Using the concept of "cultural models," this chapter presents a framework for researching daily life in family child care. Photo-stimulated interviews were used to identify cultural models or cognitive schema for how to care for children. These cultural models both guided everyday practice and were the standards against which providers evaluated everyday life. Providers varied in how much they valued, enacted, and assessed/documented (1) ensuring that children experience love, fun, and affection as important in and of itself, (2) school readiness, or (3) both. Whereas the first cultural model -- love, fun, and togetherness -- may afford babies and toddlers more opportunities to construct the close relationships essential for early development, the second, school readiness, model may activate more technical aspects of professionals' work at the expense of close relationships. Similarly, the first model frames babies as being, whereas the second emphasizes babies as becoming. Thus, the process of producing and reproducing these cultural models through daily practices may afford babies and toddlers different opportunities for learning and development. Because these are only two of many possible cultural models relevant to child care, this approach may be important for better understanding the contexts of babies and toddlers. (author abstract)