2024 Hello , A 98-year-old Pennsylvania woman will stand before congress next month to receive the Congressional Gold Medal on behalf of all the women who worked on the home front in America to assure Allied victory in WWll.
Mae "Rosie the Riveter" Krier visits the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., Jan. 10,
2020. (DoD photo by Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class James K. Lee) For two years during the war, Mae Krier drilled holes and riveted sheet metal, to construct bombers. She led the effort to establish an annual day of recognition for the five million women we've come to remember as Rosie the Riveters. We celebrated them yesterday, March 21st. Today, I'm asking the question, who took care of Rosie the Riveter's children while she took over necessary war jobs so the men could go
fight? Knowing the crisis in childcare in America, it might surprise you the federal government operated and largely subsidized childcare across the county during WWII.
Uncle Sam Babysat Dick and Jane
The war effort required US factories to gear up and build the hardware to fight the Nazis in Europe and the Japanese in Asia. If women were going to trade in their aprons for coveralls and build tanks, planes, artillery, bullets and more, somebody had
to mind the children.
Children having lunch with a trained assistant at a childcare center opened September 15, 1942,
in New Britain, Connecticut. The center served thirty children, aged two to five, of mothers engaged in war industry. (Gordon Parks/Library of Congress) Congress took up the issue. One congressman testified, “You cannot have a contented mother
working in a war factory if she is worrying about her children and you cannot have children running wild in the streets without a bad effect on the coming generations.” The Lanham Act became law, authorizing a nationwide childcare program funded with a combination of federal and state money. Three-thousand childcare centers opened, most located near
defense production plants.
The scene in 1943 at a war workers' nursery in Oakland, Calif., where children were served cod
liver oil and tomato juice in the morning, a nourishing lunch midday, and milk and crackers in the afternoon. Ann Rosener | Library of Congress In Richmond, California, surrounding the Kaiser shipyards, at least 35 nursery schools opened. At its peak,1,400 children of working women attended daily. The going rate in 1943, was 50 cents per day, equivalent to $7.70 in today's dollar.
Richmond, California, 1943 As the war ended in August 1945, the Federal Works Agency announced it would stop funding childcare as soon as possible. They got a whammy of mom's asking the government to keep the program
open--1,155 letters, 318 wires, 794 postcards and petitions with 3,647 signatures opposed the decision. The government agreed to fund
childcare through February 1946. Then the nursery schools closed.
A childcare center opened September 15, 1942, for 30 children, ages 2 to 5 of mothers engaged in the war
industry in New Britain, Connecticut. Gordon Parks/Library of Congress Besides childcare, moms working during the war also worried about industrial accidents and injuries. From the beginning of the war in 1941 up to the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, industrial casualties on the home front exceeded military casualties. This led to improved workplace safety and regulations after the war, and to companies providing their workers better and more affordable health care. Not so, with childcare. Decades later, in 1971, the U.S. came close to a universal childcare system, where the poorest children could attend for free and others on a sliding scale. Congress passed such a bill, but it was vetoed by President Richard Nixon, who wrote about the "family-weakening implications of the system it envisions." Today, the childcare situation in America is difficult for both parents and childcare workers. Married parents may pay up to 25-percent of their income on childcare, which a single parent often pays more than 50-percent according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Those workers caring for the children earn a median wage of $11.65 an hour. Here's where we stand compared to other developed counties.
Many
American families pay more each year for childcare than the cost of a year's tuition at their state college.
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Sources https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/10/31/npr-the-american-government-once-offered-widely-affordable-child-care-77-years-ago
This week I'm starting a new feature you'll see in this space occasionally, called Talk Back. I'll feature subscriber emails I think you'll find interesting. I always appreciate people sharing their thoughts on my newsletter stories, especially
when they have a connection to the topic. Let me know what you think! Mary! You continue to seek out and celebrate such powerful and life-changing women and then share the stories with whoever will listen!! This is an amazing one, indeed. And the photo of Jennifer (Birdie) looks so much like so many of my elder Irish relatives. 😄 What a tremendous story for St. Patrick's Day.
Thank you so much☘️ Oh Mary! Your story about Iris Rivera has amazing synchronicity for me. It took me back. I was in law school at John Marshall Law School in Chicago at the time this occurred, and I was not aware of it. (There were very few women in my law school, and I had a couple of experiences there that made it evident that certain professors felt I was taking the place of a male
student). Here is the synchronicity: I worked at the Chicago Office of the State Appellate Defender from 1980 to 1988. I had volunteered at OSAD in my final year and loved it so much I offered to continue to work without pay in hopes of getting a permanent job there. Iris was not at OSAD during my volunteer time or when
I got hired on. There were several female attorneys and the head of the office at the time was Ralph Reuther. He was a wonderful boss, and his successors were as well. I was passionate about social justice and making sure that convicted clients got a fair trial through the appeals process. During my eight years there, I only had a couple of cases that were remanded for a new
trial. I did have one case that went to the US Supreme Court and my mentor at OSAD, Marty Carlson, argued the case before the Supreme Court since I had moved over to the Illinois Attorney General’s office to do civil appeals. I don’t know if I could have handled an argument before the US Supreme Court, to be honest, but I had written all the briefs for the journey to the US Supreme Court. It
took a few years and I had to convince Marty that we would not lose and make bad law. And we did not. We won.
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