Lessons on Child Care, From the Military

— New York Times article about military child care from 1975In 1978, Linda Smith walked into her new job as program director of the child care center at Williams Air Force Base in Arizona to find a distressing sight: dozens of toddlers and infants all crammed into one room with a single caregiver and a TV mounted on the wall.

Because child care is considered essential to “military readiness,” the Defense Department spends over $1 billion a year, funding everything from upkeep of centers to subsidizing parent fees to the employment of 23,000 child care workers, many of whom are specifically trained by the military for early education, and are paid more than their civilian counterparts.

But the experience of the military provides crucial lessons. Before its transformation, the military child care system was plagued by many of the same problems that plague America’s national child care system today: no clear teaching standards, inconsistent quality and low teacher pay, said Lynette Fraga, chief executive of Child Care Aware of America, a national child care advocacy organization.

One change was the 1975 decision to allow pregnant women to keep their jobs. Until that point, military women — nearly all of whom held noncombat roles at the time — wereif they became pregnant, unless special exceptions were granted. The change in policy quickly led to a surge in marriages and babies.

One of the first things Ms. Smith did when she arrived at the child care center in Arizona was hire permanent staff members and move them onto the government’s payroll.

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