For parents without the luxury of deciding whether to work or stay home with young children — that is, almost all parents — day care can become a nerve-wracking, guilt-ridden, all-consuming issue. The ad hoc, loosely regulated system of day-care providers in Maine and elsewhere stands in uncomfortable contrast to the emerging body of evidence showing how crucial the first years of life are for brain development.

An ongoing research project by the National Institutes of Health recently reaffirmed that children are more dependent on a loving, stable homelife than the quality of their day care for healthy social, intellectual and emotional development. But the hours many children spend away from home, in the company of supervising adults and a few or many children, remain an understandable concern of parents, educators and anyone interested in the social fabric of a community.

Rep. Tom Allen recently introduced a bill called Model States Child Care Enhancement Act, which doubles the federal government’s funding committment for child care and establishes standards for states that want to apply for the additional funds. The bill includes many of the standards a parent might call commonsense: appropriate child:staff ratios, up-to-date immunization records for children, minimum training for staff, health and safety inspections of facilities. State community-development grants — the bill calls for a total of $1 billion a year for five years — help states meet these standards without making care prohibitively expensive.

The regular worry by parents that they are harming their kids by sending them to day care has largely been answered by numerous researchers who say this: Depends on the quality of the care. Some child-care facilities, of course, already are excellent. Unfortunately, others amount to little more than TV time with a junk-food diet. In these cases, parents are paying to set up their children for later failure, at enormous cost for everyone.

A companion bill to the model states legislation, also sponsored by Rep. Allen, would redirect some federal child care money to school districts that offered full-day, year-round day care. The idea of using schools, where space is available, can make sense — library, food service, and playground are in place. The proposals for the federal money would be largely up to school districts, but the bill gives states a better idea about the quality of care being offered. Fair to say that a proposal based on curriculum of cartoons and napping wouldn’t get funded.

Though the standards leave states with plenty of latitude to shape child-care programs, they are important because they make caring for and educating a 4-year-old as crucial as caring for and educating a 6-year-old, whose school must meet similar requirements. The latest research on development concludes that preparing children for a life of learning and achievement means starting early. Unlike earlier conclusions that assumed a child’s potential was set upon leaving the womb, scientists now refer to “learning windows,” times when children can best learn certain skills, such as speech.

This is very good news because it means that instead of giving up on some children who start life at a disadvantage, communities can help by offering high-quality care at the proper time. Rep. Allen’s bills make it easier to provide this care, helping children and calming, at least a little, the fears of parents.