The Modern Child and the Flexible Labour Market : Early Childhood Education and Care

This book sheds light on new research related to welfare state, child care policies, and small children's everyday lives in institutions in Europe. In uniting recent social childhood research, welfare perspectives and historical and comparative approaches, the book explores institutionalization as a feature of the modern child's life. This anthology presents new research related to welfare state, child care policies and small children's every day lives in early childhood education and care in institutions in Europe. By uniting recent social childhood research, welfare perspectives as well as historical and comparative approaches, institutionalization as a feature of modern child life is discussed. The anthology takes as a point of departure a close connection between labor market and work life on one side and development of particular care arrangementS for small children on another. Both the labour market and day-care institutions are influenced by similar concepts such as flexibility, neo-liberal approaches, and user-orientation. In light of recent changes in ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) policy and various adult constructions of (good) childhoods, this collection explores how girls and boys are together working out identities like the 'active and participant child', 'the natural child', 'the flexible child', and 'the individual child' Front Matter....Pages i-xiii The Modern Child and the Flexible Labour Market: An Introduction....Pages 1-15 Front Matter....Pages 17-17 Dilemmas over Childcare in Norway, Sweden and West Germany after 1945....Pages 19-37 Childcare Policies at a Crossroads....Pages 38-55 Free Choice or Gentle Force?....Pages 56-70 Flexible Flexibility....Pages 71-89 Kindergartens in Denmark – Reflections on Continuity and Change....Pages 90-107 Front Matter....Pages 109-109 ‘Child-Centredness’ and ‘the Child’....Pages 111-127 Governed Markets and Democratic Experimentalism....Pages 128-149 Daycare, Flexible Workers and the Combination of Work and Childcare....Pages 150-167 Kindergarten as a Bazaar....Pages 168-185 Children’s Sense of Place....Pages 186-202 Flexible Spaces – Flexible Subjects in ‘Nature’....Pages 203-221 Policies of Early Childhood Education and Care....Pages 222-240 Front Matter....Pages 241-241 Users and Interested Parties....Pages 243-261 Childhood and Social Investments....Pages 262-274 Back Matter....Pages 275-292