This chapter presents historical overviews of in-home childcare in Australia, the UK and Canada. It discusses the policy trajectories across these countries within the context of early childhood education and care policy and migration policy. Particular attention is given to debates about how childcare policies and funding positioned home-based care arrangements – in both the caregiver and child’s home – across the public, private, informal and formal domains. In all three countries similar debates took place regarding the role of care versus education across the public and private, and formal and informal spheres. Dominant ideas about the care of young children being the responsibility of the family hindered the success of advocacy efforts, particularly by the feminist movement, for regulated, centre-based early childhood education and care. However, by looking at the details of the debates, pressures and actors through the lens of in-home childcare, contrasting attitudes are revealed.