24 Anime About Childcare

Ah, the innocence of youth.

Whether you are looking to capture some of that bright young exuberance or you have recently become a parent yourself, anime about childcare can make you feel young again.

To see things through both the eyes of the caretaker and the children can leave you with that nice warm, fuzzy feeling that sometimes you just need. Of course, being a caretaker to a child isn’t without some issues to overcome either.

If you are looking for solid anime about childcare, we got anime recommendations for it.

Best Childcare Anime

Sweetness and Lightning

Though also an anime very much about cooking and the way food brings people together, Sweetness and Lightning is also about a widower trying his best to raise his young daughter.

This not only entails things like making her good food, but you see distinct moments in which he has to do hard-to-watch things like punish her for reckless action.

A lot of childcare anime tend to leave out the unhappy moments of being a parent and difficulties of being a single parent, so it is refreshing to see it addressed.

Gakuen Babysitters

If you are looking for solid childcare anime, this is honestly your best bet.

Not only is it a great comedy about young students having to take care of toddlers, but those toddlers are honestly adorable and much of the comedy in their own right.

Even if the kids are being taken care of by students, it has a lot more childcare moments than many childcare anime involving actual parents.

Hanamaru Kindergarten

This series has a kind of Kodomo no Jikan element to it that I don’t love, but unlike Kodomo no Jikan it doesn’t ever wander past comedy into things that are more uncomfortable. If you don’t know what that means, please continue to be blissfully unaware.

That aside, this series is about a male teacher taking over a kindergarten class, and therein it becomes a moe comedy full of shenanigans.

Sakugan

Typically, childcare anime is not awash with big action. As such, Sakugan with is big sci-fi action may not be what you are looking for. However, that doesn’t make it any less about childcare.

This series follows a dad and his genius child who wants to go out into the dangerous labyrinth of tunnels like she feels is her destiny. He constantly tries to stop her, but eventually his hand is forced to accompany and protect her on her adventure.

This series, when it premiered, was often faulted because the child character was obnoxious and generally the cause of the problems she needed saving from. However, that’s the great thing about it. She very much acts like a genius child who thinks she knows everything, despite her father knowing full well that is not true. What child doesn’t act like that sometimes, regardless of intellect?

If you are craving wholesome father-daughter moments, this provides. It also adds on a large dose of plot and mecha-based action as a bonus.

If It’s For My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord

I mean, what father wouldn’t defeat a demon lord for their daughter, right?

If It’s For My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord puts a fantasy spin on childcare by having a strong adventurer find and ultimately adopt a small demon girl. He has to hide her race from human society, but covering demon horns is something a set of cute pigtails can fix.

Get ready for a lot of cute new parent moments where he adapts to being a new father and she adapts to having a reliable, nice parental figure after watching the previous one die.

T-Sensei

This relatively invisible series is quite the gem. It follows a childcare worker in Tokyo on his many, many adventures with the children he looks over. Based on a real person’s tweets from earlier in 2012, apparently. It’s a literal children say/do the darnedest things anime.

Unfortunately, while a gem, it is a pain to track down. You need to download a smartphone app called Tate Anime, which is home to a number of underrated anime gems that are all free to watch. Yet, downloading an app is a huge ask for a series whose episodes are only 3 minutes long.

Usagi Drop

There is no anime more well-known when it comes to caring for a young child.

Usagi Drop takes a young girl and essentially pairs her up with a bachelor with no childcare experience. It is actually quite a sweet tale of watching them grow together. Daikichi as a parental figure and Rin as a person.

However, as this series follows a secret illegitimate child shunned by family after the death of her elderly father, it has its moments of sadness. Certainly it is nice to see the pair bond, but it still doesn’t let you forget that she is a grieving and rejected young child.

The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting

The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting is a odd duck for a childcare anime. The girl has a father who is in the picture, but most of the tender moments come from the yakuza henchman charged with protecting her.

As her father is the yakuza clan leader, his life is in danger. As his daughter, her life is in danger, and her mother has already met the danger. So it does make sense why her father keeps her at a distance. That is also where some of the melancholy from this series comes from. They both want a relationship with each other, but it is safer if her father keeps her at arm’s length.

Somali and the Forest Guardian

Like If It’s For My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord, Somali and the Forest Spirit is also a childcare anime in a fantasy anime wrapper. This time, the father is the fantasy creature and the daughter is just a standard young human.

However, in the world of Somali and the Forest Spirit, humans were pretty much hunted to extinction by the other fantasy races due to our, well, you’re human, you know how we be.

As the father figure is a golem at the end of his lifespan, he is on a race against time to try and find humans to return her to.

This series excels in both wholesome father-daughter bonding moments on their travels and also showing off its unique fantasy world. As the bonding goes on, the ticking clock also start to punch a lot hard too.

Mama Loves Poyopoyo-saurus

So anime really likes to kill off mothers for some reason. This series attempts to break the cycle.

This is a story of a stay-at-home mother with two young kids who also has a husband who is alive and well. If only more series could be like this.

That being said, this is a pure comedy show about the trials and tribulations of being a mother of two young kids.

Kakushigoto

Usually you pick – or at least fall into – your career before having kids. This is what this comedy childcare anime is about.

It follows a father who draws lewd manga, and he does everything in his power to prevent his young daughter from finding that out.

As a comedy anime, there is not too much else to say about it. It leans on that joke pretty hard, but does have some nice father-daughter moments too.

Kotaro Lives Alone

There are quite a few young anime characters that mysteriously live on their own despite being realistically too young to do so. Kotaro Lives Alone leans into that and is thus far the only anime to provide an acceptable reason as to why he lives alone.

Despite this series being about a cute young kid that talks like a samurai and bonds with his broken-by-circumstance adult neighbors in a wholesome way, the series also punches with melancholy like the best of them.

Kotaro lives alone because of abuse, and he was forced to try and make his way in the world in a very adult way. Yet, the series highlights that no matter how adult a child acts and even functions, sometimes they still need people in a very parental way.

Deaimon

I believe the saying is “it takes a village to raise a child,” yes? Well, in this series, it take the staff of a small traditional Japanese sweets shop.

Deaimon follows a child abandoned by a young and overwhelmed father at his old high school friend’s sweet shop. That friends’ parents initially start taking care of her, and eventually the friend in question – a failing musician – comes home too.

He almost immediately feels the need to take up the father figure role in her life, and while she resists, eventually his good nature and positive outlook slowly win over her trust.

That is much of what Deaimon is about – winning a constantly betrayed girl’s trust. Abandoned by both parents and essentially raised by nice elderly strangers, she has a bit of a right to be weary.

Baby and Me

This is more of a tragic story than some of the other entries.

Of course it starts off with the mother being killed and she leaves behind a husband, a fifth grade boy, and a toddler.

As the father has to work to support the family, that leaves a very young boy essentially in the care-taking role of his younger brother. You watch him flip between caring and anger in a very realistic bout of frustration, but this does end up a nice and poignant tale.

Poko’s Udon World

This series starts off much like a number of other childcare anime on this list – a man returns home and happenstance sees him essentially raising a young child. Their adventures together serve to be healing to him and learning opportunities for the child.

However, it differentiates itself by having the small boy actually be a tanuki. It doesn’t actually contribute anything to the story, but it doesn’t detract from it either.

If nothing else, this series is just more wholesome moments that endeared you to all these other childcare anime.

Listen to Me Girls, I Am Your Father

After being raised by his sister, the main character decides to return the favor a little by watching her three daughters while she goes traveling. Tragically, she never comes back and he feels a responsibility to take care of her kids.

Now, that all sound like the set up for a pretty great drama series, but Listen to Me Girls, I Am Your Father doesn’t play it that way. Instead it is actually more cheerful than you would expect, but still not without its new family bonding moments.

An unfortunate caveat that merits pointing out is that this becomes more like a romance than you would want in an anime about an uncle raising his younger nieces. A lot more, if you watch the OVA.

Kurenai

While the main character in Kurenai threatens constantly to break your suspension of disbelief by being a normal high schooler who is also a mediator at night, a gifted marital artist, and has a special power on top of that, it can be quite nice in its childcare moments.

This almost Gary Stu of a man ends up acting as a bodyguard to a young girl. He protects her, but also helps this sheltered girl learn about the ways of the world in a rather touching story.

Spy X Family

Spy X Family is a lot of things. Spy thriller. Amazing comedy. And most importantly, a childcare anime.

It follows a spy who builds a fake family in order to fulfill his mission to get close to a target. His adopted orphan daughter is really a mind reader. His wife is an assassin secretly using him as a cover to maintain normalcy. Even his dog can see into the future.

This is all a good set up for a wacky comedy, but what you don’t expect from Spy X Family is the wholesome family moments. Because Loid, the aforementioned master spy, gives his all to every mission, he also gives his all to being an amazing fake father and husband, even if he thinks he is just playing a role.

Buddy Daddies

Similar to Spy X Family, Buddy Daddies follows criminals with kids that are not their own flesh and blood, but are loved all the same.

In Buddy Daddies, two men who are essentially professional mercenaries end up crossing paths with a small child sent by her mother to find her father. Her father, as it turns out, was their mark that they killed and not a kind man to boot.

Now stuck with a child that no one else wants, they end up raising her. However, between being inexperienced at childcare, damaged from their traumatic pasts, and in a dangerous line of work – it is quite the task.

What I find Buddy Daddies does just ridiculously well is nail home how obnoxious yet rewarding raising a very young child can be. It can definitely talk you out of having kids and simultaneously make you want one.

Hinamatsuri

Hinamatsuri follows a yakuza tough who has a strange girl with psychic powers crash into his life. They end up living together as child and caretaker, but Hinamatsuri isn’t your usual childcare anime.

Instead, as a comedy anime, Hinamatsuri is often about their chaotic life together. It loves to make jokes and has very little wholesome moments. However, its lack of outward wholesomeness is often what makes the comedy so effective.

While it may not be the warm fuzzy childcare anime you are looking for, Hinamatsuri is easily among the top tier of anime comedies.

Beelzebub

Taking care of a young child is difficult, taking care of a young demon lord is even more so.

That is the hook for this standard shounen action anime. A young delinquent finds a young baby that is actually the son of the demon lord. He ends up having to raise it with the young lord’s maid while also having to fend of attacks from other delinquents, demons, and tackling the baby’s wild, still forming demonic powers.

It is your standard mix of action, comedy, and with just an extra dash of childcare moments. However, for a literal baby, Baby Beel doesn’t need too much parental care.

I Love You, Baby

Similar to some other series, I Love You, Baby features a rather irresponsible teenager who suddenly finds himself the primary caretaker of a very young child.

In the beginning, he is definitely not someone you would trust a child to. He acts selfishly and irresponsibly, but that is part of I Love You, Baby’s charm. It features him grow as a character and as a caretaker.

This series, while older and a bit dramatic, has some of the best character development for a caretaker.

Moribito

Moribito breaks the mold of the standard childcare anime set up because it breaks the setting for the standard childcare anime too.

This series takes place in a fantasy land where a young prince is about to be sacrificed by his father for the good of the country based on prophecy. His mother has the prince spirited away by a female mercenary to save his life.

Instead of learning lessons about the world from his parents, that aforementioned female mercenary fills that role in his life.

One of the most charming things about Moribito is watching the world-wise Balsa teach her young ward about how the world works outside of his palace. It is probably great for a young prince to learn about the people he may one day rule over.

Alice and Zoroku

Not unlike Hinamatsuri, Alice and Zoroku follows a girl with special powers who ends up hiding with a gruff old man.

Unlike Hinamatsuri, this series isn’t a side-splitting comedy and instead leans into wholesome moments.

As the titular Alice was raised in a sheltered way, Zoroku and his family help her get some of her first tastes of the world. However, the series is also about protecting her identity so she isn’t sent back to the facility she escaped from.

Clannad

To preface this, Clannad is only a childcare anime in its second season, Clannad After Story, when the main character acquires a child. The first season of Clannad is your standard high school romance where he is working towards acquiring a girlfriend who will eventually become his wife.

However, while Clannad excels where most romance anime fails – following the couple in their relationship outside of high school into their adult life – it isn’t a totally happy affair.

Like so many childcare anime, Clannad After Story punches you with its sadness very hard. It is more tearjerker than wholesome fluff, but there are quite a few valuable lessons for a father to learn in it.

Do you know more anime about childcare? Let fans of wholesome anime know in the comments section below.