The “Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Deepening Reform and Advancing Chinese-style Modernization” adopted at the 20th Central Committee’s Third Plenary Session states: “Strengthen the construction of inclusive childcare service systems, support various models such as employer-run childcare, community-embedded childcare, and family childcare points.” Among them, embedded childcare utilizes public spaces in communities (residential areas) as a carrier, with the concept of resource embedding, functional embedding, and diversified operational methods, operating under a model that combines government leadership, social participation, and market collaboration to provide full-day care, half-day care, hourly care, and temporary care services for infants and toddlers. Based on practices from various regions, embedded childcare mainly includes two forms: one is to utilize community resources to establish childcare institutions that provide childcare services to the community and nearby residents. The second is for the community to directly procure mature childcare services or establish cooperative relationships with professional childcare institutions.
Since the reform and opening up, the urbanization rate of the resident population in China has increased from 17.92% in 1978 to 66.16% in 2023. Amid the wave of urbanization, family structures are undergoing profound changes. With the prevalence of “nuclear families”, the trend of smaller family sizes is increasingly evident, and the intergenerational care ability is weakening, leading to a growing need for modern and socialized childcare services. According to data from the National Health Commission, there are approximately 30 million infants and toddlers under the age of three in China, with over 30% of families with infants and toddlers needing childcare. Meeting childcare demand positively impacts improving fertility levels, ensuring women’s employment, and promoting the development of infants and toddlers.
From a micro perspective, embedded childcare facilitates early childhood development and helps parents achieve the goal of nearby and convenient childcare. As the “softest group” in society, infants and toddlers rely on the joint care of families, communities, and professional institutions to achieve comprehensive development in physical growth, movement, language, cognition, emotion, and social skills. Embedded childcare features a homogenous living environment, safe surrounding facilities, convenient geographic locations, flexible service models, and comfortable emotional atmospheres, aligning with families’ daily habits and psychological expectations. Its advantage lies in providing suitable service support, material support, and skill support for early childhood care, offering care services from non-parents, reducing the costs borne by families for early childhood care, and providing parents with scientific and reasonable parenting concepts, knowledge, and skills.
From a meso perspective, embedded childcare can effectively utilize existing social resources and promote optimal resource allocation. Childcare services are seen as a comprehensive and practical industry that not only involves the daily life care of infants and toddlers, covering services such as diet, drinking, feeding, toileting, washing, cleaning, sleeping, dressing, and play activities; it also requires providing nutrition and health management for infants and toddlers, including balanced diets, outdoor activities, and health monitoring. Embedded childcare can coordinate social organizations, property management, community hospitals, and enterprises and institutions stationed in the community, forming a situation of resource integration and shared benefits, enriching service content; it can also fully utilize the community’s free supporting facilities and public activity venues, revitalizing idle resources, reducing land costs for childcare service centers, making them far lower than the fees charged by commercial childcare services, thus creating a pricing advantage.
From a macro perspective, embedded childcare is a foundational project for establishing a sound support and service system for population development. High-quality population development runs through the entire life cycle, with early life seen as a critical stage for accumulating human capital. Infants and toddlers undergo rapid brain development, synaptic pruning, and myelination, making this a sensitive period for shaping various abilities. Empirical evidence shows that investing in early childhood development benefits individuals and promotes social equity, breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Embedded childcare can meet families’ refined requirements for infant and toddler care, achieving a higher level of “care for the young”, stimulating the willingness to “give birth”, solving the challenges of “raising”, and alleviating the burdens of “nurturing”; it can also promote early childhood development through advanced childcare concepts, professional childcare services, and high-quality childcare educators, thereby improving the overall quality of the population and supporting Chinese-style modernization through high-quality population development.
Currently, there are nearly 100,000 institutions providing childcare services in China, with approximately 4.8 million childcare spots. According to the requirements in the 14th Five-Year Plan for every 1,000 people to have 4.5 childcare spots for children under three, the total number of childcare spots nationwide needs to reach about 6 million by 2025. To bridge this gap and meet the public’s higher expectations for the quantity and quality of childcare services, it is essential to gather the joint efforts of all sectors of society. Therefore, embedded childcare deserves encouragement and widespread experimentation.
First, build a supportive system led by the government. In top-level design, based on the rules and characteristics of embedded childcare services, the government needs to introduce relevant regulations, plans, and details to promote the professionalization, standardization, and normalization of embedded childcare development. In terms of financial investment, governments at all levels should establish special funds and formulate budget plans specifically for supporting the construction and operation of embedded childcare services. At the same time, it is also necessary to explore diversified funding channels to encourage and guide social capital to participate. Second, construct a new pattern of scientific integration of multiple resources. Relying on the resource-linking function of community governance, embedded childcare can actively mobilize the innovative forces of the government, market, society, and families, effectively integrating various resources such as human, financial, material, and organizational resources to achieve positive interactive cooperation among all parties. Third, build a professional team for infant and toddler care. Encourage local higher education institutions and vocational schools to offer programs related to infant and toddler care services, optimize curriculum settings and teaching methods, and promote the matching of talent supply for childcare services with actual industry demands. Utilize professional training institutions and community centers to provide staff engaged in childcare services with knowledge of laws and regulations, professional ethics, and safety management related to infant and toddler care, continuously enhancing the professional quality of community childcare practitioners and promoting the professional development of the embedded childcare workforce.
