At the outset of the decade, most of the major trends weighing heavily on early childhood care and development in the 1990s were visible, some with a long life, all varying from place to place. For instance:

Industrialisation continues, accompanied by internal migration and urbanisation. With these shifts have come important changes in family structure and composition, usually a reduction in extended families and an increase in nuclear and one-parent families. Industrial employment makes it more difficult to combine work and parenting roles than agrarian employment. These changes, together with the crowded and insecure conditions of cities create new demands for extra-domestic childcare and motivate changes in approaches to childcare and childrearing.

Declining birth rates in some countries have opened opportunities for new educational initiatives as the numbers of children to be attended to prior to school entry (and in some cases now at the primary school level) diminish. Declining infant mortality rates still offset declining birth rates in some countries but have also pushed societies to pay more attention to the education and development of young children who now survive, but in often deplorable conditions, negatively affecting development.

Scientific and technological changes in communications, travel, health, and other fields, have helped to change public awareness, are providing new options for promoting and fostering ECCD, and also present challenges to childrearing as we enter the twenty-first century.

Globalisation and the turn toward market economies which gained momentum in the 1980s, are accompanied by increases in levels of poverty and in economic and social inequalities. To try and counter this tendency, governments and international organisations have been pushed to support "compensatory" programmes, among which figure many ECCD programmes. There is as well a growing concern about changing values linked to globalisation, leading to calls in some countries for new initiatives to counter the advance of consumerism and individualism, beginning in the early years.

The mobilisation and emancipation of women, beginning in earnest in the 1970s, has helped to foster increasing participation by women in the paid labour force, creating new demands for programmes of early childhood care.

B. The 1990s

During the decade of the 1990s, some of the above tendencies intensified and several new major developments appeared with potential affects on early childhood:

1. The technological revolution intensified.

2. The pace of globalisation picked up, accompanied not only by increases in inequality, poverty, exclusion and "compensatory" programs, but also by growth in employment in the informal sector (where employees do not have access to childcare benefits sometimes given in the formal sector). The ability of low income populations to buy services has been further reduced.

3. Globalisation has also helped to drive a redefinition of the role of the state, with implications for how all social programmes are handled, including ECCD. Budgeting processes have been affected.

4. Internal strife and civil wars have increased in number, accompanied by displacement from homes for many people and sometimes by separation of children from their families.

5. Accelerated movement toward democracy has occurred in some areas but has receded in others, affecting priorities and policies.

6. The Soviet Union broke up and with it has come a decline of the socialist model which has placed considerable emphasis on providing a particular kind of institutionalised child care.

7. The process of decentralisation has accelerated in many countries.

8. A major blip in the pace of economic development occurred in the Asian region provoking some rethinking.

9. The ecology movement gained momentum

10. The pandemic of HIV/AIDS has reached disastrous levels in some countries, particularly those within Sub-Saharan Africa.