page_title: Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park
section_title: Maritime and Ruth Powers Child Development Centers
hierarchical_section_title: Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park / Park attractions / Maritime and Ruth Powers Child Development Centers
caption_attribution_description: War workers' nursery. Mrs. Arlene Corbin (right), time checker in a Richmond, California shipyard brings two-and-a-half-year-old Arlene to a nursery school every morning before going home to sleep. Mrs. Corbin works on the midnight to 7:30 a.m. shift and relies upon the school to keep her daughter busy and happy during the day.
context_page_description: Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park is a United States national historical park located in Richmond, California, near San Francisco. The park preserves and interprets the legacy of the United States home front during World War II, including the Kaiser Richmond Shipyards, the Victory ship SS Red Oak Victory, a tank factory, housing developments and other facilities built to support America's entry into World War II. In particular, the role of women and African-Americans in war industries is explored and honored.
  The park is a "partnership park", meaning that no land or buildings are actually owned by the National Park Service, which only administers the park. This relatively new National Park was established in 2000 and is still under development. Bus tours of the park began in 2007.
context_section_description: The Maritime and Ruth Powers Child Development Centers were two of approximately 35 nursery school units of varying sizes established in the Richmond area during World War II in order to provide child care for women working in the Kaiser shipyards. The Maritime center was funded and constructed by the Maritime Commission as part of a larger development that also included housing, an elementary school and a fire station. The temporary housing was demolished after the war but a larger permanent housing complex remains as do the other buildings.
  The Maritime Child Development Center, a wood frame, modernist style building operated by the Richmond School District, incorporated progressive educational programming, and was staffed with nutritionists, psychiatrists and certified teachers. It had a capacity of 180 children per day. At its peak, with 24,500 women on the Kaiser payroll, Richmond's citywide child care program maintained a total daily attendance of 1,400 children. Unlike the federally funded WPA day care facilities implemented during the New Deal, the World War II centers were not intended for use by the destitute, but for working mothers.
  The Kaiser-sponsored Child Care Centers, particularly those at Kaiser's industrial sites in Vanport, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, gained a reputation for innovative and high quality child care. The center is still in operation today.
caption: Midnight-shift shipyard worker Arlene Corbin (right) brings her daughter to a day care facility before going home to sleep
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