ABSTRACT
Childcare as a policy issue has increasingly become the subject of political and social debate as well as academic research and analysis in Ireland. Because so few married women were in the workforce until the early 1970s, and even then the proportion was quite small, childcare was not on the policy agenda. Perhaps the first time childcare was raised as a policy issue was in the Report of the First Commission on the Status of Women in 1972, and it has been the subject of national discussion in Ireland since the early 1980s as mothers increasingly entered the labour force. At all points, from the 1970s onwards, the participation of women in the prime childbearing age group increased at an even more rapid rate than that of other groups of married women. Childcare was referred to as a sub-category under “Women and Employment” and it was referred to as “Day-Care for Children.”.
