ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Friday, April 18, 1997                 TAG: 9704180073
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-8  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS and KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE

CLINTON ASKS THE MILITARY TO SHARE DAY-CARE PROWESS PENTAGON SYSTEM LIKELY THE NATION'S BEST

The president's idea for military-civilian partnerships was part of a daylong conference on early childhood development.

President Clinton believes that the best child care in the country is run by the American military - and Thursday he told the Pentagon brass to show civilians how they do it.

Of course, day care in the armed services has one big advantage: half the cost is subsidized by taxpayers, $273 million this year.

And that's one of the reasons that the services offer better-trained, better-paid workers to care for 200,000 children of military personnel.

``We've got to do a lot more to improve the availability, the quality and the affordability of child care,'' Clinton said at a White House conference on early childhood development.

``The military has one of the best,'' the president said. Clinton directed ``the military to share its success in partnerships with civilian child care centers and to provide training.''

Just less than 13 million children under 6 are in some form of child care in the United States: at a day-care center, with a baby sitter, family member, neighbor or friend at home. Parents pay about $17 billion a year for child care, according to Barbara Willer, spokeswoman for the National Association for the Education of Young People.

Finding reliable, affordable child care is a vexing problem for millions of American parents.

``Parents struggle to find child care, and they struggle to keep it,'' Deborah Phillips, a child care expert at the federal Institute of Medicine, said at the conference. ``Barely adequate is the term of art to describe child care in this country.''

Clinton conceded that the taxpayer subsidies made a big difference in what the military is able to offer.

``If I were to say to the Republicans in Congress, `We have a lot of problems in the military budget and we are going to let go of the child care part of the military ' there would be an uproar,'' he said.

``The children of people who are not in the Navy are as important as the children of people who are.''

Clinton's proposal was part of larger White House attention on how children develop in their first few years of life. New research has shown that the brain ``gets wired'' early in life. Infants who are given lots of attention and exposed to a variety of stimuli actually have superior brains to neglected infants.

In a day of ``talking about baby talk'' and how brains grow, Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton offered parents simple child-rearing advice: Songs and storytelling fire up infants' brainpower.

For the Clintons, two working parents, the research's emphasis on early nurturing by parents also raised a thorny question: Does science prove mothers are better off staying at home? Hillary Clinton faced the question head on with help from Phillips.

``Some people argue that what the research really tells us is that women with very young children should not work outside the home, period,'' the first lady said.

Phillips reassured her there was no evidence that placing young children in good-quality child care impinges on the parent-child bond or stops babies from thriving.

LENGTH: Medium:   71 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  ASSOCIATED PRESS. President Clinton pauses Thursday 
          during his East Room conference on early childhood development, a 
          day dedicated to "talking about baby talk."