This report examines the relationship between the federal government's child care programs and policies and the federal government's goal of equal opportunity for women. Specifically, the report reviews three dimensions of federal child care activities: programs and policies whose primary purpose is to assist families with child care; the…

During the 1920s, progressive women activists invented welfare to help mothers and their children survive when breadwinning fathers either died or abandoned their families. During the 1930s, the local mothers' pension programs of the Progressive Era became part of the emerging national welfare state, which was conceived to relieve poor single…