Early childhood care and education policies: from custody to social investment and beyond

Early childhood care and education policies have received growing attention in the last decades. The main objectives they are deemed to address – reconciliation of work and family responsibilities, as well as investment in children's well-being and development – are of critical importance in the context of new, post-industrial social risks. The chapter aims at unravelling changes over time in terms of approaches, objectives and regulation, giving an account of any differences and similarities among (clusters of) countries, and disentangling the main issues at stake in the process of early childcare expansion. It will be highlighted that, despite a growing politics and policy legitimation of such expansion within the social investment approach, major tensions that are typical of this policy field remain unresolved, particularly in terms of the quality vs quantity trade-off, access inequalities, hard working conditions for ECEC workers.