At the end of World War II, the federal government announced plans to terminate its public child care programs that had been established during the war for working mothers. In response, women in California protested and lobbied to keep their centers open, even as these programs rapidly vanished in other states. Analyzing the informal networks of cross-class and cross-race reformers, policymakers, and educators, this book 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 structural forces impeding government support for broadly distributed child care as well as the possibilities for partnership and the limitations among key parties such as feminists, Communists, labor activists, working-class mothers, and early childhood educators, the book helps to explain the barriers to a publicly funded comprehensive child care program in the United States.
Thinking with Doors and Perspectives: Reimagining Early Childhood Spaces
