Child care is an issue of increasing importance to governments, unions, employers and parents. Once provided by charitable groups and available only to those deemed underprivileged, child care has now become part of the mainstream political agenda. The Politics of Australian Child Care, the first comprehensive history of child care in Australia, examines the factors behind this transition.

Deborah Brennan shows that women, the major beneficiaries of child care, have also been the key shapers of policy and the main providers of care. While groups of women in Australia have mobilised around children's services for over a century, the women activists, trade unionists and 'femocrats' influential in shaping policy since the 1970s have a more radical agenda than their philanthropist predecessors.

The book covers the perennial debates about child care in Australia, such as whether it should encompass an educative role. It also provides a comparison with child care provisions in other countries, particularly Britain, the USA and Scandinavia.

Of particular interest is Brennan's analysis of child care policy under the Hawke and Keating governments. Despite increases in child care provision under Labor, the book argues that the ideals of the community child care movement are being eroded as policy shifts towards reliance on commercial centres and work-based child care.