Emerging Child Care Services in France and Japan: Public, Private or Associative?

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) system comes to the front in three contexts today. First, quality child care services are indispensable for parents to continue working after their child birth. Second, quality child care services are important for young children to develop their sociability. Third, the quality of the child care services depends on the working conditions of child care staff.
In many countries various child care services are emerging: municipal day care center, on-site day care center, family day care, small day care, parental day care and so on. There are also some facilities such as information center for families, open space for parents, toy musium for kids and so on. Looking at the child care providers, the private sector and the associative sector are growing instead of the public sector. What are the factors of this change? How shall this change influence on the quality of ECEC system? 
I selected two countries for comparison: France and Japan. First I will outline the historical development of the ECEC system in both countries and compare the present situation on the basis of national data. Second I will show some examples of good practices in education and care system provided by the associative sector as well as the private sector from my fieldwork in both countries. At last we will discuss about the conditions for quality child care.