ABSTRACT
As a social institution, the day-care center has a relatively short history. In the three societies treated in these chapters, public day-care centers did not appear until the latter part of the last century. Although the sociopolitical context in which the system took its shape was unique to each society, some common backgrounds can also be discerned. Economic (or industrial) development reached a stage when more woman workers joined, or were forced to join; the labor force. In Japan, both the growing gap between the wealthier and the poor in rural areas, and the increased numbers of factories led to the appearance of household baby-sitters (komori) and day-care facilities provided by the factories or religious (philanthropic) agencies. These developments were the forerunners of the modern Japanese day-care system. China and Israel had a common situation where the sociopolitical tasks each society set for itself served as the pretext for creating day-care facilities throughout the country.
