The care and education of pre-school children presents a perfect storm of conflicts among the needs of women, children, and states, particularly in societies that maintain a sharp barrier between the private and public spheres such as the United States and Britain. American and British policymakers attempted to address these tensions in the early 1970s by proposing universal child care programs. In the U.S., the Comprehensive Child Development Act (CDA) of 1971 passed both the House and Senate by overwhelming majorities but was vetoed by President Richard Nixon. Going further than any proposal before or since to establish a national public child care program, it would have made public child care centers universally available on a sliding-scale basis: free for children of the poor but available for a fee to middle and upper class children. The British Department of Education and Science, led by Secretary Margaret Thatcher, published a White Paper in 1972 calling for nursery expansion, but it was never fully implemented. It proposed a dramatic expansion of public nursery education, so that it might be available within a decade to all families with three and four year old children who chose to utilize it, with funds being made available first to local areas designated as most in need. My dissertation presents an in-depth account of the political bargaining that occurred during this period in both countries, and addresses the factors that contributed to the failure of these universal child care proposals. Although neither child care program was implemented (or fully implemented, in the British case), the proposals raise important questions about the relationship between the state and the family. It also analyzes the aftermath of these policies’ failure through to the end of Thatcher and Reagan administrations. It then turns to the mid-1990s which represent a key divergence in the two nations’ paths, as Britain returned to its earlier nursery education initiatives for all children and the United States further entrenched its reliance on the private market for the provision of care. The passage in 1997 of the British National Child Care Strategy, a central component of New Labour’s War on Child Poverty, included a free and universal preschool provision for all three and four year old children. In the U.S., by contrast, the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act expanded child care subsidies only for eligible low income children below the age of five, thus continuing the American reliance on the free market to provide this necessary service for most families. I argue that conflicting visions of child care as an educational intervention versus a welfare service—and as a universal provision benefitting all children and families versus a means-tested program targeted to low-income families—explain the differences between these two countries’ policy developments in the 1990s. Specifically, my dissertation examines how British and American conceptions of motherhood and child-rearing compare, and how policymakers viewed the role of the state in intervening with parental responsibilities. In the United States, Republicans balked at the idea of public child care provision for the nonpoor, yet British politicians of both major parties supported universal public interventions in the early years at various points across the period.

This study of early years services in India explores the take-up of the government ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services Scheme) and RGNCS (Rajiv Gandhi National Crèche Scheme), and the factors affecting their uptake by working mothers in a Delhi slum. Policy cannot assess programme outcomes effectively without understanding how services are implemented. Existing literature indicates that programme impact is related to programme take-up, with non-take-up being a complex phenomenon affected by factors operating at multiple levels of the policy process. The study makes original contributions by examining user perspectives on early childhood education and care (ECEC) in the Indian context; in being the first to research any aspect of the RGNCS; and in utilizing Critical Realism as the underlying philosophical, theoretical and methodological paradigm for studying programme uptake. It poses five research questions that examine mothers' childcare arrangements and needs/expectations from services, their take-up of government programmes and component services, and the combination of factors affecting uptake. Study findings are based on surveys with 200 working mothers and 37 children's centre workers, and interviews with 15 policy experts. Findings reveal childcare arrangements and needs/expectations to vary by family structure, child's age, and mother's age and employment. ICDS uptake is found to be higher (54.3% of all mothers), than RGNCS (18.6%). An explanatory framework for analysing take-up reveals that low take-up results from a combination of multiple factors, most significantly programme characteristics for the ICDS, and participant characteristics for the RGNCS. Two theoretical frameworks frame this analysis - Wolman's (1981) determinants of programme success and failure, and the 'barriers and bridges' to programme uptake. Critical policy analysis further identifies the effects of the policy meaning-making processes, and the role of local 'street-level bureaucrats' in take-up. Both programmes display 'conflicted policy success' vis-à-vis take-up when categorised using McConnell's (2010) criteria for programme 'success' and 'failure'. Policy implications include strategies for increasing programme uptake, and a policy focus upon service users and women in the informal economy, recognition of the dual role of ECEC, and the importance of evidence-creation for interactive governance.

This dissertation includes three papers that examine the role of child care policy in promoting early childhood education and care and parental labor supply. Paper one investigates the effects of universal pre-kindergarten on center-based early education and care enrollment and child care expenditures by household income with a focus on middle-income children. Paper two considers how the generosity of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) benefits is associated with child care utilization and maternal labor supply. Paper three assesses the role of coresident grandparents in parental labor supply during the COVID-19 pandemic.