Historian Studies Women's
Activism and Child Care
Scholar's upcoming book focuses on advocacy
for child care services.
September 15, 2005
By Valerie Orleans
During World War II, the federal government
supported day care services for any mother who worked, regardless
of income levels. The reason was obvious —
women were needed to work to support war efforts. Within weeks
of Japan’s surrender, however, President Harry Truman
announced plans to close the federally funded centers. Women
in California rose up in protest.
“Were it not for this effort, the ideal
of universal, education-based child care would have vanished
from the political landscape in the years following World
War II,” said Natalie
Fousekis, assistant professor of history and associate
director of the Center
for Oral and Public History.
Fousekis recently received a yearlong American
Council of Learned Societies’ fellowship that will enable
her to finish her book, “Fighting for Our Children:
Women’s Activism, the Battle Over Child Care and the
Politics of Welfare, 1940-71.”
“In the early ’90s when I was working
in Washington, D.C., as a legislative correspondent for [Senator]
Barbara Boxer, I wanted to research and write my dissertation
on an issue that mattered to women. Of course, the topic of
child care came up,” she explained. “Yet, as a
historian, I didn’t see much advocacy on this issue
coming from the modern women’s movement. I was curious
about that. I thought this would be an issue that would unite
all classes of women.”
This was in contrast to what she discovered
happened in the ’40s, when the federal government tried
to close its child-care centers.
“During the war, there were 6.5 million
women in the work force — many of these women were based
in California, working in the shipyards and other war-related
industries. In fact, about a quarter of the federally funded,
child-care centers established were in California.
“What was great about the child-care
centers was that working women didn’t have to worry
about their children,” she continued. “The centers
were staffed by teachers and educators, and the care provided
was excellent. The fact was, the kids were doing great.
“So when the President announced that
the centers would be closing, many of them rose up to organize
and created a movement to save the federal funding.”
Mothers inundated government officials with
letters urging them to keep the centers open. They wrote about
their families and the hardships they would face if they couldn’t
return to work. Working and placing their children in these
centers allowed women to support their families without the
stigma of being on public assistance.
“Remember, some of these mothers were
now widows and didn’t have husbands returning home to
jobs,” Fousekis said. “Others had husbands who
were disabled. And finally, there were those who enjoyed working
outside the home and wanted to continue.”
The letters that these women wrote became the
centerpiece of Fousekis’s research.
“What is most interesting is when the
women describe what having adequate child care means to them,”
Fousekis explained. “They often decided to become politically
active because, at the time, there was no one else to represent
them.”
The common perception, when you look at the
history of the women’s movement, is that the suffrage
movement was organized to give women the right to vote, said
Fousekis. Once that happened, as the traditional story goes,
the movement basically disappeared. Of course, it didn’t
disappear — many women were politically active, but
mostly at the grass roots level, and overlooked by scholars
until recently, she added.
“Despite what many believe, the ’50s
weren’t a time when all women were like June Cleaver,”
she continued. “Many women had to work, and became politically
active despite being far removed from the centers of power.”
Based on the letters and protests, California
didn’t close all the centers, but they did scale back.
Because of a maximum income qualification, only single mothers
and fathers qualified to use them.
In the 1960s as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s
“War on Poverty,” the Head Start Program began
and the federal government began providing additional funds
for child care.
“Again, this was directed to the poor,
not necessarily the working poor,” Fousekis said. “The
state ended up working with the federal government and by
1972 California’s children’s centers cared for
24,000 children; 80 percent of these were children of single
mothers. However, you had to be on welfare, or just coming
off welfare, to qualify.”
In 1971, Congress established the Comprehensive
Child Development Act — a move that would have provided
federally funded child care to every American on a sliding
scale. President Richard Nixon vetoed it.
“But the need was there so, eventually,
the federal government had to step in,” Fousekis said.
“Over the years, more and more has been done to provide
good child care to our nation’s children, but it was
the effort of California’s mothers and teachers that
saved it after World War II.”
Even today, Fousekis believes that the federal
government hasn’t done nearly enough to provide for
good child care.
“I still don’t think we make affordable,
quality child care a priority,” said Fousekis. “But
these women saved public child care at a time when it existed
nowhere else.”
The intensity of the letters that these mothers
wrote in the ’40s resonated with Fousekis. “As
a historian, I like to view this as a time in which women
began to discover their influence on the political process.
When I interview some of the women who wrote letters or organized,
they’ll indicate that they didn’t play much of
a role. But, upon further questioning, you’ll find they
put in countless hours. Some mothers would organize letter-writing
parties at their homes. The mothers would be writing and planning
and coordinating demonstrations while their children were
asleep in the next room.”
Natalie Fousekis is interested in speaking
to anyone who used these child-care centers for their children
or taught in them. She can be reached at nfousekis@fullerton.edu.
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