Looking Backward, Moving Forward.
Introduction From the Anthology by Susan Prentice, page 3
Analyzing and Debating Child Care Advocacy
The chapters collected here offer different ways to think about child care policy and advocacy, in what can be thought of as a sampler of current work. The authors do not speak with one voice, and readers will notice differences in interpretation and method. In no small measure, authors disagree with each other. In doing so, they mirror the debates and questions that frame the contemporary child care movement, and in their variances they offer a rare and valuable opportunity for critical reflection. In part, these differences are inevitable in a divided and nonunitary movement. From a bird's-eye view, "the Canadian daycare movement" appears as a singular, cohesive social movement; yet on the ground and close-up, what often takes precedence is a dizzying range of groups, mandates and campaigns within and between cities, provinces and regions of this country.
Contributors to this anthology identify this variegated, nationwide child care mobilization's many contributors to the development of child care policy and services in Canada. They examine the infrastructure and processes of child care mobilization, and they assess the effects of advocacy on public-policy process. Uniting all authors is both a conviction that child care is a necessary element of social justice and a concern that current child care services and policy are inadequate. Unlike those who would claim that child care is primarily a private family matter, the authors argue that child care is better understood as a public responsibility and part of the public good. The contributors arrive, however, at very different conclusions about the work of changing child care, at times even confronting the child care movement itself, challenging advocates to reassess their campaigns, visions and tactics.
For example, the child care movement at the national level has long advanced what some critics see as a utopian vision: a universally accessible, publicly funded, high-quality, non-profit system of care, to which all children, parents and families are entitled. In her chapter, Linda White asks if such demands operate for or against the movement's long-term interests. Her example is the struggle in the mid-1980s over the federal government's proposals to replace one general funding program (the Canada Assistance Plan) with a policy specific to child care. At the time, national advocacy organizations opposing the Mulroney government's 1988 Bill C-144 argued that a bad national policy would have been worse than no national policy at all. In contrast, Linda White critiques the advocates' campaign, pointing out that a "half loaf"-an imperfect, but institutionalized, federal child care policy-offered significant advantages over the status quo.
This assessment raises a related question: Should advocates work for and applaud incremental measures? Or ought they to struggle for wholesale policy reform and redesign? In other fields, this is sometimes termed the "reform or revolution" debate, but it is also relevant to child care advocates and their analysts. Various contributors treat this question in different ways: some explicitly approve of gradual, evolutionary developments, while others hold out for more sweeping and transformative change. Complicating this question is each different level of government's particular responsibilities for child care that campaigns must take into account. In Canada, child care is a provincial responsibility-although many advocates argue that this very fact is part of the problem. On the whole, the historical evidence collected here seems to suggest that local and provincial campaigns have pursued incremental goals; whereas national campaigns have held out for more far-reaching and systemic policy change.
Even when examining the same place and the same time, some authors in this collection arrive at different conclusions. For example, two chapters of this book focus on child care advocacy and policy in Alberta. Tom Langford and Sheila Campbell work from different positions, however, and their respective chapters offer a dialogue on how to think about child care in that province. Where Campbell sees the advantages of working with governments, in coalitions of elite or leading citizens motivated by altruism, Langford proposes that effective advocacy requires a social movement. Campbell's history of the gains made by insiders working behind the scenes with decision makers contrasts with Langford's observations that "special interest group" status weakens the political influence of advocates. Elsewhere in the anthology, Cheryl Collier and Vappu Tyyskä examine Ontario's recent experience, and like the western authors, they too arrive at different conclusions even as they study the same time and place.
Several chapters take up the issue of political parties and elected officials. Jane Jenson's analysis of the fascinating history of child care in Quebec places considerable emphasis on progressive feminist politicians and "femocrats" (feminist bureaucrats) within the state. Cheryl Collier's analysis of differences and similarities between left-wing and right-wing governments in B.C. and Ontario focuses on the governing party's political platform, concluding that left-wing (NDP) governments are the stronger supporters of child care. Judith Martin, by contrast, is more skeptical about political parties and recommends that activists not be over-confident that the NDP is always an ally.
Is child care made stronger when its message is broader? Or does a less-focused message dilute the movement? This puzzle is taken up by several contributors. Vappu Tyyskä points out the gains and losses from highlighting child care alternately as a women's issue, a children's issue and a family issue. She asks if the benefits derived from successful appeals to conservative concerns about "families in need" outweigh the loss of a feminist social change message. Judith Martin points to a similar quandary: Have advocates been too accepting of a work/family divide and not creative enough in reimagining the workplace?
Even the questions, Who fights for child care? Who are the social actors? do not find unanimous agreement among contributors. Most chapters identify the main locus of political activity in groups and organizations. By contrast, Sharon Hope Irwin and Donna S. Lero's piece points out that advocacy for the inclusion of children with special needs has come mainly from individual parents or pioneering child care directors. Even advocacy groups, they gently chide, have not made inclusion a major plank or significant focusof work. Wendy Atkin raises a parallel observation: the sexism that lies behind the organization of child care is attributable to the active work of women, as well as men. Leading women's organizations, such as the ladies of the board of directors of Toronto's West End Creche, were equally unfriendly to working mothers as were other segments of society. Moreover, Atkin's race-sensitive analysis leads her to conclude that an overconcentration on gender led many to ignore the parallel project of "whiteness" that underpinned notions of child care policy and curriculum in the first half of the twentieth century-and perhaps today, as well. There are important divisions within the child care movement, and historians and analysts must be attentive to these differences. In America, Sonya Michel observes that feminists played a relatively minor role in the struggle for child care, and this collection's contributors offer different assessments of the role of women's groups and others in Canadian child care advocacy.
Some people attribute governments' failure to enact good child care policy to the fault of advocates. Some might read Linda White's critique of 1980s national advocacy efforts this way. Judith Martin underscores a different perspective, pointing out that structural features of Canadian society (chiefly the political and economic climate) have more power than do advocates to shape the landscape of political possibility. Many contributors agree on this point, arguing that although agency and activism make a difference, historical, social, economic and political factors prevail. One of these factors is the role of business and, in turn, government receptivity to for-profit care. Several chapters address the issue of commercial child care and the business lobby's influence in promoting policies favourable to privatized care.
Contributors differ on the relative importance they place on a political division of powers, although all recognize the pervasive effects of federalism. Jane Jenson develops a complex analysis of how and why Quebec has situated child care as a component of comprehensive family policy while other jurisdictions have not. Some authors prioritize the local government (for example, Sheila Campbell on Edmonton and Vappu Tyyskþ on two Ontario municipalities). Others identify the provincial government as the key player. Rebecca Kelley Scherer and Linda White make the federal government their focus, Scherer's history chronicling a full half century. These different choices implicitly point to the need to clarify which levels of government have the most power to affect child care-all the while remembering, as the longitudinal stories show, that this "fact" can change with different historical conjunctures. For example, local control over child care had positive effects at some moments and quite regressive consequences at other points.
Across the chapters we can find different conceptions of the state. Authors have different views on whether government is a level playing field in which all voices have an equal chance to be heard or if, to the contrary, government is an unequal playing field where some perspectives predominate and others are systematically marginalized. Some authors see the state as a site of political struggle; others conceive of government as a place of consensus and conciliation in the service of the general good. Thus, contributors recommend different kinds of activities, and they advise different alliances and tactics. Judith Martin, in particular, makes a unique contribution to this collection; like other authors, she identifies the need for political and policy change, yet she simultaneously urges child care advocates to focus on extra-parliamentary sites for social change.
Taken together, the authors provide a mix of analytic tools and insights. Their careful and considered arguments enrich our capacity to understand how and why child care advocacy and policy unfold as they do-their arguments illuminate the possibilities and limitations of future politics.
Changing Child Care
The contributors to Changing Child Care debate child care as a political enterprise. The book is an historical retrospective, but as child care advocacy is a still unfinished campaign, this collection inevitably raises questions about the future. What can be gleaned about child care activism in the coming years?
The child care movement confronts significant challenges. In an era of welfare state restructuring, the prospects of comprehensive child care are uncertain. Some of the "debt and deficit" mania is abating in light of a national budget surplus, but there seems to be little political will for public spending on new programs at the federal level, and signals are mixed across the provinces. As I write in this introduction, the progressive legislation passed in 2001 in British Columbia by the NDP looks vulnerable to repeal by the newly elected Liberal government. In Manitoba, over 22,000 people have just responded to a government consultation on a new "vision" for child care, but the provincial NDP appears unwilling to implement fundamental change. Ontario's Conservative government has slashed its child care budget and downloaded costs onto municipalities, fragmenting provincial advocacy into small scale battles with local city councils. On the good news front, Nova Scotia has recently announced new spending of $66 million on early childhood development services, and Quebec seems determined to proceed with its comprehensive policy.
In the era of a Social Union Framework Agreement (SUFA) and a new federal Early Childhood Development Services Agreement, does a campaign for a national child care program make any sense? Should advocates abandon a federal campaign targeting the Canadian government and regroup in provincial or local lobbies? Should they seek broad alliances around a range of family policies, or do they need to continue to make child care a strong focus? Across the country, advocates are struggling with these and other questions. In the meantime, parents who want and need child care can rarely find or afford licensed, high-quality care. The child care workers who care for Canada's children are still paid on a par with zoo-keepers and parking lot attendants. Most Canadians support the idea that governments should actively help parents with their caregiving responsibilities; yet in all of Canada, only in Quebec are child care policy, funding and services are not seriously underdeveloped.
How and why has such a huge gap between public needs, public wants and child care service developed? This collection offers some historical reflections, in ways that may be useful for the future.
Looking backward, moving forward
Introduction from the anthology by Susan Prentice
1 | 2 | 3
Footnotes are available in the downloadable version of this essay, or in the book.
