janr@orca.UUCP (Jan Rowell) (12/05/83)
This month's (or maybe last month's by now) Harper's magazine has an article that discusses the history of women in the workforce since WWII and the how it has affected the kinds and amount of childcare that's available. The author's thesis is that we're still suffering from the fact that after WWII, women were under heavy pressure to stay home and have full responsibility for molding their children. In Europe, by contrast, women remained in the workforce after the war, and thus haven't had to overcome such entrenched feelings that they should be at home and that we shouldn't set up childcare facilities because that would just encourage women to work (like the argument that teaching teenagers about birth control encourages them to have sex). It's an interesting article.