Seattle Church Opens a ‘Checkroom’ for Children
First Presbyterian will care for working mothers' children from morning to night for seven cents a day—no questions asked.
Seattle — Babies will be checked at the new day nursery which will be opened in the First Presbyterian Church, without discrimination as to who their parents are. “Women will attend card parties and other women insist on shopping,” said Rev. M. A. Matthews, pastor of the church. “Quite a number of others are so situated that they must go out and make their own living, and it is these that we particularly wish to reach. The nursery will take care of children from 7 o'clock in the morning till the last check is presented at night. Plenty of nurses will be in attendance, and the cost will be about 7 cents a day for each child.”
“Quite a number of others are so situated that they must go out and make their own living, and it is these that we particularly wish to reach.”
A century before the modern childcare crisis, a Seattle church treated drop-in care as basic infrastructure for working women. The seven-cents-a-day nursery is a reminder that affordable childcare has long been framed as both charity and economic necessity.
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