Public Child Care and Preschools in France: New Policy Paradigm and Path-dependency

Abstract

In France, childhood was considered quite early to be a ‘common good’ and a source of human capital, mainly because of the demographic challenge that the country was facing at the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time, children were the expected results of a probirth family policy. Then new social problems emerged, new public debates took place and new political measures were implemented throughout the century. Indeed, family policy is not restricted to child care. It also includes many other issues: civil law, women’s rights, social and gender equity, support for disadvantaged households, same-sex couples, etc. Depending on the priorities, different periods can be identified (Commaille and Martin, 1998). But if we consider public child-care policies specifically, what about these changes? How can they be defined? Do they correspond to what Peter Hall calls ‘third-order change’, marked by radical changes and associated with ‘paradigm shift’? Or to ‘normal policymaking’, that is, a process that adjusts policy without challenging the main objectives of a given policy paradigm, which defines firstand second-order change (Hall, 1993)? In this perspective, can these changes be defined as a ‘path dependency process’ (Pierson, 2004)?