Childcare in Francoist Spain and the democratic transition was not about the needs of the mother, but about the needs of the state to educate children. While childcare centers had been provided by Republican aligned unions in the Spanish Civil Wars, with the start of the Franco period women were discouraged from participating in the workforce. Instead, they were expected to tend to their children in the home. The 1942 Ley de Sanidad Infantil y Maternal provided some assistance to working mothers, including maternity leave, economic incentives to breastfeed and infant childcare. By 1955, the Franco government offered educational programming for children aged three to five, but this was focused less on the needs of mothers for childcare and more on the desire to provide children with skills and abilities to succeed in later mandatory schooling. By 1970, children aged two to five were officially considered part of the educational system, even if attendance was not mandatory.
Childcare was an aspect of women's rights taken up during the democratic transition period, but it was only a very small aspect with inconsistent demands and little mobilization around the issue. State policies of the past were continued, with increased efforts to provide more pre-school opportunities to support later school success but without considering the needs of working parents. Political parties and unions were generally unconcerned with the needs of working mothers and providing them with state-supported childcare services. Reforms in the area of childcare were still needed after Spain finished its democratic transition.
History
Francoist period (1939 - 1975)
During the Spanish Civil War, Republican workers unions provided a number of services to assist in the war efforts. One of these was child care services for women working to help their cause. Auxilio Social, a mixed gendered Nationalist organization, also provided childcare services. In the immediate post-war period, the regime put tremendous pressure on women to leave the workforce, take care of their children in their own homes and breastfeed their babies, irrespective of any subsistence level survival actions taken by women.
One of the most important female labor activities in the Francoist period, especially between 1940 and 1970, was childcare. The regime used Sección Femenina and Acción Católica to impose its pro-nationalist policies on Spain through the concept of traditional womanhood, that demanded among other things that women tend to the home and be primary caregivers to their children. This was expected of women, even if they were required to take on extra work inside the home or were able to pay someone to do basic domestic tasks. Men were expected to be in the workforce, providing a steady income that would cover the costs of running the household. There was no differentiation in this period between paid and domestic work for women. Both were viewed as two parts of the same cause for women serving Spanish society.
Working pregnant women had some Government support when it came to childcare as a result of the 1942 Ley de Sanidad Infantil y Maternal. They were given six weeks of "paid rest" after the birth of their child, a cash prize from the Government if they made the choice to breastfeed their child, and a year of childcare services. Despite this, women were not encouraged to work outside the home as it was considered detrimental to the health of their children, with a mortality rate of 63 per 1000 births for housewives compared with 74 for women who worked in the home, and 162 for women who worked outside the home. Women who did breastfeed their babies and who worked outside the home were strongly condemned. The only general exception was widows.
Sección Feminina and Falange provided childcare services during the 1950s and 1960s to women working in the agriculture. Official women's participation in this sector was around 5.5%, but informal participation was much higher, resulting in the need for childcare.