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What do children need to grow and develop? How can their needs be met when parents work? A new book by Jane Waldfogel, professor of social work and public affairs at the Columbia University School of Social Work, proposes a bold new plan to better meet the needs of children in working families.
What Children Need (Harvard University Press) draws on social science research to offer comprehensive answers and a vision for change. Waldfogel documents what children need at each stage of childhood, from birth through adolescence. She also considers whether current work and care arrangements are consistent with children’s needs and finds that, all too often, they are not because parents are left to fend for themselves in a system where the quality of care is not what it should be.
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In addition to What Children Need, Waldfogel is also the author of The Future of Child Protection: How to Break the Cycle of Abuse and Neglect. |
“Just 30 years ago, the typical American child had a stay-at-home mother,” says Waldfogel. “Today, that situation is reversed: The typical child has a mother who is working, often starting in the first year of life. Yet, our policies have not kept pace.”
The book provides a plan that, building on evidence as well as core values about parental choice, quality of care and work ethic, would better meet the needs of children with working parents. Some of Waldfogel’s suggested improvements are:
- Allow parents more flex-time to manage family responsibilities
- Ensure continuity of essential family benefits such as health insurance
- Give mothers and fathers more options to stay home in the first year of life
- Improve quality of care from infancy through the preschool years
- Increase access to high-quality out-of-school programs for school-aged children and teenagers
Waldfogel has written extensively on the impact of public policies on child and family well-being and was a member of the National Academy of Science Committee on Family and Work Policies. Her current research includes studies of work-family policies including family leave, inequality in early childhood care and education, and child abuse and neglect.
Waldfogel received her Ph.D. in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In addition to What Children Need, she is the author of The Future of Child Protection: How to Break the Cycle of Abuse and Neglect (Harvard University Press, 1998) and co-editor (with Sheldon Danziger) of Securing the Future: Investing in Children from Birth to Adulthood (Russell Sage Foundation, 2000). Her work has been published in leading academic journals including the American Economic Review, American Educational Research Journal, American Sociological Review, Child Development, Demography, Economic Journal, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Population Economics and Pediatrics.
For more information or to interview Waldfogel, contact Jeannie Yip at (212) 851-2327 or at jy2223@columbia.edu.
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