American and British Child Care Policy, 1965-2004
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Education or Welfare? American and British Child Care Policy, 1965-2004 Anna K. Danziger Halperin Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 © 2018 Anna K. Danziger Halperin All rights reserved ABSTRACT Education or Welfare? American and British Child Care Policy, 1965-2004 Anna K. Danziger Halperin The care and education of pre-school children presents a perfect storm of conflicts among the needs of women, children, and states, particularly in societies that maintain a sharp barrier between the private and public spheres such as the United States and Britain. American and British policymakers attempted to address these tensions in the early 1970s by proposing universal child care programs. In the U.S., the Comprehensive Child Development Act (CDA) of 1971 passed both the House and Senate by overwhelming majorities but was vetoed by President Richard Nixon. Going further than any proposal before or since to establish a national public child care program, it would have made public child care centers universally available on a sliding-scale basis: free for children of the poor but available for a fee to middle and upper class children. The British Department of Education and Science, led by Secretary Margaret Thatcher, published a White Paper in 1972 calling for nursery expansion, but it was never fully implemented. It proposed a dramatic expansion of public nursery education, so that it might be available within a decade to all families with three and four year old children who chose to utilize it, with funds being made available first to local areas designated as most in need. My dissertation presents an in-depth account of the political bargaining that occurred during this period in both countries, and addresses the factors that contributed to the failure of these universal child care proposals. Although neither child care program was implemented (or fully implemented, in the British case), the proposals raise important questions about the relationship between the state and the family. It also analyzes the aftermath of these policies’ failure through to the end of Thatcher and Reagan administrations. It then turns to the mid-1990s which represent a key divergence in the two nations’ paths, as Britain returned to its earlier nursery education initiatives for all children and the United States further entrenched its reliance on the private market for the provision of care. The passage in 1997 of the British National Child Care Strategy, a central component of New Labour’s War on Child Poverty, included a free and universal preschool provision for all three and four year old children. In the U.S., by contrast, the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act expanded child care subsidies only for eligible low income children below the age of five, thus continuing the American reliance on the free market to provide this necessary service for most families. I argue that conflicting visions of child care as an educational intervention versus a welfare service—and as a universal provision benefitting all children and families versus a means-tested program targeted to low-income families—explain the differences between these two countries’ policy developments in the 1990s. Specifically, my dissertation examines how British and American conceptions of motherhood and child-rearing compare, and how policymakers viewed the role of the state in intervening with parental responsibilities. In the United States, Republicans balked at the idea of public child care provision for the nonpoor, yet British politicians of both major parties supported universal public interventions in the early years at various points across the period. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii INTRODUCTION 1 CHILD CARE: EDUCATION OR WELFARE? CHAPTER ONE 37 CHILD DEVELOPMENT EXPERTS AND THE ORIGINS OF PROPOSALS FOR EARLY EDUCATION INTERVENTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES AND BRITAIN CHAPTER TWO 69 THE COMPREHENSIVE CHILD DEVELOPMENT ACT OF 1971: EDUCATION OR WELFARE? CHAPTER THREE 99 “CINDERELLA OF THE EDUCATION SYSTEM:” MARGARET THATCHER’S PLAN FOR NURSERY EXPANSIONS CHAPTER FOUR 136 DISSONANCE AND SYMMETRY: BRITISH AND AMERICAN POLICY LANDSCAPES AFTER UNIVERSAL CHILD CARE PROPOSALS FAIL CHAPTER FIVE 168 DIVERGENCE EPILOGUE 200 CHILD CARE: EDUCATION AND WELFARE BIBLIOGRAPHY 219 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to the support of research grants from the Institute for Historical Research, the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, the Alumnae Association of Barnard College, and the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. My interest in child care policy was first peaked during my fellowship with the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and I thank Barbara Gault for first introducing me to how integral the issue is to women’s and families’ economic security. My subsequent employment with the Urban Institute cemented my focus and sparked many of the research questions that this dissertation attempts to answer. I am deeply indebted to the lessons I learned from studies directed by Ajay Chaudry, Gina Adams, Shelley Waters-Boots, Monica Rohacek, and Karin Martinson. Those lessons were deepened over casual but passionate conversations during field site visits and over happy hours with my colleagues Juan Pedroza, Michel Grosz, Molly Hawkins, Alex Stancyk, and Katie Mathews. Columbia University has been my intellectual home for over a decade. My love for history became a vocational call during my undergraduate studies at Barnard, and I credit my senior thesis advisor, Carl Wennerlind, as well as Matt Connelly, for their advice and instruction. Graduate school brought me more mentors: I’ve often described Susan Pedersen and Alice Kessler-Harris as a dream team of advisors. Guy Ortolano, Chris Brown, Matt Connelly, Nara Milanich, Jane Waldfogel, and Ira Katznelson have also provided unparalleled guidance and training over my graduate studies. Graduate school friendships are such a special combination of intellectual exchange and emotional support. I can’t imagine what my experience would have been like without Nicole ii Longré, Pete Walker, Melissa Morris, Nick Juravich, Keith Orejel and Laura Leuenberger, Suzanne Kahn, and Alma Igra along the way. Amy Passiak has seen me through as well. This dissertation benefitted in inestimable ways from being workshopped and presented in various forums. I am so grateful for the participants of the Columbia Modern British Studies seminar, the New York-Columbia Training Collaboration, the Social Justice After the Welfare State workshop, the Heyman Center Fellows seminar, the Early Career Workshop at the New York Historical Society’s Center for Women’s History, the 2013 NordWel and REASSESS International Summer School in Iceland, and the Dissertation Support Group. I am also indebted to the audiences and commenters of several panels of the Social Science History Association and the Graduate Student Conference in Childhood Studies at Rutgers University-Camden. For opening up their homes during my research trips, I owe the deepest gratitude to Bill Parker and Rosemary Toppin in London, Ben Ernstoff in Boston, and Deana Halperin in DC. I will never be able to thank my parents, Sandy and Sheldon Danziger, enough for their unconditional love and support. Evan Halperin has been my rock. There’s a cliché that writing a dissertation is like giving labor. It isn’t comparable in the least, except that both require some physical exertion and inestimable emotional stamina. The experience of bearing and raising my children, Rosalie and Eleanor, however, has deepened my scholarship and above all my appreciation for the weight of the decisions made by the historical actors whose story I tell. iii This dissertation is dedicated to the Bank Street Family Center. The depth of non-maternal attachment my children have felt for Robin Thomas, Michael Amaral, Liz Ocampo, Kayla Zionts, Cristina Mendonca, and Quiana Jackson would shock John Bowlby. iv INTRODUCTION Child Care: Education or Welfare? In the fall of 1971, with the promise of universal, public child care on the horizon, one Kentucky woman, Mrs. Carolyn M. Sears, was moved to write to one of the bill’s champions, New York Representative Bella Abzug, to show her support even though she was not one of her constituents. She wrote, “I am admittedly not a ‘welfare’ mother or a ‘Fem libber,’ but I am a mother who can see for myself the need for the building and funding of day-care centers on a massive scale. I am an intelligent, skilled worker who cannot find day-care which does not gobble up my salary, and I earn an average wage; what on earth does a woman less skilled than I do to meet the needs of employment?”1 Mrs. Sears saw her identity as setting her apart from both the low-income mothers who typically received government benefits, and from a new wave of women activists calling for a reassessment of gender norms and familial roles. Yet, she too asserted a need for public child care so that she could work outside the home and support her family financially. Child care can be defined in a myriad of ways, and Mrs. Sears’ letter reveals how its framing reveals the distinct purposes that child care can serve. She saw child care alternatively as a welfare service for low-income parents, a work support for higher income families, and a necessary provision for women’s liberation. In addition, child care can also be defined in child- centric terms, as an educational intervention designed to promote optimal social, cognitive, and behavioral development. In the decades since Mrs. Sears posted her letter, these purposes have been pitted against one another, inhibiting comprehensive solutions. The struggle parents face 1 Columbia University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Bella Abzug Papers [Hereafter Abzug], Box 138, Child Care Correspondence 1970-1971, Letter to Abzug September 17, 1971.