Human Rights Quarterly

Childcare has long been a priority issue for women's rights advocates in the United States, yet the United States continues to compare unfavorably to other industrialized nations that extend childcare services and other supports to assist families with young children. Provisions of the Children's Rights Convention, as well as language in CEDAW and the ICCPR, suggest that childcare should be viewed through a human rights framework rather than the more limited framework of domestic law. This article focuses on the Children's Rights Convention, analyzing the Convention's impact on childcare in ratifying countries. In particular, the article analyzes childcare policies of Australia, Finland, France and Sweden, while also reviewing exchanges between the Committee on the Rights of the Child and less industrialized countries. The authors conclude that framing childcare as a human rights concern might shift the internal politics of the issue by energizing advocates as well as enlisting new sources of pressure to combat this aspect of the US policy of exceptionalism.