Excerpts from the introduction: Day care is now a fact of life for many Canadian families but for most of the past century it's been the subject of fierce debate. Turn-of-the-century day nurseries were considered little more than "child farms" by many, while politicians of the 1950s blamed juvenile delinquency on day cares and "crèches." More recently a debate has swirled around the merits of universal day care versus traditional parenting. CBC Archives looks at the changing face of day care, from its charitable beginnings more than a century ago to the ongoing fight for a federally funded system.