The U.S. Once Had Universal Child Care. We Can Do It Again.
By: Linzy Rosen & Kristen Miller
Universal child care, or federally subsidized child care, is regarded as a radical, deeply partisan issue in the United States. But, it has not always been this way; in fact, it was once considered a necessity to the federal government. Understanding the forgotten legacy of universal child care and uplifting the narratives of working women can help us cut through the current political stalemate and ensure our response to COVID-19 re-opens the economy for every worker. It’s time to make the workforce an equitable place for women, once and for all.
Child Care during World War II?
During World War II, with millions of men deployed, domestic factories and military forces suffered an enormous labor shortage. Six million women joined work outside the home, eventually making up 37% of the American workforce by 1945, compared to 27% just 5 years earlier. Women left their kitchens and nurseries to manufacture airplane parts, uniforms, artillery, and other essential items. But what enabled them to answer the call from Rosie the Riveter? Universal child care.
On June 29, 1943, the U.S. Senate passed the first, and only, national child care program in U.S. history. This program was always meant to be temporary and existed as a means to provide public care for children whose mothers were working on war-related activities. This funding came through the 1941 Defense Public Works law, widely known as the Lanham Act. This law “was designed to assist communities with water, sewer, housing, schools, and other local facilities’ needs related to war and industry growth…the federal government offered grants for child care services to authorized community groups that could demonstrate a war-related need for the service.”
According to the Friends of the National World War II Memorial, “The federal government granted $52 million for child care under this Act from August 1943 through February 1946, which is equal to more than $1 billion today”. The federal subsidy covered two-thirds of the total costs for these child care centers, with parent fees supplying the remainder. These centers were locally planned, but many served school-aged children and even stayed open for 24 hours a day, 6 days a week. Friends of the National World War II Memorial reports that “at its July 1944 peak, 3,102 federally subsidized child care centers, with 130,000 children enrolled, were located in all but one state and in D.C. By the end of the war, between 550,000 and 600,000 children are estimated to have received some care from Lanham Act programs.”
With such an accessible and successful subsidy, working mothers increased by 400% during the wartime. Despite its limitations to solely “war impacted areas”, this was the first time in American history when parents of all incomes could afford to send their children to federally-subsidized child care. According to Friends of the National World War II Memorial, “by late 1944, a mother could send a child of two to five years of age to child care for 50 cents per day, which is about $7 today”. This was also the first time married women workers outnumbered single women workers. This is not true today. Indeed, such progress immediately ended following 1946. Though 75% of women surveyed by the Bureau of Women Workers said they preferred to keep working outside their homes, federal funding of child care ceased once women could be effectively replaced by men.
Turning back the clocks would hardly ever seem productive as we look forward and imagine the world we want to build following the pandemic. In present day, almost 47 percent of U.S. workers are women. According to a New York Times analysis, one in three jobs held by women has been designated as essential and over half of all essential workers in the U.S. are women. America’s women have to work. Yet, they have taken on the greatest child care burden amid the pandemic.
The Lanham program addressed unprecedented needs with an unprecedented solution. Our response to this global pandemic must reflect the same courage and break in the status quo. Government-funded child care in 2020 will not only ensure that women can remain in the workplace, but that communities that have struggled the most with COVID-19 and in accessing child care can have an equitable future.
Who Does Universal Child Care Benefit?
It must be understood, as we discuss child care and working families, that universal child care will not solely benefit women, and not all families include women. However, the role of the caregiver has historically been reserved for women through patriarchal expectations and subsequent economic barriers. In 2019, married heterosexual women, especially with young children, were less likely to be working full time or be employed at all, compared to their husbands. However, male rates of full-time employment remained almost consistent throughout all ages of their children. Thus, women are still significantly burdened with child care, even with another partner to rear alongside them. Our discussions of child care should not only include women but they must center their stories, needs, and experiences, given the fact that such policies, and the absence of them, undoubtedly affect women the greatest.
Universal child care will benefit single parents the most and bring forth greater equity and diversity in the workforce. In 2018, 66% of African American families and 41% of Hispanic families were comprised of single parents, compared to 33% of White families in the U.S. Single parents rely more on child care in order to accommodate their work. Thus, universal child care can be a critical part of supporting equity in the workforce, particularly for minority groups facing the most structural inequity. According to The National Partnership for Women & Families, Black women, Latinx women, and Native American women make between 54 to 62 cents for every dollar a white male makes in the U.S. This pay gap becomes magnified when such workers are the sole contributor to their families. Universal child care can greatly address the disproportionate burden BIPOC families are facing and help single parents, of any income, work longer hours without the concerns of child care costs.
This is an Essential Response to COVID-19
Universal child care is also a necessary response to address the disproportionate social and economic plight Black and Brown communities are facing as a result of the pandemic. The Pew Research Center found that Black and Hispanic Americans have suffered disproportionate death and infection rates from COVID-19 and greater rates of job loss, compared to White people. Existing inequity has only been amplified, making high-quality child care even less affordable. According to Care.com data, child care costs have skyrocketed over the past six years. In present day, the average weekly child care cost for one infant child is $565 for a nanny and $215 for a daycare center. The average family spends over $40 a day on child care today, compared to the $7 a day families spent with the Lanham Act subsidy.
Economic reopening will be impossible without equitable child care policy. This includes in-home child care and public child care facilities. The largest school districts in America have been oscillating between in-person and virtual schooling, and hybrid schedules are rampant. How will single parents afford child care while they work in the myriad jobs that cannot be remote? This issue of balancing work and childcare is not new. But now it’s more obvious than ever.
Working Motherhood Is a Long-Standing Struggle
Even before COVID, the workplace wasn’t designed for working parents, especially working mothers. As a whole, women face a well-documented host of challenges in the workplace, including:
- Lower pay for the same work, better known as the “gender wage gap” (as mentioned above)
- Lower promotion rates, aka the “glass ceiling”
- Fewer opportunities to take on high-visibility work
- Higher rates of sexual harassment and even assault
- Reduced access to mentorship and coaching opportunities
Even today’s office environments are tailored to the physical characteristics of male employees. If you’ve ever wondered why you see women at their desks draped in blankets and sweatshirts, the reason has its roots in the days when only men worked in offices (usually in full suits).
For working mothers, these issues are compounded. For each child a woman has, she loses 4–10% of her earning potential. In contrast, men gain income after becoming fathers. Working fathers are seen as steadfast providers who are dedicated to their careers. Working mothers are considered a liability, unable to “have it all” and likely to put their children over their career.
Women of childbearing age who do not have children (or perhaps even want them) also suffer due to these stereotypes. Managers may be less likely to hire them, thinking they’ll take maternity leave and eventually quit if and when they become pregnant. Although pregnancy employees are protected due the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, that doesn’t mean a current or potential future pregnancy does not affect a woman’s chances at being hired, promoted, or given high-profile work. And pregnancy discrimination lawsuits are notoriously difficult to prove.
Beyond the structural barriers, working parents (and especially mothers) often deal with subtle biases, insensitive comments, and other microaggressions. For example, a colleague might comment on a parent leaving work early to pick a child up from school or attend their child’s game, concert, or play. With work days lasting until 5 or 6 p.m. and school days ending at 2:30 or 3, this becomes a common occurrence. Most families now require two incomes to make ends meet, especially if they are paying for childcare, which is often exorbitantly expensive, costing an average of approximately $10,000 per year. The workplace “default” that one parent works full-time and the other stays home full-time is outdated. And yet, the workplace hasn’t adapted to this reality.
So, while parents are at work, who cares for their children? The answer depends on the children’s age and the parents’ available resources. While school-age children are required to attend school during the day, younger children may stay with relatives, a babysitter, or at a daycare facility.
And all of these options have been dramatically impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.
Universal child care during WW2 has been intentionally forgotten because it challenges a centuries-old status quo.
To address these long-held struggles, proposed legislation seeks to make child care more accessible and a more legitimate form of work. The Center for American Progress estimates that without government help, the COVID-19 pandemic would put 4.5 million child care slots at risk of disappearing. This would be almost half of all the nationally licensed child care slots; each “slot” represents a child missing out on critical social and cognitive developmental opportunities. This is also dangerous because less than one-third of child care centers can survive the closure of one month and over half of child care workers in the U.S. rely on some form of public assistance. A child care bailout is critical for countless workers and children.
Hence, Democratic Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro has proposed the Child Care Is Essential Act. This bill would set aside $50 billion for the child care industry. Two Republican Senators have also called for another bill that would devote $25 billion to protect the child care industry. Keeping these doors open is the bare minimum, however. To re-open the economy and ensure no family is left behind, we need affordable, subsidized national child care.
During one of the most infamous moments in world history, our government understood that child care was essential in protecting the economy and the infrastructure of this country– and they acted upon it with the Lanham Act. Subsidized child care is an integral part of how we can create racial and gender equity in the post-COVID-19 world. Universal child care should be at the forefront as we discuss what this “new normal” will look like. This pandemic has taught us that in the darkest times, courage and bravery answer the calls for justice. I just hope our government has learned the lesson, too.
This article was co-authored by Linzy Rosen and Kristen Miller during the WAVE BUILT BY GIRLS mentorship session. Linzy is a junior at Colby College fascinated by the intersections of gender and economic justice. Kristen is a passionate writer and a fierce working mother. To learn more about BUILT BY GIRLS and the WAVE program check out: https://www.builtbygirls.com/about-wave
