EDUCATION AS CHILDCARE.

INTRODUCTION 1464 I. MAKING CARE "PRIVATE" 1467 A. Models of Dependency 1467 B. The Family as Childcare 1469 C. Subsidizing Care and Facilitating Work 1471 1. The Founding and the [...]
American parents have their feet in two camps: one, the vast, state-sponsored project of education, and another, the highly privatized world of childcare. Much has been made of the fact that there are few public supports for families and childcare. But what often goes unstated is that the provision of public education effectively serves as a significant "care" subsidy. To be sure, most are loath to frame public education in this way, but as the recent COVID-19 pandemic lays bare, in fact, the provision of public education does serve as critical childcare scaffolding for families, enabling workplace participation and productivity. The crisis of caregiving that resulted when families lost access to in-person education--for many their sole state subsidy for the provision of care--revealed the ways in which education and childcare are necessary bedfellows. Although education and childcare, two sides of the childrearing coin, share deep roots in American society, they have, since the early twentieth century, been disaggregated. Though education and childcare occupy separate spheres, the pandemic has challenged us to reevaluate the ways in which education and care interact both with one another and with the state. Drawing on a history in which education and childcare were understood as unified, this Article considers how these two core aspects of childrearing might again be brought together as part of a system of public provision for families. More particularly, it suggests that the time is right to reconsider not only the role of education and childcare vis-a-vis the state, but also the ways in which education and childcare comprise dual parts of a spectrum of care.