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This paper will discuss in detail both the policy changes and shifts in the way that the child care debate was framed from the 1970s to the 2000s, and will argue that the child investment perspective allowed both policy makers and child care activists to de-emphasize women's rights in terms of justifications for child care. In fact, Quebec, the only Canadian province which has in place

a universal, affordable, and regulated child care system is also a provincial outlier in terms of its emphasis on child care as a citizenship right for women rather than a social investment. Nevertheless, I will argue that the implementation by Prime Minister Harper of the Universal Child Care Benefit represents disembarkation from both women's equality and social investment perspectives, and instead reflects an ideological perspective that has constrained the creation of a universal child care system since its conception in the 1970s. emphasizing parental choice in child care.