Two of the most well-known members of Congress entered a preschool classroom on a recent morning in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, which has received less than its fair share of the city’s investment and more than its fair share of concentrated poverty. After touring the rooms of Horizons for Homeless Children, a facility that serves some of the city’s most vulnerable young children, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, who represents this district, made a straightforward and direct statement: early education is crucial infrastructure.
It was a phrase with more historical significance than it first appeared to have.
Horizons for Homeless Children has been providing early education and wraparound support to children whose families are experiencing a shelter or housing crisis in Roxbury for decades. Since the 1960s, child development researchers have described this type of environment—warm, stable, attentive, and linguistically rich—as crucial. The center’s knowledge of early childhood is not exclusive. It is politically significant because of what it stands for in a nation that has long recognized the importance of early education but has consistently refused to take large-scale action based on that understanding.
| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Organization | Horizons for Homeless Children |
| Location | Roxbury, Massachusetts (Boston) |
| Focus | Early education and support services for homeless and low-income children |
| Political Visit | Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) |
| Pressley’s District | Massachusetts 7th Congressional District (includes Roxbury) |
| Visit Context | Advocacy for early education as essential public infrastructure |
| Broader Policy Context | Universal pre-K debate; early educator pay; childcare funding gaps in the U.S. |
| Historical Reference | First federally-funded childcare center established in Philadelphia, 1863 (Civil War) |
| Wisconsin Context | First publicly funded pre-K program in the U.S. started 1898; four-year-olds included in 1848 Constitution |
| Nixon Veto | President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971 |
| Key Historical Pattern | American child care historically tied to poverty relief and welfare — never treated as universal public good |
| Comparison | France, Sweden, Denmark offer free/subsidized care for children over 3 plus paid parental leave |
| Boston Context | Mayor Menino pledged universal pre-K for Boston; city has a distinct Department of Early Childhood |
Most people are unaware of how long and strange this place’s history is. In 1863, during the Civil War, Philadelphia saw the establishment of the nation’s first federally funded childcare facility for the children of women employed in wartime apparel factories. The Boston Infant School Society was offering programs for working-class families from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. by the 1820s; early childhood advocates continue to make this fundamental point today. In 1848, Wisconsin amended its state constitution to guarantee four-year-olds the right to an education. When John Adams was younger, he went to what he called a “school”—a dame school in Braintree that was run by a widow. Public support for the upbringing and education of young children is not a contemporary concept. It is an American custom that the nation consistently decides to give up.
The entire spectrum of American social policy exhibits this pattern. Even though maternal employment continued to rise, the Lanham Act child care centers, which had served 130,000 children at their height, were closed almost immediately after V-J Day following World War II. The Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971, which would have established a universal child care system, was vetoed by President Nixon on the grounds that it threatened the American family. While increasing tax incentives that mostly benefited higher earners, the Reagan administration reduced funding for child care for low-income families. Care for young children is a private responsibility, and public assistance is charity for those who cannot manage otherwise. This message has been ingrained in policy decisions for the past 150 years.
The disparity between that political past and the reality on display in the room was captured on camera during the visit to Horizons in Roxbury. The children there were in a well-staffed, carefully planned early learning environment that was obviously effective; some of them were living in emergency shelter, and many of them carried the specific kind of stress that comes from unstable housing. In a policy debate, they weren’t abstractions. They were small individuals with particular needs who were served by skilled workers who performed challenging tasks for pay that had nothing to do with the intricacy of their work.
Watching moments like this unfold on Instagram to almost 10,000 likes gives me the impression that something is changing in the way Americans discuss early childhood—that the term “infrastructure,” which is derived from roads, broadband, and electrical grids, is actually doing a good job of redefining what has traditionally been framed as welfare. Whether that rhetorical shift results in the kind of consistent federal investment that Denmark, Sweden, and France have maintained for decades is still up for debate. It is evident that the argument being presented from a Roxbury preschool classroom is not novel. It is currently quite old and is still awaiting a response.
