Welfare reform, seemingly, has succeeded. Caseloads are down as much as 90 percent in some states. Most former welfare recipients have jobs, and some have improved living standards.

Why the apparent success? Credit the full-employment economy and the expansion of the earned income tax credit, which helps compensate for the inadequate wages paid to most former welfare recipients.

But we don't know what will happen in the next recession (though we can guess). We don't know how many former welfare mothers who get jobs will keep them. And we don't yet know the long-term effect on their children.

Sponsors of welfare reform often spoke in moral terms. They hoped that single mothers who were working, rather than collecting a government handout, would be better role models for their children. The full name of the welfare reform law is the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.

But how does a low-wage single mother actually reconcile work opportunity and personal responsibility to her children? What happens to the kids when work comes first? What happens at the job when a kid gets sick? And what would it take to truly square this circle?

Historians looking back on sex roles and family life in the late 20th century will surely notice an oddity. Society started accepting, then demanding, that mothers should join the paid labor force. Yet it did almost nothing to compensate children for the substantial withdrawal from the household of the primary parent.

Actually, let me qualify that generalization in two respects. Other societies, such as all of Western Europe, did a great deal. They added generous family allowance benefits, universal early-childhood programs, as well as child care for school-age children. Only the United States did almost nothing.

And some Americans do just fine reconciling career and motherhood. The professional class has simply hired nannies, emulating the very rich. But for the working middle class and the poor, the absence of universal child care became perhaps the single biggest stress on marriages, on family budgets, and, of course, on kids.

One consequence was on women. Curiously, mothers were expected to work full time but were also still considered the primary parent. So women's career opportunities still got sacrificed more than men's. Though women joined the paid labor force, fathers' roles at home changed little (when was the last time you read an article about the stresses of being a working father?). The other consequence was on children. Kids simply got less reliable parenting.

Given that the vast majority of working families cannot afford nannies, and given the almost sacred place that mothers and children hold in our national consciousness, you have to wonder why society did not embark on massive investment in child care and early childhood development.

One reason is that in America a lot of issues that are properly political are mistakenly understood as personal. A woman who is whipsawed between work and mothering may well conclude: I married the wrong guy, or I should have picked a different occupation, or I'm an inadequate mother.

Instead of mourning, this lady should be organizing. The second problem is a lack of what our European cousins call social solidarity. Many middle-class couples look without compassion on single mothers. Many elderly people think they should be exempt from school taxes.

But we all have a stake in the well-being of the next generation. A sensible society would surely appreciate that if most women are in the work force, someone has to be watching the children. And the only way to accomplish that is through universal, high-quality child care programs for both the middle class and the poor.

A century ago, progressive reformers battled for universal kindergarten (we still don't quite have it everywhere). The idea was not that the poor should get special subsidies but that comprehensive schooling should be extended to all 5-year-olds. As part of that reform, kindergarten teachers became qualified professionals rather than low-wage child minders.

Now, in a new century with new gender roles, we need to extend that model downward to younger kids and outward to kids during the after-school hours. We also need programs of paid leave for both fathers and mothers.

The other day, George W. Bush, confronted by a woman who couldn't afford medical bills, shrugged: I wish I had a wand.

What a splendidly obtuse example of political default. A wand! What's needed is not a wand but a sensible set of social policies for the entire population.

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.

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