Government funding of childcare is almost as popular in the United States as Tina Turner. A bipartisan majority of Americans believe that every child (and every parent), regardless of income, deserves high-quality preschool education. A whole swath of liberals have argued that the economy would benefit from greater numbers of mothers in the workforce, and by improving the employability of millions of children in the future.
They’re right. The proof? It’s already been done.
In 1942, the US government passed the Lanham Act. The law was designed to assist communities with water, housing, schools, and other local needs connected to industry expansion during the World War II war effort. One of those provisions was a universal childcare plan for any community that proved they had absent fathers and working mothers — the only instance in American history of a federally administered program that served children regardless of family income.
The centers were required to meet very high standards. The teachers were well-trained and provided fully funded university-level education. They were well-compensated. The number of children per teacher was limited to ten, a number that is lower than the limit in many states today. Centers were clean. They had a clinic with a nurse and doctor for daily checkups before children entered the space. They offered meals. Center staff bought a mother’s grocery list while she worked to pick up at the end of the day. Center cafeteria workers prepared dinner for mothers to take home at night.
The cost: around $3–4 a week ($50–60 in today’s money), or half the actual cost per child. The rest was covered by the government, which overall spent $1 billion on the program.
At its peak, the Lanham Act provided for over 635 communities in every state but New Mexico, caring for over half a million children. And while some centers in this pre–Civil Rights Movement era inexcusably provided for white families only, some were desegregated, and an additional 269 centers accommodated black families only. In contrast to most other well-paid sectors at the time, women of color were hired as well.
The program was discontinued in 1946 after only three years. The government argued that with the end of the war, women would leave the workforce and resume their traditional roles. They were wrong: women wanted (or needed) to stay working, and they required childcare to do so. The program was extended a full year after the war ended because of its popularity. As the New York Times reported at the time, protests across the country continued well into 1947 to try to save it. In some places, multiracial grassroots mobilizations and unions applied pressure and won some federal support for childcare, but failed to win a universal policy.