About this Event
---
Universal Child Care: The Fight Then and Now
Panel Discussion - March 24, The People's Forum
Over the past decade, New York City has expanded public childcare with universal pre-K, 3-K, and the rollout of free care for some two-year-olds. But access remains uneven and far from universal. Across the city, organizers are pushing for something bigger: child care as a public good available to every family who needs it.
Today, the cost and labor of raising the next generation is still largely treated as a private burden ‒ borne by individual families and falling heavily on women, who often face the “double day” of paid work followed by unpaid caregiving.
This conversation is not new. Universal childcare was a central demand of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1971, Congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which would have created a national child care system. But President Richard Nixon vetoed the bill, warning it would promote “communal child-rearing” and undermine the family.
That veto helped launch decades of backlash against universal childcare, ensuring the work remained in the private sphere and on women’s backs.
More than fifty years later, the movement for universal childcare is building again ‒ including here in New York.
National Women’s Liberation NYC is hosting a panel discussion bringing together an organizer and a historian to explore the current push for universal childcare and the history of the fight that nearly won it before.
---
Panelists
Rebecca Bailin
Founder and Executive Director,
NYUC is an organization advocating for universal childcare in New York. Through grassroots organizing, advocacy, and coalition-building, the group has helped push childcare to the center of city and state politics.
Kirsten Swinth
Professor of History,
Kirsten Swinth is a historian of U.S. feminism whose work examines women’s labor, family policy, and the feminist struggle over childcare and economic independence. Her research explores the history of feminist campaigns around work, care, and family policy in the twentieth century.
---
Event Details
📅 Tuesday, March 24
🕖 7:00–9:00 PM
📍 The People’s Forum
320 W 37th St, New York, NY
---
If you're new to the history of the 1971 childcare fight, this short TIME article from 2021 provides a helpful overview:
https://time.com/6125667/universal-childcare-history-nixon-veto/
Join us for a conversation about where the childcare fight stands today ‒ and what it would take to finally win universal childcare.
---
National Women's Liberation (NWL) is a multiracial feminist group for women who want to fight male supremacy and gain more freedom for women. Our priorities are abortion and birth control, overthrowing the double day, and feminist consciousness-raising.
NWL meetings are for women and trans people who do not benefit from male supremacy because we believe we should lead the fight for our liberation. In addition, women of color meet separately from white women in Women of Color Caucus (WOCC) meetings to examine their experiences with white supremacy and how it intersects with male supremacy to oppress women of color.
Learn more at womensliberation.org.
Questions? Email [email protected].
---
Header image: Women’s Liberation Movement demonstration for childcare, New York City, 1973. Photo by Bettye Lane.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The People's Forum, 320 West 37th Street, New York, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 5.00
