ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Children and Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1664735
How Can "Small Childcare" Support "Great Happiness"? A Study on Inclusive Childcare Services for Infants and Toddlers Aged 0-3 in Guangxi Through the Lens of the Capability Approach
Provisionally accepted
- 1Guangxi Minzu University, Guangxi, China
- 2Guangxi University, Nanning, China
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Background: Under the "three-child" policy, the importance of childcare for infants and toddlers aged 0–3 has been emphasised. However, the implementation of universal childcare policies still faces problems such as supply – demand mismatches, uneven resource distribution, and insufficient supervision, which constrain families' childcare capabilities. Research Objective: Drawing on Amartya Sen's capability approach and taking Guangxi as the research area, this study analyses the dilemmas and challenges in the implementation of universal childcare policies, explores their impact on families' economic, social, and informational capabilities, and proposes corresponding optimisation paths. Research Methods: The current implementation of universal childcare in Guangxi was systematically examined through a mixed-methods approach, combining questionnaire surveys with in-depth interviews. Findings: The results show that the policy has improved families' childcare capabilities to some extent. However, its effectiveness has not been fully realised due to irrational resource allocation, limited service capacity of childcare institutions, insufficient family capabilities, and imperfect mechanisms of collaborative governance. Conclusion: Based on these findings, this paper proposes high-quality development paths including more precise financial subsidies, diversification of childcare supply, and strengthening of collaborative governance systems. These measures aim to enhance families' childcare freedom and promote the goal of ensuring that every child has access to care.
Keywords: Children aged 0–3, Inclusive Childcare Services, capability, Balanced population development, policy optimization
Received: 12 Jul 2025; Accepted: 26 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen, Liu, Tang, Li and Kang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Qing Kang, kq1301@st.gxu.edu.cn
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