Natalie Fousekis with her first book Caption: Natalie M. Fousekis holds her first book, “Demanding Child Care.” Photos by Karen TapiaDownload Photo

University Initiative: Bringing the Past to Life

Demanding Child Care

Historian Natalie Fousekis’ First Book Traces Women’s Activism and the Politics of Welfare

By Mimi Ko Cruz

Natalie M. Fousekis, a single working mom, knows firsthand about child care issues facing employed parents.

About the Author

Natalie M. Fousekis
Associate Professor of History and Director
of the university's Center for Oral and
Public History

City of residence: Long Beach

Family: 2-year-old son, Henry, who turns
3 on Sept. 11

Education: Ph.D. U.S. history, 2000, and
M.A. U.S. history, 2004, both from the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
B.A. history from Whitman College in Walla
Walla, Wash., 1990

Year joined CSUF faculty: 2002

Fun fact: “I live across the street from one
of the original Lanham Act child care
centers that I feature in my book (these
were the government-sponsored child
care centers established during World
War II and funded by the federal
government to serve the children
of women working in war-related
industries).”

Favorite historical figure: Alice Paul,
one of the leading figures responsible
for the passage of the 19th Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution.

Favorite book: “Crossing to Safety,”
by Wallace Stegner

Favorite quote: “Life is not measured
by the number of breaths we take, but
by the moments that take our breath
away.” — Maya Angelou

Hobbies: running, swimming, hiking
and yoga

“Child care is critical to the economic survival of most American families,” said the associate professor of history and director of Cal State Fullerton’s Center for Oral and Public History. “More than 50 percent of women with young children are in the workforce today, which means the majority of families need quality child care for their children. As most working parents know, with quality child care comes peace of mind. If we do not provide affordable, quality child care for low- to moderate-income families, then those families are at risk of losing their employment or putting their children at risk by leaving them in unsafe conditions.”

Fousekis has been researching the history of child care in America for the past 14 years. Through oral history interviews she conducted with mothers who fought for child care legislation, the historian has written “Demanding Child Care: Women's Activism and the Politics of Welfare, 1940-1971” (University of Illinois Press, 2011), her first book.

In it, Fousekis details how grassroots campaigns were successful in keeping child care services that were created during World War II when women stepped into jobs vacated by men in the armed forces.

The book tells about the federal government establishing public child care centers in local communities during wartime. But when the war ended, the government announced plans to withdraw funding and terminate the child care services. As the services vanished in states throughout the country, women in California protested and successfully lobbied to keep their centers open.

Fousekis analyzes the informal networks of cross-class and cross-race reformers, policymakers and educators, as well as the changing alliances among these groups over three decades.

“During the early stages of the child care movement, feminists, Communists and labor activists banded together, only to have these alliances dissolve by the 1950s as the movement welcomed new leadership composed of working-class mothers and early childhood educators,” the author said. “In the 1960s, when federal policymakers earmarked childcare funds for children of women on welfare and children described as culturally deprived, they expanded child care services available to these groups but eventually eliminated public child care for the working poor.”

Gordon Morris Bakken, professor of history, a prolific author and one of Fousekis’ colleagues at CSUF, called her book and her research “significant not only because it demonstrates the political power of organized women promoting an aspect of social welfare, but also why California is unique in its continuing support of this program for working women.”

Though the struggle, financial and political, was daunting, Bakken said, “California women stood firmly against limitations on women and work buoyed by the fact that the 1879 California Constitution specifically prohibits employment discrimination against women. Fousekis adds another chapter to the evolving history of women and work in America.”

Fousekis recently answered the following questions.

Q: Why did you write “Demanding Child Care?”

“I wrote this book for two reasons. First, I was interested in looking at child care because affordable, quality child care is key to women’s equality in the workplace and the key to the survival of most low-income families. Second, I wanted to understand how a group of women with little power and little political experience were able to convince the state of California to provide them with state-sponsored, education-based child care at a time when no other state in the nation was willing to do so.”

Q: What is your own experience with this issue?

“In the fall of 2008, I became a single mother. Juggling work and motherhood has given me even greater respect for the working mothers, in my book, who burned vacation time to lobby the Legislature, stayed up late stuffing envelopes and met after work to discuss their organizing strategy. I feel lucky that I was able to afford having one-on-one care for my son for his first two years of life. He's now at the Early Childhood Education Center at the Alpert Jewish Community Center in Long Beach.”

Q: What’s so important about what you learned from your research?

“This book traces a moment in history when citizens with little power and political experience influenced the political process by their coordinated efforts and by speaking out in mass.I saw why affordable quality child care is the key to the economic survival of most American families. Finally, state-funded child care programs have served many of California’s families, stretching back to World War II and, these programs have meant the economic survival of low-income families, allowing them to work and take good care of their children.”

Q: How does California’s child care program serve families today?

“Recent budget cuts in California will drastically reduce the number of children the state can serve. The state's child care program, until 2009, provided safe and affordable child care for 300,000 low- and moderate-income families with 200,000 children on the waiting list. According to the California Budget Project, recent cuts to state child care services are reported to force 35,000 children to lose access to these services. Another 6,000 plus will lose access to child care because their income will be above the new level to qualify for the state child care program.”

Q: What do you hope readers will get from your book?

“I hope they will realize that providing affordable, quality child care to low- and moderate-income families is something the government should do for its citizens. I also hope that they will see that, as citizens, we need to realize our stake in the political process. This is a story about the promise of American democracy and what can happen when ordinary citizens voice their concerns.”

Sept. 6, 2011

Top of Story

An Excerpt from ‘Demanding Child Care: Women's Activism and the Politics of Welfare, 1940-1971’

By Natalie M. Fousekis

This is a story about improved lives and better opportunities for California's working poor. Glenda Gilmore argues that historians too often focus on the outcome of a struggle, forgetting that “what is past to them was future to their subjects. Too often what they lose in the telling is what made their subjects’ lives worth living: hope.” State-sponsored child care provided hope for working mothers, early childhood educators, and teachers in California from the 1940s to the 1970s. From the perspective of the twenty-first century, the services they won appear paltry because they were available to only a small number of California's families. Yet, to early childhood educators and California's working mothers, their initial victories seemed to portend a better future. They presented working mothers with a “real opportunity” to become independent wage-earners, elevating their families’ income and status in the community. For California's nursery educators, the state centers represented the seeds from which a universal state-sponsored preschool program could grow. If they had been able to realize their vision, education-based care would have become available to all.

The passage of the Lanham Act during World War II marked the first and only time in U.S. history that the federal government supported child care for any mother who worked, regardless of her income level. This federal program, however, was short-lived. When Harry Truman announced his plan to close the centers only weeks after Japan's surrender, women in California rose up in protest. Together, a cross-class and cross-race coalition of mothers and educators, initially aided by labor unionists, mainstream women’s organizations, New Deal liberals, and left feminists, helped make California the only state to convert wartime centers into a permanent program. Were it not for the coalition's efforts, the ideal of universal, education-based care would have vanished from the political landscape after World War II.

What began in a simple desire to preserve a child care program turned into twenty-five plus years of attending community meetings, testifying at hearings, organizing letter-writing campaigns and petition drives, and lobbying legislators at the state capital. As they set out to convince the state of their child care needs, mothers and educators were drawn into the world of politics and policymaking. Over time an ad hoc, emergency-inspired organization coalesced into a cadre of politically savvy activists who put firm and consistent pressure on the government.

They did so in the face of widespread resistance to universal public child care provisions, which many saw as an unwarranted intervention into family matters. Their success suggests what a coalition of dedicated women — in this case mothers, teachers, and early childhood educators — can do. Motivated by their desire to secure education-based care for California’s working families, activists obtained publicly funded child care at a time when it existed only on a small scale elsewhere.

The struggle for these services introduced an entirely new group of women to politics and taught them how to assert authority in the public realm. For some, becoming politically active marked a sea of change in their identities as citizens and mothers. While operating under the constraints of the Cold War, the women marshaled arguments for child care based on traditional values, in part out of genuine concern as mothers and in part to gain credibility in a hostile political environment. They described independent working mothers’ need for child care as synonymous with the “greater good of society” and countered conservative resistance to maternal employment by arguing that child care allowed them to remain self-sufficient and stay off welfare. At the center of their political actions, however, were the radical notions that women could be workers and mothers and live independently from men and that the state should support them in this endeavor. Both their political activism and their arguments for child care had the potential to transform American society.

The women featured in this story expanded the possibility of democratic action well beyond the confines of the halls and hearing rooms of the state capitol. Their political action and claims for child care played a critical role in shaping public debate. Their activism forced the government to respond to their basic needs as mothers and as workers. In 1957, the immediate result was a permanent child care program for some of California’s working families. Beyond that, they launched a child care movement that continues to this day.

. . . The politicization of the working-class mothers who depended on California's centers stands at the heart of this story. They took their first political steps in the name of their socially valued roles as mothers. Drawing on the “embedded identities” that “informed their routine social lives,” they demanded safe care of good quality for their children. In doing so, they could be good mothers, fulfilling their responsibilities to their children while working to support their families. Over time, their demands began to reflect a collective awareness of the needs of other mothers in their centers, their cities, and throughout the nation. These women operated under the assumption that it was the responsibility of legislators and the governor to respond to their shared needs. They saw government-supported care as a collective means of enabling mothers to provide for their families.

The women’s organizations that spearheaded the battle contributed not only to the building of the modern welfare state but also to the expansion of American democracy. Parents’ associations and nursery school associations were vital in securing a state-sponsored child care system. Their actions influenced political leaders and helped maintain public child care at a time when programs disappeared completely in most parts of the country. These groups encouraged members to inform themselves and gave them tools with which to fight for political change. As a result, rank-and-file women learned the skills and values fundamental to sustaining effective participation in civic life. The struggle of women in California for child care demands that historians develop a more expansive view of democratic participation and continue to widen the definition of politics to include the organizing and advocacy of ordinary women. The active participation of these women, very few of whom ever became well known, exemplifies the importance of including parents’ voices in current debates and discussions over public child care provisions.

. . . In the greatest tragedy of this story, despite the diverse groups advocating for child care and a government focused on programs for the poor, the California public welfare vision did not become the model for the nation. Rather, its universe, education-based program was subsumed under a poorly funded and stigmatized federal welfare program.

“Demanding Child Care” can be read as a cautionary tale about the dangers of even the most well-meaning top-down social welfare reforms. But this is also a story about the promise of democracy, for it demonstrates what can happen when ordinary people make their voices heard in public policy debates. At a time when more than 50 percent of women with young children are in the workforce and the need for child care is more pressing than ever, it is important to heed the voices of California's child care movement and continue pushing their demands for affordable, quality care.

Copyright 2011 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the University of Illinois Press. This material may not be published, reprinted, distributed in any way or reposted without the written permission of the copyright holder.

California State University, Fullerton