The COVID-19 pandemic’s disruption of childcare prompted federal government interventions in the US, such as the CARES Act, CRRSA, and the American Rescue Plan. However, the end of these interventions in September of 2023, specifically the end of the American Rescue Plan funding, reiterates a historical pattern in the US federal government’s approach to childcare interventions as short-term and crisis-driven. Based on this thesis, I traced the history of child care interventions and drew attention to the unchanged pattern in the government’s interventions.
Great Depression and World War II Childcare Interventions
Before the twentieth century, the U.S government did not invest in childcare because of the belief that care was a woman’s job. Nancy Folbre, a feminist economist, claims that throughout the history of societies, including the U.S., care for children, the sick, and the elderly is associated with women[1]. This is a cultural and patriarchal view of family relations, which separates fathers’ and mothers’ responsibilities in the household. Fathers are seen as breadwinners, while mothers are viewed as caregivers and homemakers. This cultural belief influenced the government’s investment in childcare and, by extension, limited mothers’ access to institutionalized childcare at the time, which still influences our rationale for universal child care provision.
By the twentieth century, various incidents prompted the government’s interest in public care for children. One of those was the advocacy of the neo-maternalists, such as Julia Lathrop, Edith Abbott, and Sophonisba Breckinridge, who argued that mothers’ employment results in the loss of childcare, child neglect, and other social harm [2]. With these claims, the advocates pushed for public assistance for single mothers [3]. As a result, the Illinois legislature passed the first Mothers’ Pension Law in 1911, which provided monetary benefits to widowed and deserted mothers to ensure they committed to their role as caregivers [4]. Mothers’ Pension then became a federal program under the Children’s Bureau in the 1920s, allowing for its expansion to 40 states. Contrary to the goal of Mother’s Pension advocates, poor mothers did not receive the funds without working, because the administrators mandated a work requirement for eligibility [5]. It was also racially unequal, as black and foreign-born poor mothers had limited access compared to white poor mothers.
Following the Mother’s Pension, under the New Deal policy and during the Great Depression, the Emergency Nursery School (ENS) was established to focus on day nursery education[6]. Through the ENS, the government provided free public schools that catered to more than 60,000 children of unemployed parents through the Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief Work [7]. Under the WPA, the public school system was used to create jobs for unemployed teachers, nurses, cooks, and janitors”[8]. However, the decline in the use of day nursery school between 1929 and 1930 led to the discontinuation of ENS, and it was remodeled as child care centers between 1933 and 1943 [9]. Meanwhile, mothers employed during the WPA project were encouraged to enroll their children in the child care centers. The successes of the ENS showed that the federal government can commit to funding child care for employed mothers and that the functions of early childhood education and child care can be bridged and merged into a single program [10] [11]. Unfortunately, child care access through the ENS ended due to the loss of educators for children to jobs in the wartime defense plants, which paid better [12]. This wage crisis of the ENS also mirrors the major challenge with the child care workforce. For instance, in New York and Georgia, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed that child care workers were forced out of the labor force and were not earning living wages that would make them remain in the childcare workforce [13].
By World War II, in 1941, the Lanham Act was passed to provide child care funds to married women as a way of ensuring they worked for the wartime needs while their husbands were away fighting[14]. Katherine Lenroot, the chief of the US Children’s Bureau at the time, proposed the policy [15]. The policy ensured that working mothers’ children had access to different types of public child care centers for twelve to fifteen hours, such as day care, nursery schools, recreation centers, and infant nurseries. It allowed working mothers access to six days of care for their children, including meals, snacks, and educational programs, and it was recorded as the most affordable at $10 or less per day.[16] Unfortunately, not all families could access the funding, and by the end of the war, in 1946, Congress withdrew the Lanham Act funds while women were expected to return home to be stay-at-home mothers [17] .
This history exposes that public funding and provision for childcare were short-lived due to the loss of childcare workers in 1943 and the end of the Lanham Act in 1946 in the twentieth century.
COVID-19 Childcare Interventions: CARES Act, CRRSA Act, and ARP
In the twenty-first century, COVID-19 again quickened a sense of urgency in the federal government’s commitment to childcare, as the neo-maternalist advocates, the Great Depression, and World War II did in the twentieth century. On March 27, 2020, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump, established a $2.2 trillion relief fund. In the words of the President, “$3.5 billion [was provided] to states to expand childcare benefits for healthcare workers, first responders, and others on the frontlines of this crisis, and $1 billion for securing supplies under the Defense Protection Act”[18]. The President noted that “$300 billion in direct cash payments will be available to every American citizen earning less than $99,000 per year; $3,400 for a typical family of four. So, a family of four: $3,400”[19]. This fund also included unemployment assistance funds for individuals and support for impacted businesses. This fund revealed the government’s attentiveness to the inaccessibility and unaffordability crises in child care, and the measures were considered beneficial to working mothers across the US.
On December 27, 2020, before President Trump stepped down from office, he also signed the second public funding bill into law: the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSA Act)[20]. According to Reuters, “the Act was passed by Congress on December 21, 2020. The $2.3 trillion omnibus appropriations bill includes $900 billion in a second round of COVID-19-related stimulus, regular annual appropriations, and other miscellaneous provisions, providing significant benefits to commercial entities”[21]. The policy allocated $10 billion towards the Child Care Development Block Grant to support childcare providers and support families’ childcare costs.[22] The policy was the second policy that sought to address the challenges that the lack of child care and the economic hardship during COVID-19 portended for working mothers.
After the CRRSA, the federal government under President Biden announced the American Rescue Plan (ARP) funding, which was specifically targeted at addressing childcare challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, making the funding different from the CARES Act and CRRSA. According to the White House briefing on April 15, 2021,
Since the start of the COVID-19 public health emergency, roughly 2 million women have left the labor force, disproportionately due to caregiving needs and undoing decades of progress in improving women’s labor force participation rate. Even as many fathers have returned to work, mothers, especially those without a four-year college degree, have not done so at similar rates. As a result, the gender earnings gap is predicted to increase by 5 percentage points in this recession, hurting our families and economy [23].
This statement emphasizes how working, low-income, and undereducated mothers are mostly impacted by the pandemic. The briefing goes further to acknowledge that childcare and early childhood providers and owners are women and disproportionately women of color, and that the closures of schools and childcare centers caused child care deserts in communities, with workers laid off, and owners running on debt. In the bid to prioritize and address the childcare crisis, the government released $39 billion in funding to providers and educators, support parents, and help mothers get back to work. This funding was provided under the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF)[24], Flexible funding, and Child Care Stabilization Funding (CCSF) and disbursed to states. The CCDF provided about $15 billion in discretionary funding, and CCSF provided about $24 billion in stabilization funding.
By September 30, 2023, ARP childcare support funding ended. Claire Cain Miller, Alicia Parlapiano, and Madeleine Ngo stated that the two-year funds from 2021 to 2023 were the largest investment in the History of the US[25]. The end of the childcare funding meant that child care providers would struggle to manage their businesses, which could, in turn, limit access to child care. In the long run, this could impact mothers’ labor force participation.
Conclusion
The child care interventions during the COVID-19, Great Depression, and World WAR II indicate that the US federal government fails at providing long-lasting resolutions in addressing the structural issues that affect child care, such as access and affordability. A long-term commitment fundamentally promotes economic resilience through working mothers’ labor force participation and children’s and family well-being.
Sources
[1] Nancy Folbre, The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values (The New Press, 2001), xiv.
[2] Neo-maternalists believe in the idea that child care is the role of mothers. That is, the identity of women is tied to motherhood.
[3] Palley and Shdaimah, In Our Hands, 43-44; Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America (Harvard University Press, 2010), 162.
[4] Glenn, Forced to Care, 162-163; Sonya Michel, Children’s Interests/Mothers’ Rights (Yale University Press, 1999), 73-82.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Michel, Children’s Interests/Mothers’ Rights, 92 & 118.
[7] Ibid., 92
[8] Kathleen Alison Clarke-Stewart and Virginia D. Allhusen, What We Know about Childcare (Harvard University Press, 2005), 29
[9] Clarke-Stewart and Allhusen, What We Know about Childcare , 119
[10] In the twentieth century, child care was considered as the care for infants and toddlers, children under ages 0-2, while early education is considered for preschoolers, who are between ages three to five. Moreover, Clarke-Stewark and Alhussen pointed out that now, the term childcare is used from the ages of infant to preschool age in the 30 years from when their book was written in 2005 (see page 56 of their book).
[11] Michel, Children’s Interests/Mothers’ Rights, 125.
[12] Ibid., 142. Michel also explained that Black and Chicana mothers experience racial barriers which limited their access to this public childcare and day nursery.
[13] The True Cost of Child Care: Erie County NY (Cornell ILR Buffalo Co-Lab, 2021), 2, https://www3.erie.gov/socialservices/sites/www3.erie.gov.socialservices/files/2022-01/executive%20summary.2final.1.3.22.corrected.pdf; Amy M Jacobs et al., “Economic Impact Of The Early Care and Education Industry In Georgia: Initial Impact of the COVID -19 Pandemic on Georgia’s Early Care and Education Industry,” Georgia Department Of Early Care And Learning, February 2024, 34-35.
[14] Elizabeth Palley and Corey S. Shdaimah, In Our Hands: The Struggle for U.S. Child Care Policy (NYU Press, 2014), 44 https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qgdcg.
[15] Jessica Calarco, Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net (Portfolio, 2024), xi
[16] Jessica Calarco writes this cost in reflect the dollar rate today.
[17] Sonya Michel, CHILDREN’S INTERESTS/MOTHERS’ RIGHTS (YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1999), 94; Palley and Shdaimah, In Our Hands, 44; Calarco, Holding It Together, xii.
[18] Remarks by President Trump at Signing of H.R.748, The CARES Act – The White House, accessed October 17, 2025, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-signing-h-r-748-cares-act/.
[19 Ibid.
[20] “Bill Announcement – The White House,” accessed October 17, 2025, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/bill-announcement-122720/.
[21] “Congress Passes and President Trump Signs Year-End Appropriations and COVID Stimulus Bill with Key Benefits to Commercial Entities | Practical Law,” accessed October 17, 2025, https://content.next.westlaw.com/practical-law/document/Ib835e3ad4aa511ebbea4f0dc9fb69570/Congress-Passes-and-President-Trump-Signs-Year-End-Appropriations-and-COVID-Stimulus-Bill-with-Key-Benefits-to-Commercial-Entities?viewType=FullText&transitionType=Default&contextData=(sc.Default).
[22] Ibid.
[23] The White House, “FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Announces American Rescue Plan Funding to Rescue the Child Care Industry so the Economy Can Recover,” The White House, April 15, 2021, https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/15/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-american-rescue-plan-funding-to-rescue-the-child-care-industry-so-the-economy-can-recover/.
[24] According to Office of Child Care Fact Sheet, the CCDF funding authorized under Child Care and Development Block Grant Act (CCDBG) and was a law Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990. The CCDBG Act “was amended and reauthorized by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, and again by the CCDBG Act of 2014.” Under this fund, there is the requirement that parents have employment, and this could impact how if parents can access.
[25] Claire Cain Miller et al., “Child Care Disruptions Expected as Record Funding Nears an End,” The Upshot, The New York Times, June 21, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/21/upshot/child-care-daycare-disruptions.html.; Shengwei Sun et al., Cliff Notes: Pandemic Relief Funding Teaches Lessons About the Need for Sustained Child Care Investments, 1, September 2024.