During World War II, American women entered the workforce in
unprecedented numbers, and many of them relied on federally funded
child care programs. At the end of the war, working mothers
vigorously protested the termination of child care subsidies. In
Citizen, Mother, Worker, Emilie Stoltzfus traces grassroots
activism and national and local policy debates concerning public
funding of children's day care in the two decades after the end of
World War II.
Using events in Cleveland, Ohio; Washington, D.C.; and the state of
California, Stoltzfus identifies a prevailing belief among postwar
policymakers that women could best serve the nation as homemakers.
Although federal funding was briefly extended after the end of the
war, grassroots campaigns for subsidized day care in Cleveland and
Washington met with only limited success. In California, however,
mothers asserted their importance to the state's economy as
"productive citizens" and won a permanent, state-funded child care
program. In addition, by the 1960s, federal child care funding
gained new life as an alternative to cash aid for poor single
mothers.
These debates about the public's stake in what many viewed as a
private matter help illuminate America's changing social,
political, and fiscal priorities, as well as the meaning of female
citizenship in the postwar period.