Early Childhood in the Anglosphere

Written by two leading international experts, Early Childhood in the Anglosphere offers a unique comparison of early childhood education and care services, and parenting leave, across seven high-income Anglophone countries. Peter Moss and Linda Mitchell explore what these systems have in common, including the dominance of ‘childcare’ services, widespread privatisation and marketisation, and weak parenting leave. They highlight the substantial failings of these systems, and the causes and consequences of these failings. But this book is ultimately about hope, about how these failings might be made good through major changes. In other words, it is about transformation: why transformation is both necessary and possible at this particular time, what transformation might look like, and how it might happen. Part of that transformation concerns the need for new policies and structures, but even more it is about how the Anglosphere thinks about early childhood. The authors call for turning away from conceptualising early childhood services as `childcare’ and marketised businesses selling commodities to parent-consumers; and for reconceptualising them as education imbued with an ethics of care, a public good available as a right to all children and families, and complemented by well-paid, individual entitlements to parenting leave. Using examples from the Anglosphere and beyond, and in a context of converging crises, the book argues that transformation of thinking, policies and structures is desirable and doable.

Praise for Early Childhood in the Anglosphere

‘This book is a useful contribution to the field because of its attention to detail. We know already the main arguments that it makes, but in engaging with the richness of this book – its philosophical clarity, and its detailed analysis of early childhood across time and place – we can start to feel the possibilities for transformation in the system.’
British Journal of Educational Studies

‘Moss and Mitchell highlight the importance of an ethical framework for schools to ensure that they remain accountable to the communities that support them and the families they serve. Their proposed integrated, publicly funded early childhood system is hopeful and practical, offering clear, actionable recommendations’
London Review of Education

⁠‘Where this book … excel(s) is in moving from robust critique to a treatise altogether more hopeful, necessary and doable.’
FORUM