The scarcity of childcare services for children under two in Georgia

Open-search research suggests that less than 35 daycare centres across the whole country accept children under two.

• 10 min read

Ana, an early-career radiologist, was 32 when her second child was born. After quitting one workplace due to dire labour conditions, she found herself without any government-guaranteed maternity leave. Even once she found a new position, when her youngest child was 14 months old, there were few options for reliable childcare. Nannies were too expensive, and it wasn’t realistic to ask the child’s grandparents to take time off from their own work, or to expect her husband to receive any parental leave. Therefore, Ana had to find an affordable daycare that would admit an infant. In Georgia, however, this is a challenge.

While Georgian law sets clear standards for the provision and accessibility of kindergartens for children aged two and above, it contains no comparable regulations governing daycare services for children under two. This type of service remains both underdeveloped and scarce. In a context where mothers in Georgia — no matter their employment status — are not entitled to any guaranteed number of paid parental leave days from private-sector workplaces, the question arises: who is expected to care for children under two?

A systemic gap based on cultural attitudes?

According to the National Statistics Office (Geostat), there were over 78,000 children aged between 0–2 residing in Georgia in 2025. If the country were to reach OECD rates of having roughly 30% of children from this age group enrolled in early childhood education and care programmes, around 23,400 children would require such services. To go a step further, if you took an average of 30 children per centre, Georgia would need roughly 800 daycare centres nationwide.

Yet, according to the National Centre for Educational Quality Enhancement, there are no public facilities that admit children under two, and there are only 323 private daycares, of which only a portion might admit children under two. Indeed, estimates based on open-search research suggest that only 10% or less — in other words, fewer than 35 across the whole country — likely accept children under two.

One reason for this systemic gap, researchers suggest, is due to the high proportion of people — 77%, the highest across Europe and Central Asia, according to UNICEF — who believe that a preschool child suffers when a mother works.

Indeed, many mothers OC Media interviewed argued that it was a mistake for Western countries to institutionalise care for very young children, arguing instead for keeping caregiving responsibilities within the family. Accordingly, parents often opt for informal, unregulated, but individual arrangements, rather than for collective and institutional services.

UNICEF has been working to combat these deep-seated norms, highlighting how they ignore the double burdens that working mothers must shoulder. They argue that governments must ‘initiate public dialogue to advocate on the value and importance of early childhood education and care for young children under three’ and that the state should ‘better understand existing bottlenecks and attitudes, and shift mindsets through strategic messaging, participatory engagement and continued advocacy to create a shared vision of the value of early childhood education and care for young children and for our societies’.

Without such state-led initiatives, parents, predominantly mothers, are left without any state support or services during the first two years of their children’s lives. And in a modern society, where women are expected to work, this absence of basic care infrastructure can be difficult to justify.

A lack of government oversight

Beyond availability, one key concern for Georgian parents, including Ana, is the actual quality of care their children receive in the existing childcare centres.

One issue is the caregiver-to-child ratio. By law, services for children under two are allowed to operate with the minimum limit of one caregiver for 13 children. In comparison, UK legislation requires one adult for every three children for children aged under two, while in Switzerland, the ratio is one to four.

Another aspect that requires separate scrutiny is the question of who these caregivers actually are. Even when the caregiver-to-child ratio meets recommended standards, what qualifies individuals to work with young children, and how are their competencies assessed?

According to Tamar Kurtanidze, an expert on social policies, this sphere remains largely unregulated.

‘There are no standards for the childcare of children under two, no qualification requirements for the staff, and the carers’ roles aren’t even recognised as a profession. Without establishing these normative foundations, services cannot be developed, and quality cannot be assured and monitored’, she tells OC Media.

This lack of regulation can be a crucial factor that parents often weigh implicitly, even if they are not fully aware of doing so.

For these reasons, one Tbilisi-based mother told OC Media that while she would prefer to use a daycare rather than a nanny, she would only do so if her workplace arranged facilities, allowing her to frequently check up on her child.

Beyond the regulatory sphere, another issue that often arises is that daycare providers are able to set their own admission criteria, as state regulations give them considerable discretion in this area.

One provider told OC Media that a child must be able to walk to be admitted; another said that eating solid food is essential. Only one provider enrolled children as young as eight months.

Interviews with providers also revealed that, even when services are advertised as catering to ages 0–2, this usually means a single mixed-age group, in which most children are actually over one year old. Providers did not report significant operational difficulties in caring for younger children — some have nearly a decade of experience offering such services — yet they were unable to explain why these services remain so scarce.

‘We couldn’t have taught them as much at home’

According to Tekle Kapanadze, the founder of the Kindergarten Consulting Centre, an NGO specialising in support services for kindergartens, it is a myth that the demand from parents is low, according to them it is much higher than we think it is: ‘In fact, demand for this service is extremely high and steadily increasing. Most working parents quickly reach the end of their maternity leave, while hiring a nanny remains a significant financial burden’.

She also argues that despite government regulations, private daycare providers typically maintain much lower child-to-caregiver ratios than necessary because of the intensity of care required for infants — for example, one caregiver for every three to five children.

At the same time, however, market observations suggest a more nuanced picture.

Indeed, even with the lower child-to-caregiver ratios, the cost of the services are often comparable to those charged by kindergartens for older children, around ₾700–₾800 ($260–$300) a month, half the price for full-time nanny services.

Beyond the cost, Ana believes that enrolling her child in a daycare centre was a better option than hiring a nanny because she believes nannies are not always invested in child-development and can rarely be trusted with restricting children’s screen time.

‘I grew up with two sisters, and we often had nannies ourselves. I remember how passive they were in fulfilling their responsibilities and how apathetic’.

Similarly, a Georgian mother now residing in the Netherlands argues that kindergarten provides more learning opportunities, the development of social skills, and a set routine that rarely can be provided for at home.

‘From what I see, we couldn’t have taught them as much at home in the two years they taught us in kindergarten’, she tells OC Media, while also noting that modern-day screen time is a growing factor in parental decisions.

‘In kindergarten they have the routine they need. The same applies to screen-time — it’s better managed when children are in daycare. When a parent has a thousand things to do, and doesn’t always have help, many end up turning on a screen or TV just to keep the child safe while they get things done’.