ABSTRACT
From the early days of the socialist movement thought in this area has been divided between liberating women from the burden of child care, with its emphasis on the mothers, and on the care and proper upbringing of the children themselves. As in many non-socialist countries, there have been those who have seen the provision of child-care services as necessary when the demands of the economy required mothers to work (as in many countries during World War Two), while retaining traditional ideas about the place of women in the home and the family as the best child educator during its early years. The ABC of Communism (section on the family) expresses these various attitudes, arguing that since ‘the faculty of educating children is far more rarely encountered than the faculty of begetting them’ the ‘parents’ claim to bring up their own children' should be ‘laughed out of court’ (Carr, 1969, p. 285). It goes on to speak of the millions of mothers who will be
freed for productive work and for self-culture. They will be freed from the soul-destroying routine of housework, and from the end-less round of petty duties which are involved in the education of children in their own homes,
(ibid.)