Toward a Caring Society? A Framework for Analyzing the Impact of Early Childhood Policies Based on Chile and Uruguay

Abstract Based on an analysis of the social organization of early childhood care in Chile and Uruguay, as well as the agreements systematically adopted in the Regional Gender Agenda in Latin America, this article presents an analytical framework for future research on advances in comprehensive care systems focused on early childhood. It considers three components of the care agenda: care leave policies, early childhood education and care services, and paid domestic work. This exploratory analysis is grounded in five principles systematized by UN Women and the Economic Commission for Latin America for the consolidation of comprehensive care systems. Specific indicators were applied to analyze policies, secondary, and contextual data. We identified varying levels of progress in the construction of these systems in each country, analyzed their advances, and discussed to what extent the analytical exercise proved useful in examining public policies for early childhood from a care perspective.