After-school reform in Finland is analysed as a case of state intervention in childhood and of inscribing political goals in an activity with children. The paper asks what understandings of children and childhood are communicated in and through the reform and its dispersed implementation. Theoretically, the paper is informed by new ways of governing in the late 20th century and by the concept of the social investment state. These are combined with an ethnographic approach which troubles the concept of governance and shows how it becomes enacted through social practices in local institutional settings. The paper explores the discursive "truths" about children's after-school time and how these differ across contrasting institutional contexts, shaping and reshaping ideas around what is good in and for childhood. (Contains 4 notes.)