Alberta's Day Care Controversy: From 1908 to 2009 and Beyond

by Tom Langford

Overview

Day care in Alberta has had a remarkably durable history as a controversial issue. Since the late 1950s, disputes over day care programs, policies, and funding have been a recurring feature of political life in the province. Alberta’s Day Care Controversy traces the development of day care policies and programs in Alberta, with particular emphasis on policy decisions and program initiatives that have provoked considerable debate and struggle among citizens. For most of Alberta’s first fifty years as a province, day care was treated as a private rather than a public issue. Beginning in the late 1950s, however, debates about day care began to appear regularly on the public record. Dr. Tom Langford brings to light the public controversies that occurred during the last four decades of the twentieth century and the first decade of the new millennium, placing contemporary issues in historical context and anticipating the elements of future policy struggles.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781926836317
Publisher:	Athabasca University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	425
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Tom Langford is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary. His research focuses on globalization, labour, and the politics of early learning and child care.

Table of Contents

Tables Abbreviations Timeline Acknowledgements 1 Introduction Research Strategy, Themes, and Scope 2 Early Efforts to Organize Day Nurseries, 1908–45 3 The 1960s Citizen Action, Civil Servants, and Municipal Initiatives Lead the Way 4 The 1970s Governments Fund High-Quality Day Cares as Preventive Social Services 5 Years of Turmoil, 1979–82 A New System for Day Care Is Born 6 From Corporatized Chains to “Mom and Pop” Centres Diversity in Commercial Day Care 7 Day Care in Question, 1984–99 8 Municipalities and Lighthouse Child Care, 1980–99 9 Day Care into the Future Trends, Patterns, Recent Developments, and Unresolved Issues Appendix A Supplementary Tables Appendix B List of Taped Interviews Notes References Index