America has long been heralded as the land of opportunity, but for our very youngest citizens, it is too often a land of despair. Every year, a shocking 32,000 American babies die before they reach their first birthday. More than one-quarter of the children under age three live in families with incomes below the poverty line, and only 67% of children under two get the necessary series of immunizations needed to protect them from life-threatening illnesses. Despite America's world leadership in research in child healthcare and development, in all the statistical indicators of children's well-being--physical, developmental, educational and behavioral--we lag well behind most advanced industrialized societies. While recent years have seen some piecemeal attention paid to policy issues affecting preschoolers aged three to five, our infants and toddlers are still perilously ignored, largely invisible in American social policy. In Starting Right, internationally recognized child and family policy experts Sheila B. Kamerman and Alfred J. Kahn present the pressing practical, political, and moral reasons why we must invest more time and money in America's youngest children, and their families. Singling out the best of current childcare policies and practices in the U.S. and western Europe, they call for a three-pronged approach to helping parents raise young children well: ensuring adequate income through strategies such as a child tax credit; providing essential services such as children's healthcare, child care, and family support programs; and offering working parents more generous leaves to spend time with their children. Kamerman and Kahn carefully assess the costs of implementing each of their proposals, demonstrating that the price is neither unreasonable nor beyond our means. Drawing on their own studies and all the latest research, the authors show that this investment in our children's early years is ultimately cheaper in both financial and human terms than the alternatives we live with now. For example in 1950, when Finland was just establishing its healthcare system, the infant mortality rate was 43.5 per 1,000 live births. The Finnish system emphasizes free and universal access to healthcare for all citizens, including family planning services, prenatal care, and home visits by nurses to families with newborns. Contagious childhood diseases have now been virtually eliminated, and by 1990 the infant mortality rate had plunged to 5.5 per 1,000, making Finland the world leader in the conquest of infant mortality. A clarion call to action and a reasoned and attainable prescription for change, Starting Right lays the groundwork for providing all of America's youngest children with the fighting chance they deserve to lead happy, healthy, and productive lives. At stake are our children's futures, and America's future as well.

Starting Right: How America Neglects Its Youngest Children and What We Can Do About It

Politics & Social Sciences

Kahn, Alfred J.

Kamerman, Sheila B.

Sociology

Oxford University Press

As the American workforce has changed in recent years to accommodate an increasing number of working parents, the workplace itself must also adapt. Sheila Kamerman and Alfred Kahn, two of the most respected authorities on work and the American family, explore in this study the ways in which the workplace has responded to social change. They examine innovations in the workplace as well as enduring concerns--fringe benefits, day care and other services, and employers' policies at the workplace. And, they assess employers' adequacy in assisting parents of young children to manage simultaneously their work and family roles. In doing so, Kamerman and Kahn separate over-optimistic "wish lists" from reality, and mere claims of certain effects from observed results. They also look at some critical benefits and services in detail, delineating which are useful and practical. The authors consider whether a workplace-based pattern of provision will meet everyone's needs and, if not, what alternatives are possible. While endorsing a serious role for employers, they stress that government must also take a role in respect to families of working parents.

The Responsive Workplace

Business & Money

Economics

Columbia University Press

Income Transfers for Families With Children: An Eight-Country Study

Social Sciences

Temple Univ Pr

A welcome for every child. Care, education and family support for infants and toddlers in europe.Cover pic as shown in pic with mother holding a baby. Loc. 13s - A

A Welcome for Every Child: Care, Education & Family Support for Infants & Toddlers in Europe

Parenting & Relationships

Parenting

Natl Center for Clinical

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Books by Kamerman, Sheila B.