ABSTRACT
One of the most significant recent social and economic changes in North America is the explosion in the numbers of mothers in paid employment. In the last twenty-five years women with children aged less than 6 years old have been the fastest growing group of women entering paid employment. Yet the demand for child care continues to outstrip supply, often forcing parents to make less than satisfactory arrangements. This, along with the continued trend toward large numbers of women with young children in the labor force, highlights the pressing need for good quality affordable and accessible child care. However, unlike many European countries, neither the US nor Canada has a national child care policy. Rather than offering a comprehensive system of universally available child care, both countries have policies and pieces of legislation generated and implemented by various levels of government for various purposes at various points in time. This haphazard history and fragmentation compels many commentators to describe child care in Canada and the US as “patchwork” and “piecemeal.” This patchwork system means that there are noticeable spatial variations in child care provision, as well as differential access to that child care in terms of social characteristics (whereas there is often less variation in countries with national child care policies).
