The purpose of this paper is to show how child care practitioners and public policymakers can function in the seemingly disparate and often overlapping roles of professional caregiver, participating advocate, and public policymaker. Described are: (1) the recent expansion of and anticipated future need for child day care programs, focusing on families with working parents and emphasizing the use of family day care; (2) the identification of children's basic and universal developmental needs; (3) perceptions of childhood that affect adults' responses to children's needs, emphasizing the development of early education and child day care programs, especially in family day care; (4) conceptions of politics that underlie the current role of government in the formation and operation of family day care homes; and (5) means by which to express the relationship between the perceptions of childhood and the conceptions of politics in a pluralistic society. It is argued that persons in the roles of caregiver, advocate, and policymaker must function simultaneously in whichever roles are appropriate so that government will operate at a consistent level of consensus and compromise, so that government will respond to each segment of society that has responsibilities for child-rearing, and so that no one group will be favored to the exclusion of another. (A list of 79 references is included.) (RH)