 | | In a photo from the Defense Department website, a program assistant fed a baby at the Center Drive Child Development Center on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in April 2020.Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Charles Oki/U.S. Navy |
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"Some commanders grumble that they are warriors, not babysitters." |
— New York Times article about military child care from 1975 |
In 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. |
"They were all just running around the room, and there was just one chair — for the caregiver," Ms. Smith said. "Imagine the chaos." |
The scene Ms. Smith witnessed was actually quite common in a child care system that was then deeply underfunded and riddled with scandal. At the time, most military child care centers did not even meet fire and safety codes, according to a scathing report published in 1982 by the General Accounting Office, the congressional watchdog. |
The tipping point came in 1987, when the Army closed a child-care center at the Presidio base in San Francisco amid reports of children being sexually abused. |
In the ensuing years, the Defense Department, with the help of Ms. Smith, would engineer a transformation of its child care, laying the groundwork to create what is widely considered among the best in the country. |
 | | The child care center at Fort Lewis in Washington State, about 1977, a time when the military's child care system was deeply underfunded and riddled with scandal. |
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Today, the system's standards are considered more rigorous than any state's and almost all of its centers meet the criteria for national accreditation, which includes having a vetted curriculum and a low student-teacher ratio. By comparison, less than one in 10 civilian programs are accredited. |
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. |
The model is one that researchers, advocates and lawmakers — most notably Senator Elizabeth Warren and the cosponsors of her expansive universal child care bill, including Senator Cory Booker, and Representatives Mondaire Jones and James McGovern — urge the rest of the country to emulate. |
Last week, the House passed a $3.5 trillion blueprint, paving the way for Congress to draft legislation that would expand the social safety net, although its ultimate shape remains to be worked out in the coming days through a quirky process called reconciliation. It's unlikely that the package will go as far as replicating the military's turnaround at a national scale and may instead create a universal prekindergarten system. |
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. |
"Taking the lessons they've learned," Ms. Fraga said, "could be incredibly important to reimagining the civilian system." |
Here are four articles from The Times you may have missed. |
 | | Supporters of abortion rights protested outside the Texas Capitol in Austin in May.Sergio Flores/Getty Images |
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- "Texas politicians will have effectively overturned Roe v. Wade." Abortion providers in Texas asked the Supreme Court on Monday to block a state law that would ban abortions in the state as early as six weeks into pregnancy. The law, one of the most restrictive in the nation, is poised to go into effect on Wednesday, and it allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and others who help women obtain the procedure, including people who give women rides to clinics. [Read the story]
- "That's the thing with records: They're meant to be broken." Zara Rutherford, a 19-year-old aviator, is aiming to become the youngest woman to circumnavigate the globe solo in a single-engine aircraft. [Read the story]
- "I feel a heavy weight of responsibility on my shoulders." Governor Kathy C. Hochul, the first woman in history to lead New York and who took the helm this week under extraordinary circumstances, sat down with The New York Times. [Read the story]
- "A painful and divisive focal point." The resignation of Tina Tchen, the chief executive of Time's Up, is the latest fallout from revelations that leaders of the prominent anti-harassment charity advised Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor, on handling harassment allegations. [Read the story]
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Join Us for a Conversation on the Future for Afghan Women |
 | | Manizha Wafeq, left, and Rina Amiri, right. |
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Join us for a discussion in collaboration with the Women's Forum for the Economy & Society, about the situation for women and girls in Afghanistan; what they need from the world now, and in the future. |
Manizha Wafeq, co-founder and president of Afghanistan Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry, will be in conversation with Rina Amiri, a senior mediation adviser at the United Nations and a senior fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University. The conversation will be moderated by Amanda Taub, who writes the Interpreter column for The New York Times. |
Thursday, Sept. 2, at 12 p.m. Eastern. |
In Her Words is written by Alisha Haridasani Gupta and edited by Francesca Donner. Our art director is Catherine Gilmore-Barnes, and our photo editor is Maura Foley. |
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