¹ In a generic sense child daycare just means looking after, keeping an eye on, children during the day, in whatever context. It thus includes nursery schools. However, at times in the following discussion I shall refer to child daycare, or day nurseries, as distinct from nursery education, following the existing institutional distinction in Britain.

It should also be noted that, although provision for school-age children is also an important issue, this article concentrates on provision for the under-5s.

² See Guardian, 1 12 1993.Google Scholar

³ This has, for instance, been forcefully argued in a recent article; Edwards, Julia and McKie, Linda, ‘Equal Opportunities and Public Policy: An Agenda for Change’, Public Policy and Administration, 8 (1993), 54–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ See Daily Telegraph, 2 06 1993, p. 9.Google Scholar

⁵ There are obvious problems in interpreting responses to such surveys. To what extent do existing constraints prevent women from even contemplating paid employment? Or is it economic necessity rather than preference that makes some mothers want paid employment? Even so, such surveys have regularly shown that a majority of mothers of young children, not in paid employment, intend going back to work eventually and that a sizeable minority of these would go back sooner if convenient, affordable child care was available. There has also been some tendency for these proportions to increase over time.

⁶ This is discussed in Lovenduski, Joni and Randall, Vicky, Contemporary Feminist Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), chap. 8.Google Scholar

⁷ Thus in general the distinction between public or state and private provision is less clear-cut, with subsidized church nurseries playing a significant role for instance in Italy, Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Compulsory school age also tends to be higher, 6 in most countries and 7 in Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands.

⁸ The question of how Britain compares with specific other European countries, and why, is taken further in Randall, Vicky, ‘The Politics of Child Daycare: Some European Comparisons’, Swiss Yearbook of Political Science 94, 34 (Berne: Editions Paul Haupt, 1994), pp. 165–77.Google Scholar

⁹ See Dahlerup, Drude, ‘Confusing Concepts – Confusing Reality: A Theoretical Discussion of the Patriarchal State’, in Sassoon, Anne Showstack, ed., Women and the State (London: Hutchinson, 1987), pp. 93–127.Google Scholar

¹⁰ An example would be Walby, Sylvia, Theorising Patriarchy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).Google Scholar

¹¹ This is argued at greater length in Randall, Vicky, Women and Politics, revised edn (London: Macmillan, 1987), chap. 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² Actual secondary sources for pursuing this question are few in number. There are helpful accounts of ‘war nursery’ policy in Riley, Denise, War in the Nursery (London: Virago, 1983)Google Scholar, and of the development of national policy up until the mid-1970s in Tizard, Jack, Moss, Peter and Perry, Jane, All Our Children (London: Temple Smith, 1976).Google Scholar The only extended attempt to provide a political analysis of child-care policy making is in Mary Ruggie's insightful study, The State and Working Women: A Comparative Study of Britain and Sweden (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar, whose coverage does not, of course, extend over the 1980s.

¹³ See Hall, Catherine, ‘The Early Formation of Victorian Domestic Ideology’, in Hall, Catherine, White, Male and Middle-Class (London: Polity Press, 1990), chap. 3Google Scholar; Lewis, Jane, The Politics of Motherhood (London: Croom-Helm, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴ Lowi, Theodore J., ‘American Business, Public Policy, Case-Studies, and Political Theory’, World Politics, 16 (1964), 677–715.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹⁶ Freeman, , ‘National Styles and Policy Sectors’, p. 467.Google Scholar

¹⁷ See Tizard, , All Our Children, p. 58.Google Scholar

¹⁸ The full titles of these reports are: Central Advisory Council for Education (England), Children and their Primary Schools (London: HMSO, 1967)Google Scholar; Committee on Local Authority and Allied Social Services, Report of the Committee (London: HMSO, 1968)Google Scholar; Committee on One Parent Families, Report of the Committee (London: HMSO, 1974). The quotation from the Finer Report is from Vol. I, p. 462.Google Scholar

¹⁹ DrOwen, David MP, ‘Foreword’, in Low Cost Day Provision for the Under Fives (Department of Health and Social Security and Department of Education and Science, 1976), p. 1.Google Scholar

²⁰ As far as I can tell, the first official usage of the term ‘under-5s’ was in the Government White Paper, Education: A Framework for Expansion (London: HMSO, Cmnd 5174, 1972).Google Scholar

²¹ See Edwards, Rosaline, Beginnings: The Department of Health's New Under-Fives Initiative 1989–1992 (London: National Children's Bureau, 1992).Google Scholar

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²⁴ Ruggie, , The State and Working WomenGoogle Scholar; Equal Opportunities Commission, The Key to Real Choice (Manchester: EOC, 1990).Google Scholar

²⁵ This is illustrated, for instance, by Marchbank, Jennifer, ‘Agenda-setting, Policy-making and the Marginalization of Women’ (doctoral dissertation, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, 1994).Google Scholar

²⁶ See Davies, Patricia Wynn, ‘Child-care allowance was Hunt's initiative’, Independent, 4 12 1993.Google Scholar

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²⁸ Benn, Melissa, ‘Wandsworth—a cut above the rest’, Guardian (Society), 26 02 1992.Google Scholar

²⁹ Figures drawn from Moss, Peter, ‘Day Care Policy and Provision in Britain’, in Moss, Peter and Melhuish, Edward, eds, Current Issues in Day Care for Young Children (London: HMSO, 1991).Google Scholar

³⁰ Holterman, Sally, Investing in Young Children: Costing an Education and Day Care Service (London: National Children's Bureau, 1992).Google Scholar

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