ABSTRACT
The introduction places the book in the context of women’s history, progressive education and early childhood history, New Deal and Cold War history, and children’s history. It offers an answer to the question, “Why has the WPA nursery school program been so forgotten?” Women’s historians, both those who focused on working women in the 1980s and American motherhood in the 1990s, followed the lead of early 1970s scholars, who argued that World War II was a more important watershed than the New Deal. Recently, women’s historians have shifted emphasis away from World War II to a re-examination of women in postwar America. In neither scenario has the WPA nursery school program played a large role in scholarly analysis. Progressive education historians focus largely on K-12 reform while early childhood scholars write works on pioneers, which often lack historic context. New Deal historians continue to ignore the program while ties to the New Deal remain little explored in most Cold War studies. However, children’s historians, especially William Tuttle and Barbara Beatty, have recently called attention to the program’s significance, and my book builds upon their insights.
