Gender, Class, and Motherhood: The Legacy of Federal Child Care Policy

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Abstract
The full-time at-home mother is a historically and politically constructed "ideal type" in the United States. Federal child care policies historically reinforced middle-class women's roles as full-time at-home mothers and stigmatized federal child care programs as charity services for poor, ethnic, and immigrant women. Despite its persistence, the ideology of the middle-class mother conflicts with the historical and contemporary reality of women's lives. Although demands for federally supported child care increase, gender and class ideologies remain integral to the formation of federal child care policies.

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