Between care needs and equal opportunity goals, for women but also children

Chiara Saraceno

Research professor

The issues at hand: not only societal and labour market needs but also individual and family needs

– Equal opportunities between men and women

– Granting adequate earnings to households

– Protecting children from poverty

– Equal opportunities for children

– Investing in children as the societal future

– (particularly for some country) sustaining fertility

Are these goals at odds between themselves and with the EU employment policy goals? Not necessarily

– employment gives women more negotiating power within the couple, as well as exit possibilities when the couple does not work any longer. Thus, in principle, supports less unbalanced relationships in the family.

– Mother’s employment is highly protective against child poverty both in dual parent households and in lone parents’ households. This is very important, since poverty in childhood has much more long term consequences than poverty in adulthood

– In the developed countries, the link between fertility and employment since the Eighties has become positive, rather than negative, at the comparative, cross-country level

– Gornick (2004) found that in the group of OECD countries she studied

The lowest the share of a couple’s earnings commanded by the mother, the more she and her children are vulnerable to the breaking up of the couple, and the higher the risk that they become poor.

There is also a positive link – at the cross-country level - between the mothers’ share of earnings and fertility.

The most generous a country’s policy package, the highest on average the share of a couple’s earnings commanded by the mother

But what about the caring and relationships needs of children?

The different dimensions of the caring relationship

– There is the need to receive care (and to be embedded in meaningful relationships)

– There is the need/the desire to give care and to develop strong relationships

– There is the need not to be swamped by care obligations and not to have to pay high long term costs for having chosen to invest in care

Therefore:Care giving and care receiving are an important part of human

relationships. Therefore they should be perceived as civil and social rights. Time to care should be explicitly integrated in the way we think individual life courses.

But caregiving should be allocated “by nature” neither to women only nor to families only. Rather, it should be a shared responsibility

Responsibility for child care and overall child well being is a highly gendered subject, given the prevalent division of labour and responsibilities. This in turn affect negatively women’s and children life chances

– The presence, as well as the number and age of the youngest child affect inversely men and women

– Women therefore support the higher long term economic costs of having children (marginality in the labour force, lower wages, lower pension wealth)

– This presents a (poverty) risk for children themselves , in case a parental couple ends

– It presents also the risk of depriving children of a caring relationship with their father, and fathers of the possibility to fully develop their caring abilities and their emotional life.

– This is particularly visible when a marriage/partnership ends: children risk to become extranged from their fathers and fathers not always have the capacity to develop a relationship with their children not mediated by the mother

Just a matter of choices and preferences? Research

indicates that

– Individual choice is circumscribed by prevailing national gender cultures and expectations, labour market opportunities, quality and cost of the caring options available.

– Individual choice is also constrained by work time organization, organizational culture in the work place, which in turn is strongly related to sector-specific cultures

– There is a significant variation in preferences and constraints available to individuals according to their socioeconomic group, and the stage in their individual life course.

This means that a) governments (and the EU) should not impose or even encourage one

single model of behavior and of dealing with children’s caring needs, but should acknowledge that there may be different preferences and also different evaluation of what is best for oneself and one’s own children; but

b) Governments should open up opportunities, lighten constrains, improve trade-offs, in order to avoid that gender and social class inequalities chrystallize

Countries address the issue of children’s care needs in different ways.

The male breadwinner model is no longer prevalent in practice and policies, but

– There is a wide combination of leaves and services, of supported familization (paid leaves) and de-familization (services). And in many countries the great bulk of care is left to families with no support (a great role of grandparents)

– In many countries, but not all, leaves have been opened up also to fathers, sometime with a “take it or leave it” quota reserved specifically for them

– Rather than the dual earner model the one and a half one prevails in most countries. Again, preferences or impossible choices? And what happens when there is only one parent dealing with the needs of earning and caring?

Overall length of maternity+parental leave. And length of compensation, irrespective of compensation level. EU

0

13

26

39

52

65

78

91

104

117

130

143

156

169

182

195

CZ SK LT PL ES EE FR DE BG HU AT LV RU DK SE IE LU IT UK SI NO RO PT NL FI BE GR CY MT GE

weeks

Maternity leave in weeks Net parental leave Total lengths of compensation

.

2

6

7

7

7

8

9

10

10

14

15

16

18

18

18

19

20

21

22

24

26

27

27

41

43

56

57

60

86

74

60

93

85

82

98

89

80

48

75

89

70

60

75

81

70

79

100

80

90

59

90

100

93

99

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Poland

Hungary

Bulgaria

Greece

Italy

Czech Republic

Austria

Spain

Germany

Luxemburg

Ireland

Latvia

Cyprus

Slovakia

Lithuania

Portugal

Russia

Finland

Estonia

Netherlands

United Kingdom

Norw ay

Slovenia

Sw eden

France

Denmark

Belgium

Coverage rate for children under 3 Coverage rate for children 3 to school age

Child care coverage in EU (+ Russia)

Levels and patterns of public coverage of the caring needs of pre-school age children (taking account of duration and level of compensation of leaves and of coverage through services). (Keck and Saraceno 2008)

14

44

3532 33 34

9 10

49

20

33

11

78

8

37 38

12

22

32

10

1925

63

79

13

58

12

29

22 27

40 39

6566

29

59

47

70

4

74

4546

73

64

58

80

71

66

29

14

80

36

86

57

44 43 41

27 27 26 24 22 21 20 19 18 18 18 16 15 1410 10 10 9 8 7 7 6

2

+12

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

BE DK* FR SE NO SI UK NL EE FI RU PT LT CY SK LV IE LU DE ES IT AT CZ BG GR HU PL

% o

f ti

me

Effective leave Neither paid leave nor services Services

With respect to mothers’ and fathers’ behavior research shows that– The longest and the less compensated the leaves, the more they

are femininized and the more they produce polarized behaviors among women mostly based on social class/education

– The longest the leaves actually taken by one single parent – de facto the mother - the more difficult is for her to re-enter the labour market

– It is not enough to allow fathers to take part of the parental leave. If there is not a “take it or loose it” quota, they are not likely to take it (also because their entitlement is weaker in the eyes of the employers)

– The possibility to take it part time encourages both leave sharing among parents and labour market attachment

– Cost of child care affects usage more among the low income families than the higher income ones (thus subsidized care has an important redistributive effect)

– Quality of childcare, together with quantity, affects strongly legitimization and acceptance

From the point of view of children’s well being: Research data do not present a clear cut picture. Overall

– Importance of a stable and secure relational environment. Thus too short leaves may be harmful, particularly if there are not good surrogates for an individualized care (but one should also remember that also parental care does not always provide the standards which are defined as adequate ). UNICEF suggests one year leaves (paid at least 50%)

– Importance of the quality of non family care – Importance of the hours of work and of the overall of mothers’ work

experience, in so far it affects the quality and quantity of time spent with the child

– Importance of father’s presence and relationship with child– Importance of early education for cognitive development and for reducing

inequalities among children due to inequalities in the family environment. This is becoming increasingly crucial in countries affected by important migratory processes (see also UNICEF 2008)

IMPORTANT: Children needs for parental time do not stop at school ageChildren do not need only the attention and company of their parents (de facto

their mother). Particularly in low fertility countries, services and schools are also places of horizontal socialization.

In conclusion

– Issues of children’s needs - and generally care - go beyond the scope of employment policies, but must be integrated into employment policies

– One of the limits of the European employment strategy has been the undervaluation of care both as a valued and valuable activity and as requiring high attention for quality, organization, timing and so forth

– Focus should be redirected to strengthening opportunities and options and to avoiding impossible trade-offs and dead-end choices

– Well paid leaves and adequate, good quality child care are part of the measures necessary towards this end and should not be framed as alternatives.

– Also family friendly working arrangements and equal opportunities in the labour market are however important

– Finally, focus should also be more strongly directed towards issues of equal opportunities among children and of social justice with regard to children