A historical timeline, from World War II through the COVID-19 pandemic, of federal policies and programs that have influenced early care and education in the United States.
Photo credit: Pixabay/Nappy.co/public domain
During World War II, with millions of men supporting the U.S. military, women stepped up to fill open jobs in factories, hospitals and shipyards. That new, albeit temporary, reality left many families without child care for their young children.
The Lanham Act authorized funding to provide child care for children of mothers who were assisting with war efforts, regardless of family income. It was the first — and, to date, only — national child care program available in the U.S.
“With so many men fighting in the war abroad and women at work, there was a focus on, ‘Well, what happens to the children?’” explained Casey Peeks, senior director for early childhood policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.
As record numbers of women stepped up to participate in the labor force, thousands of federally subsidized child care centers emerged across the country (costing the government the equivalent of about $1 billion today). By the end of the war, some 550,000 children had received care under this program.
Unlike some of America’s peer countries, such as France and Japan, which also expanded public funding for child care programs during wartime, the United States did not continue to offer robust child care to families after the war ended.
Head Start was established under the Johnson administration to break cycles of poverty within families and promote school readiness. Head Start was — and remains — unique for its focus on not just child care for children of working parents but on early childhood education and development. Originally passed as an eight-week summer program for 4-year-olds, today Head Start is a full-day, year-round federal education program serving nearly 800,000 low-income pregnant women, infants, toddlers and preschoolers annually.
“This [marks] the first time,” Peeks said, “where there’s a huge, sweeping federal early childhood program” in the U.S.
Peeks views it as the most influential early childhood program the U.S. government has launched. “Head Start — and the research that has come out of Head Start — has laid the foundation for why the first five years are critical,” she said.
Some conservatives have criticized the program, but Head Start has benefited from general bipartisan support.
Here are other Head Start milestones:
The Comprehensive Child Development Act is the federal policy that never was. It would have created a universal, publicly funded child care program for 3- and 4-year-olds across the U.S., where the poorest families paid nothing and wealthier families would pay on a sliding scale.
The bill passed both chambers of Congress, but President Richard Nixon vetoed it. Nixon, who had previously committed to prioritizing child care in his administration, was under pressure from Republicans who argued that such a move was aligned with communism and that the government should not be raising America’s children. There were concerns, Peeks said, of a universal child care system leading to “family weakening” since it might motivate more women to leave the home to work.
“For everyone who works in child care,” Peeks said, “that is a very hard pill to swallow — what happened in 1971.”
In the late 1940s, fewer than one-third of women participated in the U.S. labor force. That rate climbed steadily over the second half of the 20th century before leveling out in the 1990s, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. By then — and true today — just under 60% of women were working outside the home.
By 1990, with a majority of women going to work, more families were looking for child care.
“People needed a healthy, safe place to leave their kid, so they could work,” explained Amanda Guarino, managing director of policy and national partnerships for the First Five Years Fund, a nonprofit working to build support for early learning and child care programs at the federal level. In response, Congress passed the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) to help low-income working families afford child care for children under age 13.
CCDBG is a federal grant that sends money to states to administer at their discretion. The federal government does not set strict guidelines for this funding.
“That’s kind of the beauty of the program,” Guarino said. “States can craft the program that’s best for people in their states and communities. The federal government sets broad requirements, but the nuances are set in the states.”
Families who are eligible for subsidies — meaning they fall below a certain income threshold — can enroll with the provider of their choice, so long as that provider accepts child care subsidies as payment. Many states give families a “voucher” with which to pay their child’s provider; other states pay providers directly.
Despite the program’s success — and bipartisan support — it is woefully underfunded, due to the high cost of reaching all families and a Congress that has so far been unwilling to foot the bill, Guarino explained. Today, only 14% of eligible families actually receive CCDBG benefits.
Here are major CCDBG updates:
The start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 roiled the early care and education sector in the U.S. Some programs shut down during lockdown orders, with closures often lasting for months. Others remained open to serve the children of essential workers but had to operate under dramatically different circumstances and constraints. Thousands of programs closed permanently, unable to maintain revenue with such uncertain enrollment.
The crisis underscored the lack of an adequate early care and education infrastructure in the country while also helping families, policymakers and the broader public see the value of this field.
The U.S. responded with swift and robust public funding for the field, mobilizing in a way that was reminiscent of its World War II efforts, said Brittany Walsh, senior associate director of human capital for the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank in which Republicans and Democrats craft policy together. Walsh also works on early childhood initiatives.
The pandemic-era relief packages passed during this time included the CARES Act, which provided an additional $3.5 billion toward CCDBG, and CRRSA, which awarded an additional $10 billion to CCDBG. However, the most significant investment came in the form of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), passed in March 2021.
Of the $1.9 trillion ARPA package, $39 billion went toward child care relief — $15 billion for CCDBG and $24 billion for child care stabilization grants.
The grants helped to stabilize early care and education programs as they rebounded from the pandemic, offering direct-to-provider monthly payments through September 2023. The money was also transformative in many ways, showing providers in the field what a different way forward might look like in a better-funded system and allowing many to use their money to improve and upgrade facilities to the benefit of their program quality and children’s developmental outcomes.
“During the pandemic — and ARPA — early learning was elevated to this place in our country where it was seen as an essential service,” Peeks said. People saw that, without child care, the economy ceases to function.
Like the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971, the child care provisions of Build Back Better will be remembered as a policy that might have been, Peeks said.
“In 50 years’ time, people are going to look at Build Back Better very similarly to how they look at Nixon’s veto,” she said.
Build Back Better was the legislative framework that President Joe Biden campaigned — and won — on in 2020. It included provisions such as universal free preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds and a more affordable child care cost structure for families.
This legislation ultimately failed to pass — because of one Democratic U.S. Senator withholding his vote. Another version did pass, but without the child care provisions.
Still, its existence was significant, Peeks said.
Without the pandemic and the greater awareness that brought early care and education, she said, “I don’t think it would’ve been a realistic piece of legislation.”
That greater recognition from the public may not have led to a substantial federal policy change, but it has prompted states to take action, said Walsh of the Bipartisan Policy Center, and innovative state policies could eventually lead to new programs at the federal level.
Kentucky, for example, spearheaded an approach in 2022 in which the state grants early childhood educators automatic eligibility for child care subsidies — in effect, early childhood educators get free child care for their own kids. A dozen states have since adopted or piloted a similar program.
In 2021, Michigan began offering “Tri-Share,” a program that allows participating employers to help offset the cost of their employees’ child care expenses. Employers pay one-third of the cost, employees pay a third, and the state government kicks in the final third. Copycat programs are underway in a handful of states and counties.
The fact that this work is happening in red and purple states is especially meaningful, Walsh said.
“It is helpful for the federal government when a state does something really well, particularly a purple state,” she said. “We need to demonstrate that those policies are wanted and effective in states like Kansas and Oklahoma and South Dakota and Alaska.”
Many innovative state programs are new, she acknowledged, and still in pilot stages. But they emerged because the pandemic shined a bright light on the need, and their success could have a lasting impact on the field of early care and education.
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