Introduction: The Longue Durée — Early Childhood Institutions and Ideas in Flux

Across Europe and North America (and in other parts of the world to which we can claim no expertise), we have witnessed in recent decades a spectacular development of institutions and arrangements designed for the education and care of young children (those under compulsory school age) outside the family. In no society have young children ever been raised by their parents alone, but, with a few exceptions, collective education and care in the past took place within networks of individuals who knew each other and who were tied to each other by complex social obligations (e.g. networks of kin or neighbourhood solidarity). The early childhood education and care (henceforth ECEC) which has come to define the life of young children in contemporary societies is of a wholly different nature: it is always regulated and often directly supplied by the State; its establishment has most often been the result of intentional policies pursuing specified social goals; and the individuals providing the services do so for money and not on the basis of personal ties with the parents or children.