I SERVIZI PER L’INFANZIA DAL NOVECENTO AD OGGI: UN PERCORSO STORICO

This article reconstructs the history of childcare services. The story starts in the nineteenth century, the ‘century of pedagogy’, when the welfare-based model of childcare prevailed. During the twentieth century, the ‘century of the child’, we witnessed a tension between tradition and innovation: whilst, on the one hand, the adult-centred welfare model persisted, on the other, the paradigm of educational care for children began to take hold. During this period, the ‘new schools’ movement emerged, proposing a new concept of childhood education that culminated in the Montessori experiment of the ‘Children’s House’. During the twenty years of Fascist regime, the transition from welfare to educational care for children came to a temporary halt and the welfare model once again prevailed, whilst in the second half of the twentieth century the move towards a culture of childhood accelerated, culminating in the present day and the promotion of services for children as places of educational care.