In Whose Interest? Voluntarism and Child Care, 1880–1980

Abstract

This paper examines three periods in the history of child care: nineteenth-century creches, World War II day nurseries, and the 1970s Community Child Care movement. It argues that, in each of these periods, the services were shaped by three sets of competing interests: those of the mothers who needed or wanted to work; their children; and the volunteer committees or collectives anxious to 'rescue' children from forms of care they considered unsuitable. The final resolution, in each case, reflected not simply a response to the needs of working women and their children but rather a more complex process that often owed at least as much to the values of the service providers as those of the mothers and children in their care. A u s t r a l i a n J o u r n a l o f E a r l y C h i l d h o o d Speaking in Melbourne in 1952, mother and wartime childcare activist Marjorie Coppel reflected on the voluntary effort that underlay early childhood services. Voluntarism, she noted, may not be as efficient as government provision, but it was more innovative. 'The enthusiasm, the combining of people in a commonsense empirical sort of way, to achieve a service which no-one else would give them, these are the good worthwhile things about voluntary effort.' But, she warned, 'those who do voluntary work undertake it less for the sake of helping others in need than to help themselves' (Coppel, 1952, pp. 8-9). Where the selfinterest of the volunteers conflicted with the wider aims of the organisation, 'deep strains' were likely to arise. While not decrying the claims to innovation, this paper focuses on the self-interest inherent in voluntary action and the impact this has had on childcare provision in Australia. Child care is a contested terrain, the site at which the competing demands of the working mother and the preschool child are negotiated and perhaps resolved. Australian debates about the merits of private and public/community provision proceed from an uneasy consensus that child care is an essential service: on the one hand both a right and a social good, but also central to the functioning of the national economy. Jones (1996) has identified a tendency in historical debate to polarise and then construct chronologies which move from the bad past to a better present. Deborah Brennan's (1994) history of child care in Australia, The politics of Australian child care: From philanthropy to feminism, fits this pattern, confining the history of pre-1970s developments to two chapters, before moving on to celebrate second-wave feminism's role in shaping the pattern of provision in which 'community' and government work in partnership. So persuasive is this account that it has been taken up by American writer Sonia Michel (1999) as a model that the US could, but did not, follow.

‘Herstories’: Using an Historical Lens to Examine Continuities and Changes in Early Childhood Teacher Education

“…The vast majority of young children were cared for within the family unit. The first crèche opened in Adelaide in 1887 but there was little further institutional provision to support working class mothers in paid employment (Swain, 2004). Compulsory schooling was introduced for seven-to 13-year-olds in 1875, along with the first teachers' college.…”

“…Beginning in New South Wales, the kindergarten movement spread across Australia with the formation of Kindergarten Unions (Brennan, 1994). Whereas crèches and day nurseries were usually staffed by nurses (Swain, 2004), Kindergarten Training Colleges were established to prepare young white middle-class women to educate other people's children in kindergartens (Whitehead, 2008). This situation continued until the 1970s when a slew of social and education policies, not the least of which was the Child Care Act of 1972, laid the groundwork for the expansion and integration of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in early childhood settings and in teacher education.…”

Maids and mothers: Domestic servants and illegitimacy in 19th-century Australia

“…Hence, both local residents and visitors from home frequently remarked on the impact of the bservant problemQ on domestic life in Australia. Bourgeois and activist women found common ground in highlighting the strains that the shortage of domestic help placed on women's lives, and many of the services designed to assist lone mothers to support their children had as a secondary purpose the freeing of such women to undertake domestic labor in other women's homes (Swain, 2004). The shortage of domestic help found a place in the national population anxiety.…”