This paper aims at clarifying the issues and problems that today's childcare education has by first giving an overview of the previous studies in the field of childcare education. I will go over the historical changes and developments of the aims and goals of childcare education in home economics classes in Japan from the following two standpoints: a) the needs of childcare education and b) curriculum content of childcare education. From these two perspectives I will review the papers that have been published up until 2003 in the Homemaking Society Pedagogical Journal. Then I go over the governmental teaching guidelines and make suggestion for the future of homemaking education. The points considered in plans for the future of childcare education are the following: 1) It should not aim at reinforcing gender roles but would try and make students self-reliant based on the philosophy of equality of men and women. 2) Amalgamate the needs survey and developmental requirements. 3) Self, other, community and society have to be made relevant to each other in homecare education. 4) Communication between teachers and children should be given high priority as a learning excellence. 5) Consistency among goals of classes, content of education given, pedagogical methodology, developmental issues of children, and needs survey needs to be created. 6) Educational programs that are not handed from the top to the bottom but those that would pay attention to special characteristics of schools and communities need to be created.
