I had been in Ireland on research leave for just under a month when a news story caught my attention. A prime-time television investigation of a Dublin-based childcare chain was due to air, ominously titled ‘Creches, Behind Closed Doors’. The story cast a critical lens not only on the service in question, but on all aspects of the regulation, funding and development of the sector. In the week leading up to the documentary, my family members and neighbours debated whether or not they would watch it at all. For many the prospect was too emotionally confronting, confirming their worst suspicions about care conditions in a fast-developing sector. At the same time social media feeds were humming with the voices of childcare workers pleading with parents to not assume this case was reflective of the entire sector. “Don't tar us all with the same brush – We love the children as our own”, was the message. Emotions were running high. In the midst of writing the book, it was a sharp reminder that commodified childcare is a high stakes endeavour.

Childcare is an emotionally charged domain, as are all spheres which concern the care of the most vulnerable in society. However, childcare is also now big business, bringing into sharp relief the long-standing tensions between profit making and care giving (Folbre and Nelson, 2000; Tronto, 2013). The significant growth in demand for childcare across the OECD over the past 20 years (OECD, 2016b) has given rise to more providers operating at larger economies of scale than ever before. In the UK for example, a market report by LaingBuisson (2019) estimated that 81 per cent of the childcare sector is currently owned and operated by private for-profit interests, with two ‘supergroups’ alone accounting for 8 per cent of the market. At the same time, the report noted the number of individual owner-operators in the UK market had dropped by 20 per cent between 2016 and 2018.