CHILDCARE CENTERS FROM YESTERDAY AND TODAY: WHAT PARENTS EXPECT OF THIS INSTITUTION?

Abstract

The historical importance of childcare centers originated with the entry of women to the labor market, since the Industrial Revolution, to allow those who were mothers, participate of the production process. In its early days, childcare centers used to do the basic care for child survival. Currently this concept expanded, and favors child development in many aspects - cognitive, psychomotor, affective and psychosocial. So we elaborated an exploratory case study with a sample of parents whose children are enrolled on a government childcare center of Salvador city in order to investigate what they expect from this institution to their kids, correlating this with the government's proposals for early childhood education. Characterizing the family profile and mapping their reasons to choice a childcare center for their children, we analyzed the relation between these two environments - intersection that serves as context in the perspective of this study, for child development. As methods for data collect we applied questionnaires and proceeded document analysis conducted with qualitative and quantitative study of their results. For this study we used as theoretical frameworks, the historical references from children  education field and the  origin and establishment of childcare centers, beyond the bioecological systemic approach - a psychology of human development field, discussing the binomial family – childcare center. The study founded that the parents expectations, considering the childcare center target, followed the government's proposals direction for this level of early childhood education. It also allowed the mapping of important aspects from the relationship between the two environments.