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The concept of a day nursery to care exclusively for children whose
parents were away from home at work originated in France with the invention
of the créche. The first créche had opened in 1844 in Chaillot, on the
outskirts of Paris, as a part of an effort to combat infant mortality. So
great was the demand for low-paid unskilled factory workers that many
industrial firms sponsored créches so that mothers...could continue their
work in the mills.12
The first American créche was opened in 1854 in New York by Nurse's and
Children's Hospital...for the care of infants whose parents labored away
from the home.13
Again and again, as
one reads descriptions of these early day nurseries, one is forced to
conclude that they were almost always limited to providing only
minimal
forms of care and protection for the children.
14
"...nursery care...consisted chiefly of
'herding children, feeding one end, and wiping the other'"15
It was not uncommon for one matron to be responsible for cooking, cleaning,
laundering, and supervising between 30 and 50 preschool children.
16
After 1900, the day
nursery fell into increasing disrepute. Jane Addams, herself an
innovator...(who had)... sponsored a day nursery at the Hull House
settlement...outlined an argument against group child care.
Settlement workers in Boston began to feel that (day nursery children) were
no better off than the "full orphan".17
Increasingly...the new social workers...believed that the home was the only
proper place for children and that the mother was the best caretaker.18
By 1911 it was clear that the day nursery was at best "makeshift," a
"necessary evil," and at worst a partner of an industrial system "trying its
evil best to thrust the working man's wife or widow, the mother of the
working man's children, out of her home and into its insatiable mills"19
In 1910, Dr. Carolyn Hedger, addressing the National Federation of Day
Nurseries, asserted that it takes mother-love, mother arms, mothers
breasts, and considerable common sense to grow a human properly for
the first nine months and no institution,
no matter how scientific, how philanthropic,
can replace these things."20
"Underscoring the negative attitudes
toward day-care institutions, The Association of Day Nurseries dissolved in
1931...(acknowledging) that day nurseries should be a last resort..."21
12
Past Caring, A History of U.S.
Preschool Care and Education for the Poor, 1820--1965
by Emily D. Cahan, ©1989 by National Center for Children in Poverty, p.
13
13 Ibid., P. 14
14 Ibid., P. 15
15 Children's Interests/Mothers' Rights, by Sonya
Michel, ©1999, P. 113 |
16 Ibid., P. 16
17 Ibid., P. 18
18 Ibid., P. 19
19 Ibid., P. 20
20 Ibid., P. 25
21 The Politics of Parenthood, by M.F. Berry,
©1993, P. 105 |
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