In times of great challenges and dynamic social changes, Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), a profession historically regarded as Cinderella within the system of education, underprivileged and underdeveloped, has in the past few years been slowly but safely climbing the priorities ladder on the national education policies agenda around the world, and has become an essential area of political dialogue and cooperation.

Affirmative messages granting it a key role in laying the foundations for improving the overall quality of life of the future European citizen are welcomed because they have a significant impact on its empowerment and development.

The etiology of these messages is an important pedagogical question. Starting from the firm belief that ECEC plays a significant role in contemporary society, we discuss its place and prospects within the dominant structural-functional discourse, which seriously endangers the very essence of its functioning and existence.

The contemporary ECEC theory, therefore, develops a kind of resistance movements and affirms new paradigms that, in turn, affirm a new view of the child in terms of institutional childhood as its destiny in the 21st century.