In the second-wave women's movement in Canada (1965-1985), the rhetoric of ''freedom'' and ''choice'' occupied a prominent position in public discourses. Waged as rallying points to resist entrenched forms of gender inequality in all areas of social, economic, and political culture, this language asserted a desire for an alternative social order founded on women's full rights to citizenship. In the following analysis, the author considers dimensions of inequality as she draws attention to childcare as a problem of sustained importance. In Section 1, the author clarifies the terms of her analysis, offering a brief summary of neoliberalism and its presence in the Canadian context. She then considers the language of freedom, choice, and the individual in neoliberal theory and feminist theory. In the third section the author examines a history of the struggle for childcare in Canada before 1995 and highlights how neoliberal policy and ideology thwarted the creation of a National Childcare Strategy. Finally, she turns to what the effects of this failure have meant for ''freedom'' and ''choice'' and for whom, and offers an alternative solution founded in principles of the social common.