"How to Handle Your Double Job": Maternal Employment, the State, and Childcare in World War II, 1942-1946

As an increasing number of mothers entered the workforce during World War II, childcare became a social, political, and economic problem. Through an analysis of two Congressional hearings held in the summer of 1943, this thesis seeks to illuminate the rationale behind the contending views in the debate over wartime childcare policy. Specifically, these hearings addressed two opposing childcare programs. The Lanham Act of 1940 authorized large-scale spending to support emergency wartime infrastructure that, after amendments passed in 1941, included daycare and related child services. The War-Area Child-Care Act of 1943 proposed a more comprehensive and centrally planned program that would have integrated daycare, nursery schools, extended school services, and more. Importantly, an exploration of this childcare policy debate provides an avenue to probe at the practical and deeper ideological problems that arose when mothers went to work including bureaucratic struggles, the role of the state, family composition, and gendered norms. Thus, the insights from this project reveal a more nuanced understanding as to why the Federal government ultimately preferred a more limited childcare program during the war.