Although the US does subsidize a portion of child-care services via tax credits for the middle class and subsidized care for low-income families, it has no parental-leave policy, no national system of child-care services, and no national standards of quality. This nonsystem of child care is in great contrast to the situation in most industrialized nations, which do have parental-leave and child-care systems with quality standards acceptable to most American experts. We believe that the greatest obstacle to such a system within the US lies in the premise that children are the responsibility of individual families and that responsible mothers will remain home to care for them. This is ironic in a country that claims to believe in diversity and parental choice. Our nonsystem of child care fails to serve the diverse needs of families and greatly restricts parents' choices.
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