Description
Book SynopsisAs a deeply researched history,
Working Mothers and the Child Care Dilemma reveals how, for over 100 years, a persistent political uneasiness with the role of mothers in the workforce has contributed to the lack of affordable, quality child care services in British Columbia.
Trade ReviewReading Pasolli’s extensively documented book is a sobering exploration of twentieth and twenty-first century policies guided by familiar rhetoric about why mothers partnered with male breadwinners should not work and why mothers without breadwinners should work (in low-wage jobs) to redeem themselves … In the end, Pasolli’s history of childcare policy in British Columbia tells us that out-of-home childcare is a radical claim that requires a paradigmatic shift in thinking about working mothers and the ‘‘contested nature of social citizenship.’’
-- Rachel Langford, Ryerson University * Pacific Historical Review *
Much more than connecting the chronological dots (which is itself an important achievement), Pasolli provides an analytical explanation for the rather discouraging continuities that shaped decades of public debate and marginalized the childcare and employment needs of women and families … A smart book on an issue we continue to wrestle with, and the sole monograph on the topic from a historian’s perspective, it will find its way on to many bookshelves.
-- Esyllt W. Jones, University of Manitoba * BC Studies *
To assemble this impeccable book, Lisa Pasolli has formulated impressive questions … Readers … will be interested to discover how contemporary debates over the importance of early education, and over the educational disadvantages of parents and workers who bore the consequences of the deficiencies of child care, became part and parcel of
The Child Care Dilemma. -- Dominique Marshall, Carleton University * Historical Studies in Education *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1 “A proper independent spirit”: The Vancouver City Crèche, 1909–20
2 “Self help is to be encouraged to the fullest extent”: Working Mothers and the State in the Interwar Years
3 “It takes real mothers and real homes to make real children”: Child Care Debates during and after the Second World War
4 “The working mother is here to stay”: The Making of Provincial Child Care Policy in the 1960s
5 “Talkin’ Day Care Blues”: Feminist Child Care Battles in the 1960s and 1970s
6 “The feeling lingers that day care just isn’t nice”: Provincial and National Child Care Politics since the Mid-1970s
Conclusion
Notes; Bibliography; Index
