Childcare as Welfare or Women’s Right? Political Battles Over Childcare Legislation, 1946-1971

• In Event: Navigating the Politics of Education in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Abstract

The United States has consistently failed to enact legislation to ensure affordable childcare for working families, which has contributed to a difficult-to-navigate, exorbitantly expensive, and under-resourced patchwork system of formal and informal childcare arrangements for American families. Why has the United States historically refused to enact beneficial childcare policies? Two historic “missed opportunities” for substantive federal legislative action on childcare offer some insight: the defunding of the childcare centers that operated under the Lanham Act, and the presidential veto of the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971. Two political voices emerged alongside each of these “missed opportunities” – House Representative Mary T. Norton and President Richard Nixon – and their distinct yet complementary perspectives on childcare are insightful.

Author

• Kristen Cameron, Southern Illinois University - Carbondale