For Child Care That's Parent-Centered!

Senator Elizabeth Warren has proposed a national program for affordable child care. But what her proposal overlooks (at least, judging from the discussion on NPR's All Things Considered) is that, rather than being counterposed to paid work, parental care of children deserves to be publicly recognized as socially necessary labor and compensated accordingly. This could be either by an individual stay-at-home parent or by a collective or cooperative enabling parents to balance child rearing with participation in the institutional work force. This would allow parents to have real engagement with their children's development in "on" time while still pursuing other careers.