Working Mothers and the Child Care Dilemma

Esyllt W. Jones, University of Manitoba:

Much more than connecting the chronological dots (which is itself an important achievement), Pasolli provides an analytical explanation for the rather discouraging continuities that shaped decades of public debate and marginalized the childcare and employment needs of women and families … A smart book on an issue we continue to wrestle with, and the sole monograph on the topic from a historian’s perspective, it will find its way on to many bookshelves.

Rachel Langford, Ryerson University:

Reading Pasolli’s extensively documented book is a sobering exploration of twentieth and twenty-first century policies guided by familiar rhetoric about why mothers partnered with male breadwinners should not work and why mothers without breadwinners should work (in low-wage jobs) to redeem themselves … In the end, Pasolli’s history of childcare policy in British Columbia tells us that out-of-home childcare is a radical claim that requires a paradigmatic shift in thinking about working mothers and the ‘‘contested nature of social citizenship.’’

Susan Prentice, Professor of Sociology, University of Manitoba:
This book asks the question: “Why has there never been universally accessible, affordable, high quality, public child care in British Columbia?” The answer reveals much about the fundamental discomfort society has with working motherhood and how this discomfort has contributed to an absence of full social citizenship for women.

Lara Campbell, author of Respectable Citizens: Gender, the Family, and Unemployment in Ontario’s Great Depression:
Contested Child Care beautifully illuminates the historical tension between maternalist reformers, who saw child care as a service targeted at ending the “dependency” of poor women, and feminist advocates who understood universal, accessible care as a fundamental right, linked to work, economic independence, and full social citizenship.

Sharon Gregson, Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC and Director of Child and Family Development Services at Collingwood Neighbourhood House:
This book will shock you with historical details of the discrimination mothers have faced over the last 100 years in BC. It also explains the remaining government ambivalence toward working mothers and quality affordable child care. Required reading for feminists and those of us committed to the $10aDay Plan as the solution to BC’s child care crisis, this book will better equip us in the continuing fight for women’s equality.

Martha Friendly, Executive Director, Childcare Resource and Research Unit:
This book is a must read for anyone interested in Canadian child care. Focused mainly on British Columbia, it is as germane to Canadian child care policy more broadly. Its main thesis – that “a fundamental discomfort around working motherhood” underlies our failure to win a national childcare program – offers a valuable analysis with implications for future strategies.