According to Dr. Brenda Hunter's excellent book, "Home by Choice" (Multnomah, 1991), census figures have been misinterpreted by most in the media to reflect an ever-rising number of women in the workforce, especially mothers of children. In a study conducted by Douglas Besharov and Michelle Dally of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, a closer look at the census data indicates that most mothers of children under eighteen still stay home.

The figure widely reported in the media--that 62% of all mothers with children under eighteen are working--apparently includes mothers that are not working full-time, and whose children would therefore not be in full-time day care. First, of that 62%, only 41% worked full-time throughout the year, while 16% worked part time. Also included in that 62% figure are 6% who were unemployed and looking for work.

Additionally, when considering the number of mothers of children under six, the numbers of working mothers decrease dramatically. Only 33% of mothers of preschool children worked full-time, while 15% worked part-time. But, even these figures are misleading. The term "full-time" didn't mean working 50 weeks a year. Instead, the Department of Labor considers a mother to be 'employed' if she is working as little as one hour per week, or if she is working from home (even as a child-care provider), or even if she is employed full-time for any period of the year. That would include women who work seasonal or temporary jobs even one or two weeks a year!

I question Hillary's recent claim that 'more than half of all children under the age of one are in day care,' and would like to know the source of her assertion. Hillary's motivation for making such claims is obvious...using scare tactics to funnel more taxpayer dollars into Federal child care programs. But, what these stories of woeful and inadequate child care should do is motivate more mothers to reconsider the alternatives available to them. They should know that choosing to stay home and raise their own children is a respectable and, despite media reports to the contrary, popular choice.

Instead of scare tactics about inadequate child care, perhaps studies regarding the detriment of child care on children under one should be presented to mothers--information readily available from such experts as Penelope Leach and Dr. T. Barry Brazelton. Both suggest that children under one are better off in the care of their mothers or at least a single caregiver.

Rather than throwing more money at child care and providing infants with 'surrogate mothers,' why can't liberals even suggest a provision of incentives for mothers to stay home with their own children for at least a year? Recent polls of working moms indicate that 85% of them would stay at home at least part time with their children if finances made it possible. Tax-breaks, savings plan incentives and allowing penalty-free early withdrawal of retirement savings for women choosing to take a year off from their career to nuture their infant children might be not only more cost effective for the government, but surely better for the babies.

There is no amount of money that can be paid to a caregiver, no training program comprehensive enough, that will make her love a child more than that child's mother. Any one can provide the basic necessities to a child--food, shelter, diapers. But no one will argue that in the vast majority of cases, a child would fare far better in the care of its own mother.

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