The American Government Once Offered Widely Affordable Child Care … 77 Years Ago

Enlarge this image

Nicole Xu for NPR

Enlarge this image

Rachael Shannon with her children JoJo and Nora in Filderstadt, Germany, in 2017. The Shannons moved back to the U.S. the following year due to a job change.

Joseph Shannon Photography

hide caption

toggle caption

Joseph Shannon Photography

Enlarge this image

The scene in 1943 at a war workers’ nursery in Oakland, Calif., where children were served cod liver oil and tomato juice in the morning, a nourishing lunch midday, and milk and crackers in the afternoon.

Ann Rosener/Library of Congress

hide caption

toggle caption

Ann Rosener/Library of Congress

Stretched: Working Parents’ Juggling Act
How Politics Killed Universal Child Care In The 1970s

Till today, the U.S. does not heavily subsidize child care, and the subsidies that do exist reach only 1 in 6 eligible children. Most parents in the U.S. shoulder the high costs of child care on their own, according to analysis from the Center for American Progress.

As a result, parents in the U.S. pay too much, and child care workers earn too little, says Ashley Williams, a senior policy analyst with the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former preschool teacher herself.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, child care workers earn a median wage of $11.65 per hour. Their jobs, which are taxing in normal times, are now more stressful than ever, putting strain on a workforce that is almost exclusively women and 40% people of color.

The pandemic has made clear the need for more investment in the system, Williams says. «Parents need somewhere for their children to be safe and cared for so that they can engage in the economy.»

The Coronavirus Crisis
Stuck-At-Home Moms: The Pandemic’s Devastating Toll On Women

But there is one employer in the U.S. that does make child care viable for both families and workers: the military.

The Defense Department’s Child Development Program has its origins in the end of the draft. The military was no longer composed of single men in barracks. A volunteer force meant there were now wives and children to consider.

«There was a saying in the early days — you recruit the soldier, but you retain the family,» says M.A. Lucas, an early childhood educator who was tapped in 1980 to build a formal child care system for the U.S. Army.

Even with the experience of World War II, it was not an easy sell. For the first couple of years, she avoided talking about children. «It didn’t mean we weren’t thinking about children, but we didn’t talk about children. We talked about the impact of the lack of child care on the military force,» says Lucas, who was a military spouse herself.

She focused on readiness, and through anonymous surveys, demonstrated the immense need.

Enough Already: How The Pandemic Is Breaking Women
‘My Family Needs Me’: Latinas Drop Out Of Workforce At Alarming Rates

«I asked soldiers at all levels, officers and enlisted, if they lost time from the job because of a lack of child care,» she says. «It was an astounding revelation to find the high number of folks that admitted to it.» Twenty percent of the workforce reported losing duty time.

Lucas went to work, guided by a mission statement that remains largely unchanged today: To reduce the conflict between parental responsibilities and the military mission. She spent 31 years on the project.

Under Lucas’s leadership, the Army built day cares on bases for easy pickup and drop-off and kept them open for long hours to accommodate shifts. Like other jobs in the military, there was a training regimen for caregivers, and they were paid competitive wages. Fees were charged on a sliding scale to make the care affordable.

But running child care in this manner is costly. The Department of Defense spends more than $1 billion a year on child care.

Enough Already: How The Pandemic Is Breaking Women
‘Incredibly Scary’: Single Moms Fear Falling Through Holes In Pandemic Safety Net

«It shows that the federal government can do it when it wants to,» says historian Michel. But despite the proof of concept, Americans remain allergic to the idea of funding such programs outside of times of need.

«Maybe Congress and the government rises to the occasion in an emergency, but does it last afterward? That’s always the problem,» Michel says.

Currently, a bill that would greatly expand federal child care subsidies sits idle. The fate of the Child Care for Working Families Act will likely be determined in the next Congress.

• coronavirus pandemic
• military families
• child care
• day care