This article summarizes results from a child care survey of military families conducted by the RAND Corporation in 2004 and draws policy implications for the military child care system. The article describes the military child care system, discusses the policy objectives of the system, and summarizes survey results that clarify the degree to which the Department of Defense is meeting its child care goals. The authors find evidence that despite its high quality, the military child care system fails to optimize readiness and retention of military members because these goals do not drive system policies or operations. The article offers suggestions for improving system outcomes.
U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), Office of Family Policy Web site, http://www.mfrc-dodqol.org/MCY/mm_cdc.htm (accessed March 23, 2005).
2.
Susan M. Gates, Gail L. Zellman, Joy S. Moini, and Marika Suttorp, Examining Child Care Need among Military Families, TR-279-OSD (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2006); and Joy S. Moini, Gail L. Zellman, and Susan M. Gates, Providing Child Care to Military Families: The Role of the Demand Formula in Defining Need and Informing Polity, MG-387-OSD (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2006).
3.
U.S. GeneralAccounting Office, "Military Personnel: Active Duty Benefits Reflect Changing Demographics, but Opportunities Exist to Improve," Report to the Subcommittee on Personnel, Committee on Armed Services, GAO-02-935 (Washington, DC : U.S. Senate, September 2002).
4.
See Bradford Booth, Mady Wechsler Segal, D. Bruce Bell, James A. Martin, Morton G. Ender, David E. Rohall, and John Nelson, "What We Know about Army Families: 2007 Update," prepared for the Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation Command (Fairfax, VA: Caliber Associates, 2007), 15-16. Note that the percentage of women has continued to increase, and Army women are less likely to be married than Army men.
5.
The Services use different terms to describe family child care (FCC), including child development homes.
6.
Gail L. Zellman, A.S. Johansen, L. Meredith, and M. Selvin, Improving the Delivery of Military Child Care: An Analysis of Current Operations and New Approaches, R-4145-FMP (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1992), 14.
7.
For example, as of 2000, the accreditation rate in military child development centers (CDCs) was 96 percent; the equivalent rate in the civilian sector was 8 percent (See N. D. Campbell, J. Appelbaum, K. Martinson, and E. Martin, Be All That We Can Be: Lessons from the Military for Improving Our Nation's Child Care System, Washington, DC: National Women's Law Center, 2000, p. 15).
8.
The term subsidy has different meanings for different types of care. For CDC care, it reflects the difference between the cost to DoD of providing the care and the price charged to parents. It is important to note that for military child care the subsidy is usually not visible to parents; while weekly CDC fees are well below market rates in every fee category, parents may not be aware of the substantially higher fees for comparable care in the civilian sector. For FCC care, the subsidy reflects a payment from the DoD to FCC providers, which often covers only insurance or other incidentals, or is designed to promote a DoD goal such as increased infant care. This payment supplements parent fees but is not typically visible to parents because it is provided directly to the provider.
9.
Gail L. Zellman and Susan M. Gates , Examining the Cost of Military Child Care, MR-1415-OSD (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation , 2002), 14.
10.
Two new DoD programs, "Child Care in Your Neighborhood" and "Operation: Military Child Care," provide location assistance and subsidies for high-quality care for eligible families who do not have access to on-base services.
11.
Gail L. Zellman and Anne S. Johansen, "Military Child Care: Toward an Integrated Delivery System," Armed Forces & Society21 (1995): 639.
12.
For example, Bourg and Segal examined affective organizational commitment, defined as "an agreement with, and a willingness to work toward, organizational goals and values"; Chris Bourg and Mady Wechsler Segal, "The Impact of Family Supportive Policies and Practices on Organizational Commitment to the Army," Armed Forces & Society 25 (1999): 633. They found a significant positive correlation between perceived policy support of families and individual affective organizational commitment among enlisted Army soldiers with civilian wives. A similar result was found Army-wide using the Spring 2005 Sample Survey of Military Personnel, as reported in Richard Fafara and David Westhuis, "Morale, Welfare and Recreation Programs and Their Effect on Readiness and Retention," US Army Journal of Installation Management 2 (2007): 10-14.
13.
Ann H. Huffman , Satoris S. Youngcourt, and Carl Andrew Castro, "The Importance of a Family-Friendly Work Environment for Increasing Employee Performance and Retention" (Paper A25, 45th annual conference of the International Military Testing Association, Pensacola, FL, November 3-6, 2003), 177-98.
14.
Michelle L. Kelley, Ellen Hock, Jennifer F. Bonney, Melinda S. Jarvis, Kathleen M. Smith, and Monica A. Gaffney, "Navy Mothers Experiencing and Not Experiencing Deployment: Reasons for Staying In or Leaving the Military," Military Psychology13, 1 ( 2001): 55-71.
15.
Meredith Leyva , "Transforming the "Retention Sector," Joint Forces Quarterly38 (2005 ): 84-91. Leyva's conclusions are based on sources including RAND research.
16.
M.C. Harrell , N. Lim , L.W. Castaneda, and D. Golinelli, Working around the Military: Challenges to Military Spouse Employment and Education, MG-196-OSD ( Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2004), 2, 157.
17.
Peggy McClure, ed., Pathways to the Future: A Review of Military Family Research (Scranton, PA: Military Family Institute, Marywood University , 1999).
18.
DoD regulations prohibit self-care by children aged twelve and under. However, we asked about such care in the families we surveyed (all of whom had a child twelve and under) because we believed that self-care does occur among younger children, and we needed to understand its frequency and the circumstances under which it occurs. Assurances of confidentiality were offered to parents to encourage them to reveal such arrangements.
19.
One such study, discussed by Huffman, Youngcourt, and Castro, focusing on Army personnel in Germany and Italy, used shooting ability and physical fitness as measures of "job performance." See Ann H. Huffman, Satoris S. Youngcourt, and Carl Andrew Castro, "The Importance of a Family-Friendly Work Environment for Increasing Employee Performance and Retention" (presented at the 45th annual conference of the International Military Testing Association, Pensacola, FL, November 3-6, 2003), http://www.internationalmta.org/2003/2003Proceedings/03IMTAproceedings.pdf.
20.
Caliber Associates, "MWR Programs and Readiness Links: 2003 Update," Final Report, U.S. Army Community and Family Support Center, Contract no. DASW01-96-D-0035, Purchase Request no. W81A70-0257-0060-000 (Fairfax, VA: Caliber Associates, September 2003).
21.
David A. Harrison and Joseph J. Martocchio, "Time for Absenteeism: A 20-Year Review of Origins, Offshoots, and Outcomes," Journal of Management24, 3 (1998): 305-50.
22.
Shelley M. MacDermid, Rachelle Strauss, Natashia Robbins, Heather Wenz, Yuhsuan Chang, Rona Schwarz, and Howard Weiss, "Child Care Use and Satisfaction among Military Families with Preschool Children," Technical Report (West Lafayette, IN: Military Family Research Institute, Purdue University, May 17, 2004).
23.
M. Queralt and A.D. Witte, "Estimating the Unmet Need for Services: A Middling Approach, Social Services Review73, 4 (1999): 524-59.
24.
One might question our focus on such a broad definition of unmet need. In fact, we considered several narrower definitions of unmet need, for example, families who report that a lack of child care options prevents a parent from working outside the home; or parents who use parental, sibling, or self-care. These more restrictive definitions captured very few families among our survey respondents.
25.
MacDermid et al., "Child Care Use and Satisfaction among Military Families with Preschool Children."
26.
Although being stationed in the United States was a criterion for inclusion in the survey sample, the military member may have been deployed abroad at the time of the survey.
27.
Additional information on the sampling methodology, data sources, and survey responses is available in Gates et al., Examining Child Care Need among Military Families, 19-27. The survey instrument is reproduced in Appendix C, pp. 65-89.
28.
For a more detailed description of the survey and methodology, please see ibid., 19-27.
29.
See ibid., 55-62, for a description of findings.
30.
The methodology is described in detail in ibid., 19-27.
31.
The stratified sample design is used to ensure that the survey population captured a reasonable number of dual-military and single-parent families. The six strata, described earlier, are based on the age of the child (zero to five and six to twelve years) and on family status (single parent, dual military parents, or civilian spouse). We sampled five hundred families from each of the six strata. Since the survey asks families about the child care arrangement for only one randomly selected "target" child, weights are constructed at the family level.
32.
We use a logit model to estimate the probability that an individual responded to the survey as a function of observable characteristics available on the sampled population and to construct the nonresponse weights. The analysis reveals that women, more highly educated individuals, whites, Air Force members, and officers and senior enlisted personnel are substantially more likely to respond to the survey than men, less well-educated personnel, Army members, and junior enlisted personnel.
33.
See Gates et al., Examining Child Care Need among Military Families, for further details.
34.
See C. E. Newell, P. Rosenfeld, R. N. Harris, and R. L. Hindelang, "Reasons for Nonresponse on U.S. Navy Surveys: A Closer Look," Military Psychology 16, 4 (2004): 265-76. On p. 266, Newell et al. document the drop in survey response rates, in general, for military surveys and for U.S. Navy surveys in particular: "The Navy-wide Personnel Survey had a 52-percent response rate in 1990, a 45-percent response rate in 1996 and a 33-percent response rate in 2000." The response rate for the 2002 DoD Status of Forces survey was 32 percent; the survey is available online at http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2003/b02252003_bt083-03.html (accessed May 10, 2005). For the Air Force, "Survey Branch personnel at the [Air Force Personnel Center] are `very happy' if they get a 33 percent return rate on their official surveys"; Laura A. H. DiSilverio, "Winning the Retention Wars: The Air Force, Women Officers, and the Need for Transformation," Fairchild Paper (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, August 2003), 27. For another example discussing recent surveys across all branches of service, see Brian M. Lappin, Regan M. Klein, Lee M. Howell, and Rachel N. Lipari, "Comparisons of Satisfaction and Retention Measures from 1999-2003" (Paper A22, 45th annual conference of the International Military Testing Association, Pensacola, FL, November 3-6, 2003), 158-66. The three surveys discussed by Lapin et al. were conducted for periods of months during 1999 to 2003 and achieved weighted response rates of 51, 32, and 35 percent.
35.
This difference may be partially due to the fact that the parents of older children tend to be older themselves and have a longer tenure in and stronger commitment to a military career.
36.
The high level of unmet preference for CDC care is consistent with findings from the April 2004 Status on Forces Survey, which found that CDC care was preferred by a higher percentage of respondents (26 percent) than any other care option.
37.
It is worth emphasizing again here that families using one type of child care may differ in observed and unobserved ways from families using other types of care. These differences may be related to the outcome under consideration.
38.
See Gates et al., Examining Child Care Need among Military Families, for findings from our focus groups, Appendix A, pp. 55-62.
39.
Reservist status was not a statistically significant explanatory variable in any of our analyses.
40.
Other studies include the Sample Survey of Military Personnel.
