A Warning from History: The Pendulum of Change to and from Institutional Out-of-Home Childcare

This article examines the historic and current developments in out-of-home childcare – as a chain of repeated attempts to prioritize family-based and family-like care, followed – due to various circumstances – by returns of institutional care. We focus on Russia – as a country with a particularly significant history of institutional care – and place the Russian case within a broader international context. Comprising a critical review of published academic analysis and primary documents, the article explores the circumstances of the pendulum-like, repeated recourse to both family-based and institutional residential childcare, as well as the implications of these dynamics for policy-makers and childcare practitioners today.