Copy
View this email in your browser

NEWSLETTER | Dec. 1, 2022
 

THIS WEEK A time when the government supported families with child care subsidies. Plus guideposts to the Texas Rangers, a highly sought-after word search and other surprises from history.
LENS ON HISTORY
SEPT. 15, 1942 A child care center opened in New Britain, Conn., for the children of mothers employed in war-related industries.  (Photo: Library of Congress)

During WW II, the U.S. Government Was Sometimes the Sitter

By CJ  WALKER | Retro Report

As millions of Americans return to work following the Covid shutdown, a shortage of caregivers is sending the cost of childcare soaring. That has put many parents, particularly women, in an economic bind. Congress has failed to help: Universal pre-kindergarten, paid family leave and an expanded child tax credit were all cut from the Inflation Reduction Act.

It wasn’t always this way. For a brief time during World War II, government subsidies for childcare were available to women working for the war effort. Coverage included medical care, enrichment activities, meals and snacks, at a cost of less than $10 a day per child in today’s dollars, according to government estimates.

The benefits came from the Lanham Act of 1940, legislation that provided federal grants for water supply, sewers, housing and schools in areas where many women were employed in wartime industries. Nearly six million women had entered the workforce, sending the number of working women to 19 million in 1944 from 13 million in 1940. Many filed into factories to build planes, tanks, ships and munitions, or went to work in construction and on farms.

For the first time in U.S. history, married women, the largest segment of the nation’s female population at the time, outnumbered single women in the workforce, according to a congressional research report. The mothers among those married women needed someone to watch their children.

Under the Lanham Act, federal grants to child care centers from 1943 to early 1946 totaled $52 million. An estimated 500,000 children were enrolled. According to a study that compared long-term outcomes for children enrolled in or eligible for Lanham daycare centers to a group born after the centers closed, the Lanham group had higher rates of graduation, employment and marriage. Children from low-income families especially benefited, the study found.

Getting the child care provisions of the Lanham Act passed wasn’t straightforward. It wasn’t until the number of women in the wartime workforce began to drop, with employers citing lack of childcare as the cause, that political resistance gave way in 1943.  As soon as the war was over the funds were cut, ending in February 1946, despite widespread protests. New York City's welfare commissioner, Edward Rhatigan, “deplored the ‘hysterical’ propaganda” about changes to the state’s plan, The New York Times reported at the time.

In 60 percent of two-parent households today, both parents work. But over half of all Americans live in a “child care desert,” a census tract with three times as many children as available openings in licensed local child care facilities, according to the Center for American Progress. Following the pandemic, there are nearly 100,000 fewer child care workers in the United States than there were before, The New York Times reported. Many experts agree: the United States is in a child care crisis.

A few large cities have implemented universal pre-kindergarten. This year, the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, signed a package of bills to support families, including funding for a universal child care program for children under school age. It would be the first of its kind in the nation if implemented.

CJ WALKER, an Institute for Nonprofit News intern at Retro Report, wrote and produced the short video accompanying this article. 

1944 A poster from the Office of War Information urged women to join the workforce in jobs traditionally held by men. (Image: U.S. Government Printing Office via Library of Congress)
CURATED

Retro Report Recommends . . . 


The Retro Report team suggests articles, podcasts and videos that interest, impress and inspire us. Do you have a pick you'd like to share? Let us know: news@retroreport.com
 . . . Taking a walk
Michael Kimmelman, the architecture critic for The New York Times, toured parts of New York on foot with architects, urban planners and other experts during the pandemic, and his book “The Intimate City” is a record of what they saw. “The Intimate City” is a joyful miscellany of people seeing things in the urban landscape, the streets alive with remembrances and ideas even when those streets are relatively empty of people," Robert Sullivan writes in a review. [The New York Times]

(Image: Penguin Random House)
 . . The true story of the Texas Rangers 
Actor Clarence Gilyard Jr., best known to TV fans as James Trivette on the series "Walker, Texas Ranger," died this week at the age of 66.  The Rangers, often romanticized in popular culture, were created 200 years ago by Stephen F. Austin, the leader of the first Anglo settlers there. Texas Monthly, which has been documenting evolving accounts of the Rangers’ history for years, is producing a podcast, "White Hats." The first four episodes are available here. [Texas Monthly]

. . . Words on the rise
Merriam-Webster announced this week that its choice for word of the year was "gaslighting." The dictionary publisher said the word had a 1,740 percent increase in searches on its website from the previous year. The term comes from the title of a play and movie, below, the plot of which involves a man attempting to make his wife believe that she is going insane by insisting that the gas lights in the house are not dimming and that she can’t trust her own perceptions. Other top searches in 2022: sentient, omicron, and queen consort. [Merriam-Webster]
 MAY 4, 1944 "Gaslight" was released in theaters. It received seven Oscar nominations and won two: Best Actress (for Ingrid Bergman), and Best Production Design. 
LAST WORD
“People have a common message. They know what they want to express, and authorities know too, so people don’t need to say anything. If you hold a blank sheet, then everyone knows what you mean.”

 – Xiao Qiang, University of California, Berkeley researcher
On protests against Covid restrictions across China
LET'S CONNECT

We Use History to Explain Our World, and We Show Why It Matters

Retro Report is an Emmy Award-winning nonprofit news organization dedicated to uncovering the ways that news of the past continues to resonate today. Our documentary videos blend original reporting and compelling archival footage to add history and context to the conversation around current events. That's us, above, meeting by Zoom.

Were you forwarded this email? Here's the newsletter sign-up. You can view past newsletters here

To explore our growing library of 250 short documentary videos, subscribe to Retro Report’s YouTube channel.

Have feedback or a great idea for a story? Email news@retroreport.com or talk to us on Twitter: @RetroReport.

Retro Report YouTube channel
Follow us on Twitter
Instagram stories and pictures
Follow us on Facebook
LinkedIn
Website
We'd like to hear from you.
Click Here to Support Our Work

Copyright © 2022 Retro Report, All rights reserved.
Retro Report Inc.
633 Third Avenue, 16th Floor
New York, NY 10017


unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences

Retro Report, Inc. is a Section 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization under the Internal Revenue Code; Tax ID # 27-3504415. All donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.







This email was sent to <<Email Address>>
why did I get this?    unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences
Retro Report · 633 Third Avenue · 16th Floor · New York, New York 10017 · USA