ADULTS RECALL DAY-CARE DAYS OF LAPS, NAPS.

Byline: Mary Otto Knight Ridder Newspapers

Ask adults to recall their experiences in day care, and they pause and fumble for some small thing, some token of comfort or confusion. It could be a memory of the communal box of crayons, or the dreaded tomato soup, a picture of Jesus looking down from the wall, or the lap of a woman they can no longer name.

In remembering, they touch the child they were then, very young and away from home.

Since the 1960s and '70s, when women joined the work force in earnest, formal day care has become a fact of life for millions of American children. It has also become a public policy question discussed in the White House and Congress. It's a subject of major research at the National Institutes of Health.

But questions about day care are intimate ones for this now-grown generation of day-care children.

Are they different adults because they once endured the strangeness of the day-care world, and discovered how to live in it? Yes.

Are they putting their own children in day care?

Yes, said Sara Bigley in New Jersey. No, said Simon Rakoff in Virginia. Maybe, said Luciano Medellin in Chicago.

A new world

Thirty years ago, at the top of a dreary set of stairs in Detroit, 4-year-old Sara stepped into a new world, the Children's Learning Center, a bright place, alive with other children.

``The kids were very diverse. I liked it.''

Life there was certainly different than the somewhat lonely days she had been spending with an elderly baby sitter.

``It was a lot more interesting,'' she said.

Now Bigley, a fourth-grade teacher in Cherry Hill, N.J., is the mother of two boys, ages 2 and 5. From the age of four months, she has placed each in day care. It is ``important to me they be with other kids,'' she said. Bigley says she cried a little, preparing her second baby's things for his first day at day care, ``packing away his little bear in a box.''

``I do feel guilty at times. But if I were home, I'd have them go at least three mornings a week because I know it's so important.''

Organized day care got its start in America well over a century ago as a philosophical movement. It enjoyed a practical boom when mothers went to work during World War II. Today almost a third of all preschoolers go to a day-care center or nursery school.

There has been a shortage of long-range research on the effects of quality day care on children, but a comprehensive study by the National Institutes of Health is helping to provide a better understanding.

The study, started in 1991 and still under way, has offered some reassuring findings: that children in group arrangements seem to show fewer behavioral problems; that children in day care learn to think and talk as well as children cared for by their mothers; that day care by itself needn't diminish mother-child attachment.

Parents most important

The study has found that positive relations with parents are far more important to children's development than whether they attend day care.

But even in the best of worlds, the decision to send a child to day care is a tough one.

In Reston, Va., Simon Rakoff, 27, a health care consultant, recalls the magical years he spent gluing beads to paper and playing ``haunted house'' at the Reston Children's Center.

``I was never stifled as to my imagination,'' he said. ``I was allowed to dream.''

At the time, Rakoff recalls, the center was located in the wing of a spookily wonderful white Victorian house, a place that seemed homey and exciting at the same time.

``I loved the experience,'' said Rakoff. ``It's great to be part of something bigger than yourself.''

When Rakoff was a teen-ager, that old house was torn down. He took a walk through the rubble, and saved himself a shard of the foundation - ``my foundation.''

The place formed him, he said. He even met his wife, Jodi, there. ``I was 3-1/2. She was 2-1/2.''

In the evening, the Rakoffs play with their 10-month-old daughter, Ellie, in the living room of their airy home. Jodi Rakoff said she doesn't remember much about their old day-care center; she describes just a ``glimmer'' of the swing set.

The center now occupies a modern facility, not far away. But the Rakoffs can't bear to send their daughter.

More like school

Simon is convinced day care is more serious than it used to be, that it is more like school, not the dreamy refuge he remembers. Besides, Jodi, who used to work as a dental assistant, cannot bear to part with her baby.

``I'd cry every day if I had to put her in day care,'' she said.

Luciano Medellin, 27, remembers the taste of pancakes.

A good breakfast can still remind him of the pleasures of the union day care center he attended in Chicago, from about the age of 3, as the child of two garment workers.

``Next to my marriage, it is one of my fondest memories,'' Medellin said.

He remembers playing Superman and ending up with 36 stitches. Yet he mostly remembers the limitless warmth of the place, the feeling of nap time, lying on a little cot, drifting to sweet music, or breakfast: savoring the wonderful pancakes and French toast.

Medellin still lives in Chicago, where he works as a foster care case manager. He tries to repair other people's childhoods terribly damaged by abuse and neglect.

He wishes he could give them a sense of the loving order he got at day care.

``Granted, both parents have to work,'' said Medellin, but at day care ``there's a surrogate parent to discipline at an early age. I work in a field where you don't see it at all.'' He and his wife have no children of their own, yet. But he dreams of having a child, perhaps a son.

``Personally, I'd quit my job to raise my son. That's an idealistic world.'' More realistically, maybe his mom will be retired by then and care for their child. But at some point, they would probably also opt for day care. ``You learn to share,'' Medellin said. ``You learn to play.''

President's plan

Day care has been on a lot of people's minds. The president has offered a five-year, $21.7 billion day-care initiative to provide more quality day care. In Congress, dozens of day-care bills have been proposed. Lawmakers moralize about the issue.

Yet no one has brought any first-person testimonials into the debate, at least within earshot of Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat.

She grew up in post-war New Haven's Italian-American neighborhood.

Her mother worked in a sweatshop and her father served as an Italian interpreter in the courthouse. ``I went to my grandmother's pastry shop,'' DeLauro said. ``That's how my parents dealt with day care.''

Today, she said, more day care is needed. Good day care that is safe, stimulating, affordable and planned with children in mind.

The pastry shop was a wonderful place, she said. But times have changed.