Education or Welfare? American and British Child Care Policy, 1965-2004

Anna Klein 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...