Remembering Childcare History

To highlight the need for childcare and to demonstrate “approved methods of rearing children from infancy on”, prominent New York philanthropists created the Model Day Nursery in the Children’s Building at the 1893 World’s Colombian Exhibition in Chicago, later founding the National Federation of Day Nurseries (NFDN), the first national organization devoted to this issue in 1898. During World War 2, Congress attempted to pass policy to accommodate childcare for the new workforce comprised of women, but what child care there was did little to dispel public concerns. Finally, in 1954, Congress found an approach to child care it could live with: the child care tax deduction, allowing for all the development of childcare centers all over the nation!