In Finland, 70 percent of preschool children attend a full day care service supported by the government. There’s absolutely no reason why countries like the United States can’t do the same.

The autumn is a colorful time in Finland. The trees turn yellow and then red before the leaves fall. Neon pinks and yellows also appear — the reflective vests of toddlers and children venturing out to explore parks and cities with their day care teachers.

In Finland, these sights are omnipresent. The country’s free or inexpensive public and private day care is, in many suburbs, so extensive that it seems every block might well have one. This autumn, my eighteen-month-old daughter has started in hers — a city-run public day care quite close to our home.

There, for a part of the day, she will join a group of twelve equally small kids while her parents go to work or study. Among other activities, she plays with friends, goes on nature trips, and visits the library.

Day care is a place for children not only to engage in play, get nutritious meals, and improve their immune systems, but also to prepare for education and for wider society. The children are cared for by skilled caretakers, too — like schoolteachers, early childhood education teachers in Finland have generally been university-educated since 1995.

Of course, the idea of day care for children existed before then — it’s existed for as long as people have opted to care for each other’s children to free the others to do work. The first kindergarten in Finland, intended for children of workers in the working-class suburbs of Helsinki and subsidized by corporations, was established as early as 1888; four years later, the education for kindergarten teachers began. Finland, then an autonomous part of Russian Empire, was the first Nordic country to introduce it.

Municipalities were permitted to establish day cares in 1919, but at first only a few chose to do so. Only since the postwar period has day care been formalized as a crucial aspect of the welfare state. The current form of the Finnish day care system dates to 1973, when the government passed the Act on Children’s Day Care, mandating municipalities to offer sufficient day care to meet the local need. This was, step by step, expanded to the so-called subjective right to day care, the requirement to organize a day care spot for every child in need of one, no matter their parents’ economic situation — a cornerstone of the Finnish system ever since.

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