| Reviews / Comptes Rendus | Labour/Le Travail, 54

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Susan Prentice, ed., Changing Child Care: Five Decades of Child Care Advocacy and Policy in Canada (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing 2001)

THIS ANTHOLOGY on child care history and practice fills a gap in the literature on the Canadian welfare state. The ten articles featured in the book are drawn from a growing body of research analyzing child care policy reform in Canada. Many of the book's contributors are also advocates, including parents, early childhood educators, union representatives, government officials, and policy analysts. What unites them is the conviction that child care is a public responsibility and not a private family matter, and the concern that child care services and policies in Canada have failed to keep pace with the growing need. The authors chosen for this anthology all start from the premise that advocacy is effective and has had an impact on how child care is conceptualized, developed, and delivered. The book is part of a larger research project co-sponsored by Human Resources Development (HRD) and the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada (CCAAC) that includes interviews with child care advocates and a bibliography of archival sources. These can be accessed on line at <www.childcareadvocacy.ca/history>.

In the last fifteen years, a new body of research has emerged emphasizing the impact of social policy regimes on women, and critiquing the "gender bias" or "gender blindness" of much of the existing literature on welfare state reform. The first two authors in this anthology belong to this new school. Wendy Atkins chronicles the impact of first-wave feminism, maternalism, and social eugenics on child care in Toronto. Atkins brings the concepts of race/ethnicity, gender, and class into play in her study of how the early 20th-century practices of the women who lead the day nursery movement had moral regulatory and social control overtones. Atkins describes how the female creators of the Toronto Creche were inspired by the ideology of social eugenics to assimilate the children of female immigrant workers into the Canadian cultural fabric. Despite these moralistic beginnings, the work of these female philanthropists set the wheels in motion for the later development of a publicly funded child care system in Toronto. Jane Jenson is well known for her research analyzing how governments preoccupied with population decline at the beginning of the 20th century gave rise to pronatalist and maternalist social policies in Britain and France. She uses a similar framework here to explain how policies have emerged in support of working mothers as a consequence of Quebec nationalism. Jenson recounts how parent-run child care centers were extended and institutionalized by the Parti Québécois, with the backing of an unusual coalition of women's groups, "femocrats," demographers, and the conservative "family" movement. As most Canadians are aware, the result was a package of comprehensive social policies unparalleled anywhere else in Canada, including a publicly funded child care system where parents paid "five dollars a day," a parental leave policy extending benefits beyond those provided by federal legislation, generous family allowance, housing and health care entitlements, and laws extending benefits to part-time workers, the majority of whom are women.

Many of the authors in this anthology examine the challenges of bringing about welfare reform in the neo-conservative 1990s. Cheryl Collier argues that the determining factor shaping child care policies currently is a government's commitment to a political vision and ideology. Using evidence from a study comparing BC and Ontario, Collier rejects one-dimensional arguments that place economic factors at the forefront of policy change. In her comparison of the New Democratic Party (NDP) and its opposition in BC and in Ontario, she demonstrates that the NDP managed to maintain a publicly funded child care system despite strong pressures to privatize these services; yet, when right wing governments had their turn in office, their predisposition towards neo-liberal ideas caused them to dismantle the public child care system. A more detailed analysis of the impact of neo-liberalism on child care is provided by Vappu Tyyska. In 1995, when the NDP government of Bob Rae was defeated by Mike Harris' Conservative regime, Ontario had the third highest per capita expenditures on child care in Canada. The incoming government disrupted the care of approximately 60,000 children by canceling early kindergarten, and affected tens of thousands more children by slashing direct funding to child care centres. The NDP's planned conversion of for-profit spaces to the public system was overturned, and in an unprecedented move, municipalities were allowed to channel government subsidies towards private operators. The new government also tried to reverse the decision to include child care workers in the Pay Equity Act, and it clawed back subsidies and funding to low-income parents and special needs children. Syyka concludes that the neo-liberal model offloads the responsibility for and costs of child care onto parents, child care workers and municipalities, leaving many families with no other recourse but to opt for unregulated care.

In addition to the political, sociological, and historical questions tackled above, the book has a second goal of critiquing the child care movement's effectiveness. Towards this end, many of the authors address the questions: what power do advocates have to influence state polices, and how successful have they been? Both Tom Langford and Sheila Campbell take Alberta as a case study of how the structure of political opportunities at different points in time affects policy outcomes. Langford argues that while earlier activism in the 1960s and 1970s was successful, its influence has since waned. He says this is so because the climate then for advocacy was the unique product of a particular set of historical circumstances that would not be repeated; governments, recognizing their own lack of expertise as well as the inadequacies of child care, viewed advocates as their allies during this seminal period. He provides ample evidence that by the late 1970s, the child care movement had moved from "insider" to "outsider" status, with municipal bureaucrats even being shut out of provincial decision-making. Sheila Campbell pinpoints the moment advocates began to lose ground: it occurred when advocacy passed into the hands of the "professional" daycare stakeholders and the vital involvement of the broader public was lost, including the support of prominent citizens with direct access to decision-makers. In her assessment of the child care movement's progress, Campbell concludes that timing is everything: pressure can be brought to bear on politicians during critical moments by enlisting media attention and generating widespread interest, and advocacy can be effective during election periods; however, in the absence of such opportunities, the child care movement has been stalled. Drawing on their experience lobbying for services for children with special needs, authors Sharon Hope Irwin and Donna Lero find that the pattern of advocacy in Canada has been innovation-driven. When funds were more readily available through the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP), daycare "pioneers" were able to break new ground. They warn us that such social experiments are fragile and unsustainable, though, if they are not subsequently institutionalized by governments.

Many of the authors in this anthology express concern about the changing dynamics of Canadian federalism. Advocacy is tricky in Canada because programs must be broad yet flexible enough for provinces to implement them. With the division of responsibilities among the three levels of government remaining ill-defined and contentious, advocates must target their efforts at all three, draining precious energy and resources. Another aspect of federalism is the fact that policy results are often unintentional; for example, from 1966 to the late 1980s, cost-sharing arrangements under the CAP encouraged many local governments to fund non-profit child care services; however, despite being on the agenda of the federal parties for more than a decade now, no national commitment to child care has actually materialized. The replacement of CAP by the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST) and the Social Union Framework Agreement (SUFA) sets a dangerous precedent by allowing provincial regimes to opt out of support for child care.

Should advocates work for incremental measures or should they insist on sweeping and transformative changes? This is perhaps the most important question raised by the authors in this anthology. Linda White and Judith Martin come down on opposite sides of this issue. The contemporary child care movement was founded on a platform calling for a universally accessible, publicly funded, not-for-profit national child care system. Linda White asks if this utopian vision has operated for or against the movement's long-term interests. White is critical of child care advocates for adopting what she calls a "narrow ideological position" in favour of women's equality and against commercial child care, and she approves of a recent shift in strategy, which puts forth a more "sophisticated" and "palatable" set of demands, linking child care with less controversial issues such as child poverty reduction and crime prevention. Although also critical of some of the strategies child care advocates have used in the past, Judith Martin, by contrast, faults the movement for having a platform that is "too adaptive" to the dominant culture. She argues that a vision for child care should grow out of an emancipatory analysis of gender issues and a critique of what society offers in the way of support for parents. In lieu of focusing on commodifying child care services outside the family, Martin suggests there should be more emphasis on making it possible for both parents to become involved with the care of children by providing a continuum of services to help them balance their family and working lives. In order to achieve this, Martin urges us to reject the current stakeholder model that marginalizes the advocacy movement as a "special interest group." Instead, she says we should expand the debate to include a broad range of citizens, and only then will a discourse emerge that is capable of influencing our political culture enough to bring about lasting social change.

One suspects that most of the authors in this anthology would follow Martin's advice and not White's. The evidence mounted within these pages makes a compelling argument that advocacy has been most effective when it emanates from a broad-based coalition of social forces. Activists may have to heed White and temporarily adapt their tactics to these neo-conservative times, but in doing so, they should not lose sight of their vision for a national child care system whose roots originate with the emancipatory movements of the 1960s and 1970s. While we await the turn of the neo-conservative political tide, in the words of Vappu Tyyska, "it is all the more important to get out the strongest possible message. This includes advocating the long-standing vision of child care as a universal service that promotes equality." (146)


Laurel Whitney Simon Fraser University

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