ABSTRACT
The normalization of daycare both depended on and contributed to the discursive normalizing of child care and the child. Although the history of daycare practice is one of custodial care and educational training, the history of daycare discourse in these popular magazines is that of constructing daycare as a single discursive form of scientific, and therefore, educational child care. From its first edition in 1900 though the 1990 edition, the Readers Guide to Periodical Literature lists 989 articles under such headings as “Day Care,” “Nursery School,” and “Play Schools.” Yet, although important in and of itself, such a normalized environment also is the site for particular types of activities promoting the correct training of the daycare child. High-quality daycare becomes the means for the correct training of the young through the densely interrelated discursive formations of the normalized environment, activities, discipline, and examination.
