The issue of child care has been in the news a lot in the last week.

It was reported Hillary Clinton is tackling the issue to make recommendations for national policies concerning child care, much like she did with health care.

Last week’s conviction of the British au pair accused of shaking a baby boy to death brought criticism of the baby’s working mother for hiring cheap child care.

And, the results of a recent report last week showed incidents of juvenile crime rise drastically between the hours of 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., the time between the end of the school day and the end of the typical work day.

Every day in America, millions of women face the child-care issue as they drop their kids off at day care before heading to work.

For women to achieve gender equality, it often seems they must do it all. Millions of women juggle child rearing, homemaking and the career.

There are choices involved, of course.

Women can choose to delay family life to focus all energy on career advancement. Women can choose to do both a career and children or women can choose to focus on family.

But is it actually a choice?

Many women, single or not, need to work in order to remain financially stable. Staying at home with their children is often not an option.

Child day-care is the answer for many women. Many child-care centers offer a safe home away from home for children while their parents are at work.

However, questions have been raised about the effect day care has on children’s development, especially children taken to child-care centers as infants.

Other questions have been raised about the nurturing capabilities and safety of child-care centers and the effect they have on early family-bonding. Working mothers often miss out on the special “firsts” like the first smile, the first step and the first word.

And we have all heard or seen the horror stories on the news — unsupervised, crowded, dirty centers with inexperienced staff.

It’s probably safe to say the horror stories are the exception to the rule.

Most community child-care centers are inspected by officials and parents. However, even if mothers do find good, trustworthy child-care providers, they still face difficult issues.

Quality child care is expensive and hard to find.

The average national cost of day care is $3,000 per child, and waiting lists can be months long. Options for infant care are even more rare and expensive.

Even if a woman does have the option of staying at home, society tends to discredit her for choosing the “traditional” role of mother. Unfortunately, raising healthy and happy children doesn’t get as much respect as success in the 9-to-5 world.

Political matters further complicate women’s choices.

The political right talks about family values and the virtues of a mother who stays at home. From the way they talk, you’d think there’s nothing better than a woman who is able to stay at home with her children.

At the same time, Republicans and Democrats alike are talking about welfare reform — trying to “reform” welfare so single women will get out of the home and into the work force. From the way they talk, you’d think there’s nothing worse than a woman who goes on welfare to stay at home with her kids.

Child care needs to become a national policy issue, offering solutions consistent among all classes of women.

We need to implement national registries for child-care centers. We need legislation setting specific standards for child-care licensing. We need to provide incentives for companies to provide child care as an employee benefit.

Some companies are already doing this successfully. Companies like Campbell’s Soup and Apple Computers operate on-site child-care facilities for employees’ children. IBM and Smith Kline Beckman offer alternative work schedules to give parents more flexibility.

Child care needs to be a national policy issue to ensure good ideas like these will catch on.

In a time of government overspending and mismanagement, it is difficult to gain support for yet another government social program.

Yet, what is a better public investment than our children?

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Jonquil Wegmann is a senior in community and regional planning from Bellevue.