The forgotten children.

• Position: Child welfare - Editorial

The Children's Defense Fund conference in March came at an auspicious moment. "The election of a new President and a Congress composed of more women and minority members raises hope that meeting children's and families' needs can be moved to the top of the list of national priorities," declared Marian Wright Edelman, the Children's Defense Fund's president.

Indeed, children and families have received some rare attention lately, thanks in part to the connections between the Clinton Administration and the Children's Defense Fund (Hillary Clinton is former chair of its board), and to the controversy surrounding the appointment of a new Attorney General, which revolved around day care.

More than half of all mothers with children under the age of six are now employed--as compared with fewer than one-third in 1970. For most families, declining real wages make it necessary for both parents to work to maintain the standard of living that used to be possible on a single income. For the growing number of single mothers, the child-care crisis is even more pressing. Yet, as the Children's Defense Fund points out, half of all states spend less than $25 a year per child on early childhood education, and the United States has no national child-care policy.

Over the last thirty years, the American family has gone through dramatic social and economic changes, but attitudes toward women and children have not kept pace. Women are now expected to work full time and figure out what to do with their children. The result: Women are more beleaguered than ever, and hasty, inadequate day-care arrangements are our nation's dirty little secret.

For the majority of American women, work is not a question of climbing to the top, but of surviving in the middle--or below. And since the majority of mothers can no longer afford to stay home, the question should have come up at a national level a long time ago: What is happening to the kids?

The answer is that more and more American children are cared for by low-wage workers--mainly women. Whether they are undocumented live-in nannies or minimum-wage workers at day-care centers, they are treated with little regard by society at large. Low pay, high staff turnover, minimal training and supervision, and scanty quality controls are typical.

Women still take care of America's children. And taking care of children--despite the lip service we pay to "family values" and a good upbringing for our young--is still considered...