About BC Books Online
BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
Description
During the twentieth century, child care policy in British Columbia matured in the shadow of a persistent political uneasiness with working motherhood. Charting the growth of the child care movement in this province, Working Mothers and the Child Care Dilemma examines how ideas about motherhood, paid work, and social welfare have influenced universal child care discussions and consistently pushed access to child care to the margins of BC’s social policy agenda. Lisa Pasolli also celebrates those who have lobbied for child care as part of women’s rights as workers, parents, and citizens.
Contributor Notes
Lisa Pasolli is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies at Trent University. She researches the history of child care, social welfare, and women and gender in twentieth-century Canada. Her work has been published in BC Studies and Acadiensis.
Awards
- Short-listed, Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book on British Columbia, University of British Columbia Library
- Winner, Clio BC, Canadian Historical Association
Editorial Reviews
Much more than connecting the chronological dots (which is itself an important achievement), Pasolli provides an analytical explanation for the rather discouraging continuities that shaped decades of public debate and marginalized the childcare and employment needs of women and families … A smart book on an issue we continue to wrestle with, and the sole monograph on the topic from a historian’s perspective, it will find its way on to many bookshelves.
— BC Studies
Reading Pasolli’s extensively documented book is a sobering exploration of twentieth and twenty-first century policies guided by familiar rhetoric about why mothers partnered with male breadwinners should not work and why mothers without breadwinners should work (in low-wage jobs) to redeem themselves … In the end, Pasolli’s history of childcare policy in British Columbia tells us that out-of-home childcare is a radical claim that requires a paradigmatic shift in thinking about working mothers and the ‘‘contested nature of social citizenship.’’
— Pacific Historical Review
To assemble this impeccable book, Lisa Pasolli has formulated impressive questions … Readers … will be interested to discover how contemporary debates over the importance of early education, and over the educational disadvantages of parents and workers who bore the consequences of the deficiencies of child care, became part and parcel of The Child Care Dilemma.
— Historical Studies in Education
