...WWII ...made day care into a full-fledged
public issue.
-- From A Mothers' Job: The History of Daycare,
1890-1960 by Elizabeth Rose, Oxford University Press, Inc., 1999,
p 153Convinced that day care was an effective tool for recruiting women, defense
contractors...opened day care centers for their employees, although most...(did
not).
-- Ibid., p 161
...those concerned primarily with meeting the needs of defense industries
urged the creation of day care facilities in order to encourage mothers to
take up defense work, thus helping the war effort.
...Day care was thus left to the mercies of those concerned with increasing
war production, who in turn created programs that many working mothers were
reluctant to use.
-- Ibid., p. 154
Many mothers expressed dismay at
the idea of placing their children in the care of strangers...
-- From 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. 29
"...A 1943 Gallup Poll Reported
that 56 percent of mothers would not use government daycare centers even if
they were provided free".
-- From The Politics of
Parenthood by Mary Frances Berry, ©1993, P. 108
Employers and government agencies who did advocate providing day care...did so out of a concern with war
production, seeing day care as an aid to defense industries,
not necessarily
as a good in itself.
-- Elizabeth Rose, Op. Cit., p.
162
Despite a lack of support from union leadership, ..., the CIO (Congress of
Industrial Organizations) women's auxiliaries vigorously campaigned for day
care...in every neighborhood where working mothers live...located in the
public schools or in buildings close to elementary schools.
-- Ibid., p. 165 |
