Welfare state development and child care policies: A comparative analysis of France, Canada, and the United States

This thesis analyzes the historical and contemporary development of child care policies and programs in France, Canada, and the United States. It explains why France developed a more generous system of child care than most European and North American countries. It also explains why Canada, considered to have a more generous welfare state than the United States, has much lower levels of child care than other western industrialized countries, including the United States.;The explanation offered links the literature on historical institutionalism and ideas, and focuses on the role of institutionalized actors as carriers of ideas. The thesis argues that the higher levels of child care programs in France and the United States results from the greater institutionalization of maternalist ideas. Maternalism connotes the exaltation of motherhood and the home, the promotion of "motherhood" values such as care and nurturance, and the application of those values in government, the community, and the workplace. The institutionalization of maternalist ideas legitimized state action in developing policies for women and children, and provided the basis for the later expansion of child care policies. Their lack of institutionalization in Canada, in turn, explains why it has meagre child care programs compared to the United States.;The findings highlight an important dichotomy between policy goal and policy effect in the three cases. Policy expansion in the United States and France occurred not within norms of women's equality but within norms of maternalism. The process of institutionalization of ideas and policies proved to be both narrowing and transformative. While the original policies did not necessarily support women, the effect of implementing maternalist-based policies was to provide the normative basis upon which later programs such as child care could be built.;This thesis demonstrates the powerful role of ideas and norms in policy development, as well as the important interaction of ideas, institutions, and actors. It also refutes the feminist argument that the presence of maternalism, rather than its absence, is to blame for low levels of child care. It shows that maternalism provides a better normative base upon which to build child care policies than liberal feminism.