AHC/WI: The USA retained its universal child day care program?

ComradeHuxley

Donor
“Many thought they were purely a war emergency measure. A few of us had an inkling that perhaps they were a need which was constantly with us, but one that we had neglected to face in the past.”

My Day, September 8, 1945; Eleanor Roosevelt - Eleanor Roosevelt said of the wartime child care centers


I just listened to an interesting NPR Podcast on the history of universal childcare in the USA.

The Lanham Act for the whole USA (wartime)

In 1940 Congress passed the Lanham Act in order to fund public works, including child care, in communities with defense industries. All families in which the mother was involved in the war effort, regardless of income, were eligible for child care for up to six days a week. Parents paid the equivalent of about $10/day in today’s dollars to send their children to one of the 3,000+ centers funded by the Lanham Act, many of which featured the hallmarks of high-quality child care programs: they had low student-teacher ratios, served meals and snacks, and taught children arts and educational enrichment activities. But they didn’t last long, despite the pleas and protestations of many who wanted to keep them open. When the war ended, the Lanham Act was terminated, federal funding for child care dried up, and the majority of programs established during the war shuttered

California (post war)

There was however one exception as discussed in the Podcast by Professor Natalie Fousekis, author of Demanding Child Care: Women's Activism and the Politics of Welfare, 1940-1971, studies women's history. California extended the program post WW II for a while in OTL helping working woman to keep their jobs but then the federal government persuaded the state to shift funding to woman on welfare only destroying the universal solidarity nature of the institution in California as well .

Question/Challenge
What if and to which extend might the program have been retained?

Sources

Commentary: Universal child care was provided during World War II. We need it again during this pandemic — and beyond.
By DANA SUSKIND, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, APR 30, 2020

That Time America Paid For Universal Day Care - THE INDICATOR FROM PLANET MONEY
 

ComradeHuxley

Donor
Bigby said:
Either way, Reagan's gonna find a way to Second Gilded Age-ify it.
Click to expand...

Probably, much more interesting might Nixon's view be. In OTL they actually tried to bring back universal day care under Nixon. But maybe being more of an institutionalist than Reagen he might have kept what would be there in an alternative timeline.

Nixon and the Comprehensive Child Development Act (CDA) of 1971

"Riding on the perceived success of the 1965 Head Start program, established during the war on poverty to provide preschool services for low-income families, the bipartisan Comprehensive Child Development Act (CDA) of 1971 would have established a national public child-care program. These public child-care centers were universally available to all families on a sliding-scale basis. The centers were intended to provide high-quality education alongside nutritional and medical services and would have been administered at the local level. The CDA passed Congress by an overwhelming majority. One of its cosponsors, Sen. Walter Mondale, later recalled that “because the focus was on children ... I assumed this would not be a controversial bill.” However, Nixon vetoed it, surprising even officials within his own administration.
Despite the broad coalition of child-care advocates pitching the CDA as a universal educational intervention for all children, many viewed public provision of direct child-care services as nothing more than a program for the poor — and mainly for families of color. The right wing of the Republican Party balked at the CDA’s language promising access for all children and the implication that white middle-class women would use it to join the workforce. Conservatives viewed the bill as a threat to middle-class family life, overstepping what they saw as the government’s proper role of intervening in the private lives of the poor. This perspective pushed Nixon to veto the CDA despite its broad bipartisan support."

Richard Nixon bears responsibility for the pandemic’s child-care crisis By Anna K. Danziger Halperin - The Washington Post
 
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Falloutfan

I'd say 50-50 chance that by ATL 2022 there would just be universal childcare payments like the Feds already do in OTL but maybe with more broad political support on both sides of the aisle.
 
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