Group child
care during the late 1940s and 1950s remained unpopular.
-- 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. 31.
Eventually,
however, daycare gained further acceptance
due to the growing
misconception that day care was educational and thus
benefited children. |
|
Daycare Initially
Unpopular:
Dr. Benjamin Spock (the
famous pediatrician of that time) declared in the 1947 and 1958 editions of Baby and
Child Care that "...it doesn't make sense to (have mothers)...pay other
people to do a poorer job of bringing up their own children."
-- Ibid., p. 31
And New York State's brief
experiment with publicly funded child care ended in 1947 when governor
Thomas E. Dewey terminated state support for day care and called those who
protested the decision "Communists".
-- Ibid., p. 31
Dependent Care Tax Credit
encourages daycare:
The DCTC was passed in 1956,
allowing tax deductions for child-care expenses "...as long as (the child
care expense) was to permit the taxpayer to hold gainful employment."
Although supporters "believed that child care should be considered a
legitimate business expense", it had the unintended consequence of unfairly
penalizing families that care for their children at home, since their taxes
now had to subsidize those that used daycare.
-- Quotes from Children's
Interests/Mothers' Rights by Sandra Michel,© 1999, P. 205
The Welfare Crisis in the
60's reinvents publicly-funded daycare.
...public concern over the sloth
of ADC (Aid to
Dependent
Children, a.k.a., "Welfare") recipients gave daycare
advocates an opening. In 1962, congress approved day care funding for
poor mothers, who were expected to enter the workforce and leave their
children with others.
-- "How Welfare Begat Day Care",
The Howard Center's Family in America, Jan 2001, Volume 15, number 1 |
