Who Watches the Children?

Washington, D.C. -- that is, the so-called "official" Washington, where the lawmakers and media roam -- is not known for its long attention span. By now, Zoe Baird, Kimba Wood, and the other nominees and nearly nominees for U.S. attorney general in the Clinton administration are already well on their way to being end-of-the-year trivia answers.

But those few weeks of high anxiety for the Clinton administration, striving so hard for that cabinet that at least resembles America, holds interesting insights into our society in this year after the Year of the Woman.

A subtext of the Baird and Wood affairs is the assumption that the care of children, hearth, home, and garden is a woman's special, exclusive domain. A woman's administration of this domain, whether it be firsthand or through the hiring of domestic help (and including her choice to have children or not), becomes an implicit part of her resume.

This theme emerged initially because Baird's child care situation broke laws that as attorney general she would be required to uphold. However, the domestic subtext lingered -- not because other candidates under consideration showed evidence of ethical wrongdoing in their home or child care, but because they were women. (Who can name which male cabinet officials even have children, or who mops their floors or weeds their gardens?)

Judge Kimba Wood's child care situation was not illegal. She did not, however, make it even as far as being a nominee. Her legal hiring of an undocumented worker from Trinidad to babysit her child was seen as too dangerous politically. At that point, it was clear that the administration lacked the confidence it could keep a confirmation process focused on her qualifications for the attorney general position instead of her domestic situation.

The eventual nomination of Janet Reno, the highly qualified state attorney for Dade County, Florida -- who has no children -- put the so-called "nanny problem" to rest (aided of course by the introduction of Clinton's economic plan, which drew away media attention).

What never got shaken out of deep slumber were fundamental questions about our country's values. We have a disposable servant class -- made up of immigrants and lower-income people of all colors -- that does for those who can afford it the jobs they cannot or do not want to do themselves. This includes child care. In the meantime, this servant class, as well as the lower-middle and working classes, struggle to find any child care at all.

THE GENERAL PUBLIC raised an outcry about Baird because it was perceived that her privilege was threatening to place her above the law. But while Baird paid her fine and then returned to her corporate career, Lillian Cordero, the nanny on whom Baird's attorney-general fortunes swung, was returned to Peru along with her husband.

The letter of the law and of class egalitarianism under it were honored. The reality of a highly stratified society remains. So do immigration laws, selectively enforced, that provide a cheap, fluid supply of domestic and sweatshop workers willing to labor for less because they can't get recognized as being "legal." At the same time, Latino and Asian groups report increased incidents of firings and job discrimination against immigrants by employers newly skittish about the law.

In the meantime, the question of who watches our children echoes painfully for those in the domestic and service sector, whether they're immigrants or U.S. citizens. In the midst of the nanny debate, some suggested that Baird and Wood could have found Americans (i.e. employees who wouldn't have attracted so much attention) to watch their children if they had just been willing to pay more.

But those in upper-income brackets throwing more money at the problem will do nothing to change a defective infrastructure. A commitment on the part of high-income families to pay for child care will not somehow trickle down to the rest of the country. The women or men they employ will still not be able to afford dependable, quality care for their own children. For those struggling to find work, or for domestic workers from other countries who subsidize other people's careers with their own poverty-level wages, paying for child care is nearly impossible. They must rely on friends or relatives willing and able to stay with their children for little or no pay.

What got lost in those couple of weeks of intense focus on two professional women's child care situations were not only their qualifications for the job at hand. Also lost was a chance for an honest look at quiet but ever-present parts of our national economy -- children, those who care for them, undocumented immigrants, and all others who struggle to survive in the service sector. Implicitly or explicitly, we as a country continue to make those with no voice disposable -- and we all pay a high price for this waste.

Julie Polter is associate editor of Sojourners.