Policies & Politics

In the Policies and Politics section, we will present comments by us as well as links to advocacy articles in the field of early child care. Some of these articles may be ours and some are those of others that we pass along, sometimes with observations from us. The views expressed here are our own and not necessarily those of our publisher or other sources on, or linked to, this website.

DETAINING MIGRANT FAMILIES INDEFINITELY WILL HARM MANY CHILDREN PERMANENTLY

Over the past year six children have died while in the custody of the Border Control on our southern border. Reports from news correspondents and members of Congress who have visited the immigrant detention centers where they are being held have described the scenes of children suffering from inadequate health care, hunger, sleeping on cement […]

SUPPORT GROWS FOR NATIONAL CHILD CARE PROGRAM

The growing support for a national program of high-quality affordable child care has reached new levels in recent months as political figures, including several declared 2020 presidential candidates have endorsed it and placed it on their agendas for the coming campaign. A powerful impetus for a publicly funded program of early child care has come […]

More Child Care Experts Condemn Immigrant Family Separation

This election season has seen an outburst of hate-filled demagogy the likes of which we have never witnessed in this country in our lifetime. The  avalanche of hate against immigrant families seeking asylum in this country that has been going on for several years was revved up in recent weeks by one side to stir […]

HUNGRY KIDS IN AMERICA

Most kids, when they’re hungry think about when dinner will be ready. But not the little 6-year-old in North Carolina who was asked about it in a recently released five-year study. “I go to bed and think about eating,” she said. The study, conducted by two sociology professors at North Carolina State University and one […]

A VISIT TO A CHILD IMMIGRATION DETENTION CENTER

We are reprinting below an urgent message fromUS Senator Kristen Gillebrand (D.-NY) about her recent visit to the southern US border to look into the plight of children separated from their parents. I TRAVELED EARLIER THIS WEEK TO TEXAS, where I saw firsthand 1,400 children living in an industrial converted Walmart, and women and children […]

THE INHUMAN POLICY OF SEPARATING CHILDREN FROM PARENTS

A NUMBER OF YEARS AGO, we were in Prague, a lovely Czech city on the Vltava River. Near the river, there’s a museum that we will always remain indelibly printed on our minds. The museum featured the drawings of children who were taken with their parents by the Nazis when the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia back […]

END THIS INSANITY NOW: TIME TO BAN WEAPONS OF MASS MURDER

Editorial Statement by Nettie & Paul Becker AS FORMER HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHERS, as people who now work with and write about young children, and as American citizens, we want to add our voice to the rising chorus of people who are calling for action to ban the sale and possession of assault firearms in our country. […]

HOW CAN AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN PARENT EXPLAIN BIGOTRY TO HER CHILD

NIC STONE IS AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN MOTHER of a four-year-old son. She lives in Atlanta and is married to a bi-racial man who is Jewish. Her African-American son attends a Jewish pre-school that he loves. But on a recent visit with her child to the Martin Luther King Center, as she toured the exhibits including the […]

FOR NEW PARENTS AND YOUNG KIDS IN U.S. – IT’S AN UPHILL BATTLE

A CHILD’S BRAIN forms more than a million connections every second, faster in the first three years than in any other period in his life. During this period, his future physical, social, emotional and intellectual development is being determined by his experiences. It is axiomatic that good health, secure and stable families, and supportive relationships […]

DEMAND CONGRESS REVERSE EPA RULE ALLOWING DANGEROUS PESTICIDE IN FOOD

A YOUNG CHILD’S BRAIN IS SO PRECIOUS for a human being’s future development that it cannot be overstated. Authorities in the field of child development have long demonstrated that the human brain and its nerve connections develop most rapidly in the earliest years. To interfere with that development is to condemn a person to a […]

PROPOSED TRUMP BUDGET HURTS INFANTS

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION BUDGET, released in June, “largely turns its back” on babies and children, warns Zero to Three, an organization deeply committed to the healthy development of children and families. “Babies don’t exist in a vacuum… they live in families,” and this budget’s “explicit intent is to redefine compassion away from ordinary working families and […]

WHERE DOES A CANDIDATE STAND ON CHILD CARE?

While most people think of economic policy as a national issue and child care as a family issue, the two are really both national and family issues. With both parents in so many families working to make ends meet in today’s economy, affordable child care is a must – not just for pre-K but beginning […]

THE FUTURE BEGINS WITH BABIES

IN A SHARP CHALLENGE to the new administration and Congress, Zero to Three, an organization dedicated to the well-being of young children, parents  and families, has called for enactment of legislation to vastly improve the status of early child care in America. “Four million babies will be born in theUnited States during President Donald J. Trump’s first year in […]

MORE PROOF THAT CHILD CARE INVESTMENTS PAYS OFF

AS IF ANY PROOF WAS NEEDED, a recent study led by University of Chicago Professor James J. Heckman, a Nobel laureate in Economics, finds that children between eight weeks and five years enrolled in high quality child care went on to have more successful lives. This is particularly true of children from economically disadvantaged single […]

NEURONS TO NEIGHBORHOODS: WHAT WE’VE LEARNED SINCE ITS PUBLICATION

Seventeen years ago, the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine released a report that has become a landmark in the field of child development. The report, From Neurons to Neighborhoods, opened a national discussion of early child development and its broader implications for our society. It massively documented and discussed how a child develops from […]

A RARE GLIMPSE: EARLY CHILD CARE AND PRE-SCHOOL IN CUBA

by Nettie Becker Cuban children dancing for their American visitors The pre-school children danced around on the area in front of the room, their colorful costumes flowing as they whirled. Behind them, a young boy played his guitar, accompanying them as the audience of the children’s parents and their foreign guests clapped their hands in rhythm […]

SPECIAL MENTION

Paid Parental Leave Is Also An Election Issue While a number of advanced industrial countries now have paid leave for new parents as national policies, there is no such policy in the United States where very few workers can take time off after the birth of a child. Some workers can take unpaid time off […]