Revolutionary Love: Early Childhood Education as Counter-Culture

This paper places the pedagogies of love and care which typify the early years of practice in the context of evolution, arguing that, during an optimum window of development, young children are predisposed physiologically to benefit from the attention of multiple alloparents. This anthropological model of community stands in stark contrast to the individualistic and privatised notion of love in neoliberal cultures, indicating reasons why practitioners may be ambivalent about it. Moreover, it is argued that, whilst the notion of care is easily commoditised, the deeper concept of love, contextualised within wisdom and faith paths, is resistant to the money culture. In looking beyond neoliberalism at counter-cultural alternatives, alloparenting traditions suggest a way in which ECEC settings can establish themselves as models of social sustainability rooted in ‘philia’ and mutuality.