Childcare on the World War II Home Front: America's Only Universal Program

Written from an article by Ella Wagner, PhD, for the National Park Service's Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education, funded through the National Council on Public History's cooperative agreement with the Park Service.

"Story hour" at a childcare center in New Britain, Connecticut, opened September 15, 1942, for thirty children aged two to five whose mothers worked in war industry — open 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., six days a week. Photo by Gordon Parks, U.S. Office of War Information, June 1943. Library of Congress.

Rosie's children

"Rosie the Riveter" dominates how Americans remember the World War II home front. Millions of women did take jobs in munitions plants, shipyards and hospitals — for the war effort and for their families. Many had husbands in the military or working long hours away; others were single parents. Women headed nearly 20% of U.S. households during the war.

For all the praise of their patriotism, "Rosies" with young children had few childcare options at first. Some could lean on neighbors or grandparents, but many had moved far from family to work in war boomtowns.

The answer: in 1943, Congress put $20 million into the nation's first and only universal childcare program, under an infrastructure law, the Lanham Act (1940). States and companies set up hundreds of "war nurseries", which enrolled about 550,000 children during the war. It was temporary and never reached every family, but it was the first time the federal government treated childcare as critical infrastructure.

A workers' nursery notice at the Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyards, Baltimore. Photo by Arthur S. Siegel, U.S. Office of War Information, May 1943. Library of Congress.

Why Congress acted

• Children alone: stories of working mothers forced to leave children home alone alarmed officials and the public.
• Lost work: one Oregon report found women's absences in the shipyards four to five times those of men, largely because childcare plans broke down.
• Politics: many Americans still opposed mothers working outside the home, but labor unions and women in politics pressed Congress: if Rosie was to help win the war, someone had to care for her children.

How it worked

Lanham Act money went to states and cities in centers of war industry. Red tape slowed it, and it varied widely: California spent an average of $264 per child, New Mexico $0.

For families who used them, the centers meant meals, activities and a safe place for children to play together — and relief from worry. Above all, they were affordable: about fifty to seventy-five cents per child per day — roughly nine to fourteen dollars in the 2020s.

The Maritime Child Development Center exhibit at Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park. NPS photo.

Nurseries at the shipyard gate

Companies used Lanham Act funds too, for on-site centers. The Kaiser Shipyards in California, Oregon and Washington had some of the largest, right at the shipyard entrance, so mothers could drop children off and collect them on the way to and from their shifts.

• Buildings: big outdoor play yards, wading pools, bright classrooms.
• Staff: teachers, a nurse, a dietitian and a social worker at each.
• Supplies: "Everything was new, we had the best of equipment and lots of it," remembered Jean E. Amonson, a teacher at the Kaiser center in Portland. "We had library books, crayons, papers, and blocks…the children played with those by the hour."
• Dinner: "Home Service Food", a program promoted by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt — hot dinners mothers could pick up with their children.

Nursery children at Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia. Photo by Arthur Rothstein, U.S. Office of War Information, March 1942. Library of Congress.

After the war

When the war ended in 1945, factories laid off hundreds of thousands of women to make room for returning men. But most working women meant to keep working — out of need, choice or both — and still needed childcare. Many organized to keep the centers. At one New York City picket, women and children carried signs: "While We Work Our Children Must Be Safe" and "Food Prices Rise—Mothers Must Work."

Congress did not extend the funding. Only New York, California and Washington planned partial extensions, and those ran out within a few years. Without federal help, childcare became scarcer and much more expensive, and families' struggle to balance earning and caring continues into the 21st century.

Sources

Based on "Childcare on the World War II Home Front," an article by Ella Wagner, PhD, published by the National Park Service and in the public domain; rewritten in hubnx's own words. The article quotes the Council of Social Agencies' "Annual Report 1942–1943" (Portland, Oregon, 1944), as cited by the Oregon Secretary of State's exhibit Life on the Home Front; Jean E. Amonson's 1976 interview with Karen Beck Skold (Oregon Historical Society); and Lydia Kiesling, "Paid Child Care for Working Mothers? All It Took Was a World War," The New York Times, October 2, 2019. Further reading from its bibliography: Jessica Enoch, Rhetoric Review 31, no. 4 (2012); Chris M. Herbst, Journal of Labor Economics 35, no. 2 (2017); William M. Tuttle, Child Welfare 74, no. 1 (1995); Ruth Pearson Koshuk, Journal of Experimental Education 16, no. 2 (1947).