publications

The Need for Daycare, 1915

This year, the day care problem is a red hot issue. Both state and national senators are

wrestling with the question of how to adequately care for the children of working parents. It

seems like a very modern problem.



But Nebraska women have always worked. Most of this work was invisible, since it wasn’t

done for wages, and it was done in the home or on the farm. Still, some women worked for

wages outside the home. And if these women had children, they had to worry about what we

now call “daycare.”



Immigrant women were among those most likely to work for wages, often as domestic

helpers in “American” homes. Hattie Plum Williams, a sociologist from the University of

Nebraska studied these workers. She recounted the effect of the day labor of “Russian-

German” women in Lincoln on their children around 1910.



“The mother leaves the home at 7 or 7:30 in the morning and the small children have from 1

to 2 hours of undirected time to put in before school. Tasks which have been set for them are

either slovenly done or neglected altogether so that they may join their mates at play on the

streets or school grounds. Especially this is true of the boys both before and after school.

The girls on the other hand put in their time after school at the heavier housework which

must be done “after hours”–the washing, ironing, scrubbing, baking, etc. Although overwork

undoubtedly sometimes results, its effects on the whole are less detrimental than no work or

such carried on unsystematically.



“Not infrequently small children are locked in the house if the weather is bad or out of the

house if the weather is good. Not long since a pastor called upon a parishioner at 2 o’clock in

the afternoon and found three children, aged 2, 4, and 6, locked in the house since their

mother left in the early morning. Sometimes the most careful parents do this to avoid

indiscriminate playmates on the streets or danger from colds because the children are too

small to wrap themselves up carefully, but the fearful danger from fire makes it a hazardous

practice.



“In warm or pleasant weather the streets are swarming with children from 2 to 4 years old

whose mothers are gone from home half to three-quarters of the day.



“A small effort has been made by public and private means to meet this situation. A junior

kindergarten for children from 3 to 5 years of age in the North settlement partially meets the

need there; while one of the schools in the south side has accepted into its regular

kindergarten children from 3 to 5, although they are below the legal school age. It looks as if

a couple of day nurseries were urgently needed, but there is a question whether it would not

do more harm than good by encouraging out-of-home work where it was not necessary.

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Other Publications

The Bachelors’ Protective Union of Kearney

When the Bachelors' Protective Union gave a gala reception for two of its newly married, former members and their brides in March of 1890, the social club for young, ...

U.S. Weather Bureau in 1890s Nebraska

The U.S. Weather Bureau was established by an act of Congress on October 1, 1890. It took over the weather service that had been established in the office of the Chief ...

Canning the Way to Victory

During American participation in World War I the U.S. Food Administration, under the direction of Herbert Hoover, launched a massive campaign to persuade Americans to ...

The Shoemaker’s Ashes

"Edward Kuehl, one of the most peculiar characters that ever lived in Omaha, or anywhere else, was found dead in his bed last night in the back room of his place of ...

Crazy Horse Surrender Ledger Foreward

Red Dog, an Oglala Lakota who lived at the Red Cloud Agency, Nebraska, 1876-77 (Nebraska State Historical Society RG2955.ph).   In the summer of 1876, following the ...

Darryl F. Zanuck

Darryl F. Zanuck Darryl F. Zanuck (1902-1979), a native Nebraskan, produced some of Hollywood's most important and controversial films. He helped found 20th Century Fox ...

The Burlington’s Profitable Pork Special

Nebraska railroads were much concerned with developing an adequate economy in the areas they served. The Burlington, for example, had a long history of caring for the ...

Bungalow Filling Stations

After the giant Standard Oil Company was broken into thirty-four separate companies in 1911, the newly independent Standard Oil of Nebraska dominated the state's market ...

The Bull Fight

This is the perfect time of year for a visit to the old fishin' hole. But a group of fisherfolk from Plainview discovered that this bucolic pastime sometimes has ...

Buffalo Soldiers West

African-American soldiers on the western frontier are the focus of an exhibit at the Nebraska History Museum in Lincoln. Buffalo Soldiers West, on loan from the Colorado ...

Protection for Buffalo

The extermination of the buffalo on the Plains occurred largely between 1870 and 1885. The Nebraska State Journal of Lincoln on February 1, 1874, editorialized in vain ...

Buffalo Hunting

In late October 1877 young Rolf Johnson and three friends left their homes in Phelps County, Nebraska, for a buffalo hunt in northeastern Colorado. The hunt was not very ...
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