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Federal funding for day care was
established by a 1942 amendment to the Community Facilities Act, known as
the Lanham Act. Originally passed in 1941...
...The agency entrusted with the government's day care program was the
Federal Works Agency (FWA), a successor to the (Depression-era) WPA...
-- Ibid., p. 166
But not without a power struggle
with the Federal Security Administration. "The FSA, reflecting the
attitudes of children's advocates, was not about to stand by while the FWA
constructed a nationwide chain of 'Baby Parking Stations'."
Emily D. Cahan, Op. Cit., p. 30
The Lanham Act Centers, as they
were called, received 50 percent of their support from the federal
government...
Fritz Lanham...protested that this use (of federal funds) distorted his
bill's purpose, but he was ignored.
Minding the Children: Childcare in America from Colonial Times to the
Present by Geraldine Youcha,
© 1995, p. 308
The (federally-supported) centers had a peak enrollment near 130,000 in 1944.
Child Care: The Federal Role
During World War II, Emilie Stoltzfus, Congressional Research Service
Report RS20615, p. 1, 2 Feb 2009
Given the millions of kids alive
at the time, this hardly counts as universal (childcare).
Reason.com blog, "So How
Many Kids Went to Federally Funded Daycare During World War II?", Nick
Gillespie, 21 Jan 2015
Day care planners were aware that they had to revise the popular image of
the day nursery as a sort of dreary orphanage for neglected children: a
poster-sized fact sheet produced by the Family Welfare Association of
America to encourage the use of day care centers declared, "This is a war
program, not a charity."
-- Elizabeth Rose, op. cit., p. 168
The public day care centers also differed from the private day nurseries in
their link to the public schools. Like the WPA nursery schools, the
wartime day care centers were located in public school buildings. Not only
did this make the centers easily accessible, but it also reinforced their
identity as a public service similar to public education, available to all,
and suggested that they were providing educational as well as custodial
care. If day care was equated with public education, it could be defined as
a right of all citizens rather than as a gift to poor mothers.
-- Elizabeth Rose, op. cit.,
p.169
The opening of federally funded day care centers...furthered
the dawning perception that day care could be seen as a public service for
ordinary families, not a charity for those who had nowhere else to turn.
-- Elizabeth Rose, op. cit.,
p. 153 |
