During World War II, as women stepped in to fill jobs vacated by men in
the armed services, the federal government established public child care
centers in local communities for the first time. When the government
announced plans to withdraw funding and terminate its child care
services at the end of the war, women in California protested and
lobbied to keep their centers open, even as these services rapidly
vanished in other states.
Analyzing the informal networks of cross-class and cross-race reformers,
policymakers, and educators, Demanding Child Care: Women's Activism and
the Politics of Welfare, 1940-1971 traces the rapidly changing alliances
among these groups. During the early stages of the childcare movement,
feminists, Communists, and labor activists banded together, only to have
these alliances dissolve by the 1950s as the movement welcomed new
leadership composed of working-class mothers and early childhood
educators. In the 1960s, when federal policymakers earmarked child care
funds for children of women on welfare and children described as
culturally deprived, it expanded child care services available to these
groups but eventually eliminated public child care for the working poor.
Deftly exploring the possibilities for partnership as well as the
limitations among these key parties, Fousekis helps to explain the
barriers to a publically funded comprehensive child care program in the
United States.