Robert Drago's Remarks

Testimony of Robert Drago
Friday October 31, 2003
Dirksen Senate Office Building
Take Care Net Launch

Thank you Julianne, to Senator Kennedy's office, and to those of you in attendance. We are here today to begin the process of involving academics and practitioners in the process of changing the political landscape.

Let me provide an example of why this effort is so important. Last Sunday, an article in the New York Times magazine discussed the lives of women who had made it through Princeton, and had begun successful professional careers, only to drop out and stay home after kids came along. The article seemed to claim that this behavior was biological, with women born to love children (and men presumably born to make money). Yet if you looked at the evidence from a study of college and university faculty we are just completing for the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, you would reach precisely the opposite conclusion. The women marry less than the men, delay childbearing and raise fewer children than the men, and divorce more frequently. Clearly, the men must be inheriting a gene causing greater love for marriage and family...

The fact is that a close reading of the biological evidence provides no support for the claim that women care more for children than men, nor does it suggest that women are inherently better parents than men. Yet that message has not gotten out to either the media or policy-makers here in Washington.

The more crucial message from this story of professional women, a story that is shared with low-income women, is that we do not currently provide the social supports families need. Faced with low-quality child care options and few supports for that, the professional woman may correctly believe that she and her husband would provide their best child care option, and she "gets" to quit since high incomes typically require that someone work very long hours, longer hours than any committed parent should be spending at the workplace. The low-income mother faces even lower-quality child care options, but is sent into employment by our welfare system, often when infants are only a few months old.

Also ignored in this story is a sea-change in men's attitudes toward fatherhood. A recent study found that, across the income spectrum, most men now take a leave of absence from work when a new child arrives in the family. The average is around four days of leave, but the men tell us they would have preferred two weeks (their wives wished the husbands would take even more...). Four days may not sound like much, except the average father of previous generations took no leave for a new child, and for many women, four days of leave would be far more than they believe they can take.

Things look brighter when we turn to child care in the household. The best available time use evidence finds today's men in couples with children performing 43 percent of all child care. That is not equality, but equality is no longer a distant dream.

These findings tell us that men as well as women deserve better support from our government. Paying for family leave could help millions of Americans hold onto their jobs when new adoptive, step or biological children arrive in their families, or when illness strikes employees or other family members. And the evidence from corporations suggests the burden is too heavy for employers to bear. Even though the cost of paid leave would only average between $10 and $20 per month, our competitive economy will not allow many employers to foot this bill.

Government support for child care would also benefit millions of Americans and their children. How can the Bush tax cuts, currently running over three trillion dollars and still counting, be justified when 80 percent of child care in this nation is of substandard quality and we force parents into employment? Our best corporations, often included in Working Mother magazine's "Top 100" list, found they could not afford quality child care for all their employees, much as they wanted to provide it, and much as employees need it and cannot afford it themselves. This is a case where the federal government should step in and help.

Academics and practitioners know we need these supports, and they know why we need them, and how to design policies that will best fit the needs of America's families. The Take Care Net is designed to provide them with a voice we hope will prove useful in moving us towards a society that helps all of us to survive, thrive and achieve our potential.

Let me finish with a bit of history regarding the Take Care Net. The group stemmed from a meeting with Julie Kashien, of Senator Kennedy's office, with Alisa Green and my daughter Eva. I asked Julie what she needed from me or academics in general, and her answer was a broad outline of what now exists. A few months later, when I found it increasingly difficult to look Eva in the face and say I was "too busy" to do this, I started contacting people in the field, and the Steering Committee, with Randy Albelda, Eileen Appelbaum, Ellen Bravo, Netsy Firestein, Jodi Grant, Heidi Hartmann, Jody Heymann, Nancy Segal, Lynette Chappel-Williams, and Faith Wohl, quickly formed. I thank them each for giving tirelessly of their time, and a special thanks to Nancy Segal, who organized this amazing event!

You might wonder, as I have, why the Take Care Net is new. Why haven't academics and practitioners banded together before to promote social change? A complete accounting would show that many have gone before us and made substantial contributions. Yet, at heart, I think there is a problem with how we teach and perform social science. We are usually asked to study phenomena in order to make predictions. But at the end of the day, if we are to leave the world a better place for future generations, we need to move out of the comfortable arena of predictions, and into the far riskier but ultimately more rewarding arena of policy change.

Thank you for your time.