ABSTRACT
The editors of this volume have provided readers in the field of child development and child care with an array of chapters describing the various types of nonmaternal care for young children. These chapters provide opportunities to share experiences around day care and to learn how and why different countries have developed their programs. Explicitly, the editors seem to assume that by studying these efforts and the bases for them, much can be learned about how children are socialized in different societies in nonmaternal care environments. By understanding how the institutions of nonmaternal child care have evolved in their particular settings, we become more knowledgeable, and hopefully wiser, in our understanding of the complexities regarding nonmaternal child care. I have the responsibility for those chapters dealing with child care in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Italy. The chapters are highly diverse in focus and content, consequently I plan to generate generalizations and questions, often on the basis of both common and idiosyncratic topics addressed in the three chapters. In this way I hope to provide practitioners and researchers with reflections on this complex and diverse field of nonmaternal child care.
