From Work-Family Balance to Work-Family Interaction

Chapter 15

Imagining the Future: A Dialogue on the Societal Value of Care

Faith A. WohlPresidentChild Care Action Campaign

Changing the metaphor, as the title of this book urges, is one way to think differently about an important issue. Another is to change the context in which that thinking is done. That was, in fact, the impetus behind Child Care Action Campaign’s decision to position its strategic thinking about advocacy for child care in a new time frame—the year 2020—in the hope that doing so would permit accelerated progress on present-day solutions.

Late in the summer of 2001, as the organization worked on its strategic plan, one fact seemed both clear and unarguable. The national dialogue on child care was truly stuck. The public conversation ...