ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines some of the principal contemporary international debates relating to the provision of care for young children. It explores how various nations dealt with the situation, and the debates that arose relating to the care and education of young children, many of which are still live' today. A key question revolves around the balance between parental leave and subsidised childcare and how this corresponds to the age of the child. In a literature review focused on early years education undertaken for the Scottish Parliament, Stephen proposes that justification of practice from a perspective of future development is rejected by many education theorists as a politically dominated approach. The children as human capital' approach focuses on children as human resources in society; in the sense of sociological theory, it is a functionalist approach, rejecting the concept of human beings as autonomous, self-determining individuals.
