Day care debate needs historical perspective

March 10, 1998

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Jamie Lawson Reeves, (615) 322-2706
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Day care debate needs historical perspective, Vanderbilt professor says

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- President Clinton's proposal to spend $21.7 billion over

five years to make child care affordable is a step in the right direction, but a Vanderbilt University historian says the public and policymakers need to do more to build a good system of child care.

"Child care in America shouldn't just be expanded, it should also be improved," said Elizabeth Rose, assistant professor of history and author of a forthcoming book from Oxford University Press on the history of child care in America. "Clinton's plan modifies the tax code to help individual parents, but doesn't directly improve the quality of day care by addressing standards, training, or compensation for day care workers. We've inherited a fragmented system of day care from previous generations," Rose

said, "and we need to fully reconstruct it before it can meet today's needs."

While Clinton's proposal has some weaknesses, some Republicans prefer not to use public funds to support day care at all. A Republican proposal offered as an alternative to Clinton's plan would instead provide a tax credit for women who stay at home with their children. "This says to me that we are still not sure about the whole concept of mothers working," Rose said. "Why are some mothers being encouraged to stay at home with their children while women on welfare are being compelled to go out to work? Our confusion about this issue goes back to debates that people were

having about poor mothers, welfare, and day care in the 1910s."

Public policy on day care would benefit from knowing more about its history, Rose suggested. Child care emerged at the turn of the century as a charitable function coordinated by wealthy women for poor, mainly immigrant, mothers. Today as most women are working, child care has become more legitimate across all socioeconomic systems. Another evolving aspect is that child care now must be educational - beneficial for both mothers and children.

Rose's forthcoming book, "A Mother's Job: The History of Day Care: 1890-1960," is based on her nationally recognized 1994 dissertation which was honored with the Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians. Rose, who teaches the course "Motherhood in Historical Perspective," used the city of Philadelphia as a case study for the dissertation and book.

The establishment of day cares was very much a woman's cause at the turn of the century, Rose said. Women from wealthy, privileged backgrounds saw themselves as "rescuing" children who were left alone while their mothers worked.

The government became involved in the 1930s as the Works Progress [note] Administration set up nursery schools as part of its employment program. The schools provided jobs for teachers and food and medical care for children. Federal involvement increased again during World War II, when day care centers were established around the country to encourage women to take jobs in defense plants. With the end of the war,

however, most of these centers were shut down.

Rose's research evolved from an interest in college of Jewish immigrant women. She knew she had found a wealth of information when she discovered the Philadelphia day nursery collection compiled by case workers. "The collection was not just reflecting what child care policies were in place, but the social history of child care and how particular mothers dealt with working and raising their children."

The collection materials come from social workers assigned to counsel the families of children attending day nurseries. From these records and archival material, it is clear that the social workers viewed their work as strictly charity for the working poor, Rose said. They did not support the concept of mothers working outside the home and as a result were very strict about whom they would accept - limiting the day nurseries to children of widows and women who had been deserted or whose whose husbands were incapacitated.

"Today, day care is part of most American families," said Rose, "but we still have a long way to go before it is well funded and embraced."

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