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History Social History

Working Mothers and the Child Care Dilemma

A History of British Columbia’s Social Policy

by (author) Lisa Pasolli

Publisher
UBC Press
Initial publish date
Jan 2016
Category
Social History, Women's Studies, Babysitting, Day Care & Child Care
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780774829243
    Publish Date
    Jan 2016
    List Price
    $32.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780774829267
    Publish Date
    May 2015
    List Price
    $32.99
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780774829236
    Publish Date
    May 2015
    List Price
    $95.00

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Description

During the twentieth century, child care policy in British Columbia matured in the shadow of a persistent political uneasiness with working motherhood. Charting the growth of the child care movement in this province, Working Mothers and the Child Care Dilemma examines how ideas about motherhood, paid work, and social welfare have influenced universal child care discussions and consistently pushed access to child care to the margins of BC’s social policy agenda. Lisa Pasolli also celebrates those who have lobbied for child care as part of women’s rights as workers, parents, and citizens.

About the author

Awards

  • Winner, Clio BC, Canadian Historical Association
  • Short-listed, Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book on British Columbia, University of British Columbia Library

Contributor Notes

Lisa Pasolli is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies at Trent University. She researches the history of child care, social welfare, and women and gender in twentieth-century Canada. Her work has been published in BC Studies and Acadiensis.

Editorial Reviews

To assemble this impeccable book, Lisa Pasolli has formulated impressive questions … Readers … will be interested to discover how contemporary debates over the importance of early education, and over the educational disadvantages of parents and workers who bore the consequences of the deficiencies of child care, became part and parcel of The Child Care Dilemma.

Historical Studies in Education

Reading Pasolli’s extensively documented book is a sobering exploration of twentieth and twenty-first century policies guided by familiar rhetoric about why mothers partnered with male breadwinners should not work and why mothers without breadwinners should work (in low-wage jobs) to redeem themselves … In the end, Pasolli’s history of childcare policy in British Columbia tells us that out-of-home childcare is a radical claim that requires a paradigmatic shift in thinking about working mothers and the ‘‘contested nature of social citizenship.’’

Pacific Historical Review

Much more than connecting the chronological dots (which is itself an important achievement), Pasolli provides an analytical explanation for the rather discouraging continuities that shaped decades of public debate and marginalized the childcare and employment needs of women and families … A smart book on an issue we continue to wrestle with, and the sole monograph on the topic from a historian’s perspective, it will find its way on to many bookshelves.

BC Studies