To understand the focus and central aspects of government attention allocation in provincial-level infant and toddler care service policies in China to reveal the characteristics of provincial governments’ attention to various issues related to infant and toddler care services, providing a basis for rational allocation of government attention in the next phase and optimizing policy resources for these services.

A total of 87 provincial-level government policies on infant and toddler care services issued from April 2018 to July 2023 were selected as the research subjects. The study primarily employed word frequency analysis and semantic network analysis to measure the direction and center of government attention allocation in the policy texts.

The direction of government attention allocation in infant and toddler care policies across different regions was relatively consistent, with the top ten high-frequency words including “service”, “care”, “institution”, “infant and toddler”, “care”,“elderly”, and “health”. The central focus of attention allocation in the eastern, central, and western regions was “institution”,while the northeastern region showed a different central focus. The node with the highest intermediary centrality was “service”,followed by “infant and toddler” and “elderly” as secondary central nodes.

Provincial governments have placed excessive emphasis on services provided by care institutions, necessitating greater attention to the diversity of infant and toddler care service types. There is also a need to enhance focus on inclusive infant and toddler care services, with the northeastern region particularly requiring innovative models for the coordinated development of elderly and infant and toddler care services.