During World War II, when the US government needed to attract female workers, it constructed and heavily subsidized neighborhood child care centers under a program called the Lanham Act.
The centers operated on extended hours (some around the clock), took care of mildly ill children in infirmaries, mended clothes, scheduled doctors' visits and immunizations, and not only provided kids with all their meals and snacks during the day but sold affordable, healthy home-cooked dinners to take home.
This holistic view of caretaking feels radically foreign today, when you're lucky to find a day care with a meal program or a nanny who will do laundry, much less someone to schedule doctor's visits or handle sick days.
These centers were, of course, promptly disbanded at war's end when it was time to drive women back out of the public sphere. But it turns out that when you (albeit temporarily) value women's paid work, you can understand value their unpaid work, too. Huh.