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Widow's Pensions
Prominent progressives like Jane Addams, the later chief of the U.S. Children's Bureau in 1912, realized that day nurseries only served to make women's difficulties harder. Her and her Hull House colleagues went on to call for a policy to support low-income mothers while they can stay home and take care of their children: widow's pensions. A modern-day stimulus that did little to defy gender roles, so a lot of support was garnered. By 1930, many states in the union had this law. -
Emergency Nursery Schools (ENS)
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) would come to establish nearly 3,000 Emergency Nursery Schools (ENS) between 1933 and 1944. They offered employment to unemployed teachers, and by the next year, the capacity reached approx. 75,000 students. This program was more of a private school than a daycare. They had charged fees and served only the unemployed middle-class. There were ENS in 43 states including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. -
The Lanham Act
In 1943, this act went from war-impact community facilities to turning remaining ENS into child care facilities. It fell short of the 2 million places that were needed, but this is because public opinion at this point still held distaste towards dual maternal employment and child care. Latchkey children and children found sleeping in locked cars were used to paint wage-earning mothers as "selfish." It was thought that "maternal deprivation" from group care could disrupt home environments. -
The Aftermath of V-J Day
After the Victory over Japan day, the funding for the Lanham Act was cut off. Most child care centers were shut down within a year or two. National organizations and several local groups across the country continued to lobby and demonstrate for public support. The 1946 Maternal and Child Welfare Act was never passed, but they did win child care provisions in New York City, Philadelphia, California, and in Washington, D.C. -
The Child Care Tax Deduction
In 1954, Congress passed the child care tax deduction. Low to moderate-income families were allowed to deduct up to $600 for childcare from their income taxes. It did offer some financial relief but activists and reformers were not quite satisfied with this alone. The tax failed to address the root of the issues, as well as supply, distribution, affordability, and quality of child care. -
The Establishment of ICC
The Inter-City Committee for Day Care of Children (ICC) was a national organization established in 1958 by a group of activists who devoted themselves specifically to child care. Unlike previous child care organizations, the ICC believed that private charities could not provide solid and adequate child care by themselves, and so they sought to gain federal support by working closely with government agencies like the U.S. Children's Bureau and the U.S. Women's Bureau. -
National Conference on the Day Care of Children
The ICC succeeded in convincing the Children's Bureau to sponsor a national conference in Washington, D.C. In this conference, the growing demand for labor was brought to attention, as well as the irreversible trend toward maternal employment. Albeit the ambivalence towards daycares, the leader of ICC, Elinor Guggenheimer, stressed the fact that private and voluntary charities/agencies will no longer be able to "shoulder the burden" with their government's continued lack of support. -
Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)
Luckily, two welfare reform bills passed in the coming years (1962 and 1952) in its stead. These bills provided federal support for child care to policies meant to encourage women with low-income to take employment outside the home and reduce the number of Americans on welfare. The push for universal child care policy was still going, but all efforts seemed to fail, reaching a stop after the veto of the CCDA of 1921. For the next 3 decades, federal support only targeted low-income families.
