I'd like to see some change, but I'm not sure that just going back to some version of how it was done when my generation was young necessarily counts as progress.
Source? because this isn't my partner's experience. Her grand parents owned a house, cars and raised more than 5 kids on a single factory worker salary. It would be just impossible nowadays in most of the west.
Basically you have more then third of women working in any except oldest one. Third of women is a lot of women, a lot of households.
Moreover, people kind of tend to forget that women needs to eat even if husband died or got sick, even if they are single, even if husband is unemployed, even if husband is alcoholic, even if husband is in prison. People also kind of tend to forget that having to marry anyone just so that someone feeds you is one path toward disasterous abusive marriages you are trapped in (where you still have to pretend everything is ok for appareances sake).
And 1950 is when economy was the best, male employment was like 95%. And you still had women who were married and they worked and their income mattered to family. (Surprising example is Rosa Parks who worked for money and loss of income was issue to her and her husband.)
It's not done in the name of progress, it's done in the name of profitability.
The rate of profit and worker productivity are at all time highs, but who benefits? Worker compensation has been stagnant and decoupled from profitability and productivity increases for close to five decades now. Even engineer compensation hasn't kept up with productivity, inflation and cost of living increases.
Doubly so if "affordable for the parents" means "affordable for parents who are in the same income bracket as your average pre school teacher."
Source: I've served on the board of a day care.
The other piece of the puzzle though is that there need to be sufficient providers, which can't happen instantaneously. So you'd have to scale up such an initiative in a sensible way.
I know that borders on callousness, and obviously I don't think we shouldn't take care of single parent households that don't have an option or that the child tax credit shouldn't be high enough so kids don't go hungry. Just if you reduce this to the choice to have a child and a lack of outlying circumstances, you shouldn't have a kid if you don't have someone ready to take care of them and the freedom to make that choice.
Also, there are other reasons why the situation you desribes as ideal sparked the protests back then - for many people ir was unhappy unsatisfying sitiation.