bill. Dangerous because its vast scope of day care programs for pre-school children would place parents in the background and substitute a whole new bureaucracy to tell us how to raise our children". That "day care" portion of the bill is the real joker. For some time now there has been agitation for government-supported day care centers as an aid to getting more mothers now on welfare, off welfare and into self-supporting jobs. Certainly it sounds logical to suggest they can hardly abandon their pre-school age children during the working day. Most of us envisioning a nursery center with playground equipment and a few trustworthy ladies to keep the children happy and healthy till Mama picks them up are inclined to say "good idea". But those who've been promoting this idea as an adjunct to job training and welfare have planned something a little more elaborate. And, it's hard not to believe they have something more in mind than getting Mama off welfare. The bill called "The Child and Family Services Act" proposes part and full time day center care; social, recreational and educational programs; all social services (and that can cover a lot of things); programs dealing with physical, mental, psychological and emotional problems. Added to this is a catch-all phrase -- "Other services and activities as the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare deems appropriate". Who will decide what these services might be, and when they are "appropriate"? In committee hearings on this bill there are some clues as to what the answer to that question might be. For example, one witness talked of the need to get to the babies earlier in order to reach their minds -- quote -- "When most available for corrective intervention" -- unquote. The original bill defined a parent as "any person who has primary day-to-day responsibility for any child". That definition brought such a deluge of protests the Senator amended the bill to include the line, "nothing in this act shall alter or interfere in any way with the rights and responsibilities of parents". Frankly, that line is pure cosmetics and does nothing to lessen the fact that government will be intervening in family life. Let me describe in a sentence or two what a day care center will be like when the agency in charge writes the regulations to implement this bill. First of all, the baby sitters will be professionals meeting definite prescribed standards of training. A staff will very likely include trained teachers, nurses, undoubtedly an in-house psychiatrist or at least psychologist and social workers complete with graduate degrees in that field. Meantime, working mothers who aren't on welfare will park the baby with grandma or the married sister who has kids of her own. And she'll notice the tax bite is a little bigger. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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