The separate origins of day care and preschool explain why, more than a hundred years later, “day care” still has a working-class connotation in America, while middle-class parents battle to get their two-year-olds into preschool. It also explains why today’s American preschools often last just a few hours a day; it’s presumed that mothers of the students don’t have to work, or can afford nannies.2
