Abstract
preschools are the main supply among childcare market. Because the supply of public preschools is not enough, this thesis aims to answer the question that what are the historical conditions for forming Taiwanese preschools’ market; what is the commodity childcare and how does this commodity work? This thesis is based on the qualitative research method. First, collecting newspapers, magazines, Taiwan Legislative Yuan news, data from Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Education and other references to reframe the preschools market in Taiwan. Besides, this research did the field work in a private preschool and a day care center to collect the data for answering the question that how this commodity works. Lastly, this research uses depth interviews to analyze working conditions of childcare workers and the effects of highly marketization. There are three results according to this thesis. First, the process of forming the market is based on three growing trends: the marketization and the strength of market; the genderization of social welfare policies and the professionalization of childcare. Secondly, this thesis reconceptionizes childcare and finds the distinctiveness of this commodity. According to this thesis, childcare is formed by “education” and “care” and transforms to the commodity based on these two elements. After transforming to the commodity, they have become “profession” and “love” to sell in the market. Lastly, the rationalization of labour is also based on above principle. Besides, the workers play different roles in the preschools, like teacher, mother, waiter/waitress and salesperson. Through this process, the selling of childcare commodity could be possible.