Grandparenting in Europe: reconceptualising family care across two generations

Paper presented to the 10th ESPAnet Annual Conference at the University of Edinburgh, 6th - 8th September 2012

Authors: Eloi Ribe, Debora Price, Giorgio Di Gessa, Anthea Tinker & Karen Glaser

King’s College London, Institute of Gerontology

Abstract

Grandparents have always provided financial, emotional and practical support to children and grandchildren, generally taken for granted by governments. Yet this may disadvantage grandparents (particularly grandmothers) who have reduced engagement with paid labour and loss of long term financial benefits as a result, particularly as retirement ages are extended. Despite the importance of grandparents to the social organisation of childcare, they are generally invisible to welfare scholars. While family care regimes have been theorised as a complex consequence of historical legacy, policies, state and social institutions, women’s and men’s paid labour and gender ideologies and cultures, with few exceptions comparative care regime studies have tended to limit the scope of analysis of social policies to their impact on mothers.

In this paper we reconceptualise child care as two-generational encompassing collaboration between mothers and grandmothers. We extend existing family policy analysis to take into account work and care policies for both generations, as well as variations in employment, gender and care norms and behaviours. Combining detailed policy analysis with data from Eurostat, SHARE, ESS and Eurobarometer, we explain variation in grandparental care across eleven European countries: Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Romania, Denmark, Sweden, UK, Netherlands, France and Germany. We find grandparents are core to routine childcare across all countries, but that the extent and intensity of grandparent childcare depends on labour market structures for both mothers and older women; gender norms in paid work, mothering and care; and use of and trust in formal childcare providers. The consequences for grandparents need to be included in policy analysis.

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Introduction

In recent decades substantial socio-demographic and economic transformations in Western economies have altered family structures as well as relations between the family and the State. New international economic relations and sectors of economic activity together with greater civil and social rights have contributed to changing the social division of labour between men and women. As a result of these changes a series of ‘new social risks’ have appeared surrounding the social organisation of childcare. New demands for alternative maternal care have become more common and greater strains have been placed upon the State to assist and provide support to families with children. In parallel, Western societies have experienced increasing longevity, thus increasing possibilities for multigenerational relations, while at the same time posing new challenges in the provision of care for dependents. Policy settings and societal conditions have entered into a new phase of relations where gender, age and time interact with welfare states in complex ways.

Family: change and continuity

For most of the 20th Century family and social care issues were obscured in the policy-making debates. It is only since the 1980s that family and care issues have taken a more central place in welfare state policies (Wheelock and Jones 2002, Mätzke 2010). Theoretical approaches have moved away from the traditional ‘functionalist’ approach that regards the family as a functional, immutable, holistic institution aimed at the socialization of children (see for example Parsons and Bales 1956) to adopt a more dynamic, interlinked, mutable and heterogeneous perspective. The multiple purposes of the family are evident in a large number of studies (see for example Leitner 2003, Knijn and Saraceno 2010). They point out that there are substantial differences between countries as a result of the characteristics of policies in response to care challenges, ascribed to traditions, ideals and societal structures.

In the literature, the advent and development of family policies is most often associated with societal changes. It is argued that the family as a social institution changes according to economic and demographic changes, which exerts pressures upon the State to meet new social demands (Hantrais 1999). Family transformations are often related to processes of labour market restructuring. Labour market and social changes (linked to the feminist movement) have brought about an increase in the labour market participation of women and mothers (OECD 2002, OECD 2007). Nonetheless, gender differences in employment conditions (i.e. women are often employed in temporary and part-time jobs) and gender pay gaps (i.e. differences in the retribution of males to women) remain an issue in Western (and other) economies (see for example O'Connor, Orloff et al. 1999, Lewis, Campbell et al. 2008). New patterns of employment (more females in formal employment, discontinuity of working careers, late access to the labour market, increasing work mobility, changing working hours, etc.) in increasingly fragmented labour markets have altered women’s but also men’s access, participation and conditions in paid work and have consequently transformed family and household structures. The most common changes are decreases in fertility rates, reduced number of nuclear families (single-parent households), rises in divorce rates, cohabitation and children born out of wedlock (Coleman 2000, Haskey 2002). There is also a large body of research that argues about the importance of public institutions in influencing family policy development (a top-down effect). For instance, O’Connor et al. (1999) point out

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that family policy change is a result of government social policy objectives, which is different in each country due to political party configurations and the extent and tradition of social movement mobilisation. Similarly, von Wahl (2008) argues that political-institutional decisions are the main drivers of family policy, but does not take into account the role political ideals and interests or cultural expectations play in transforming family and care policies (Pfau-Effinger 2005). Family practices and social policies are thus both the cause and consequence of a multitude of processes across social institutions and under the influence of ideas, values and norms. Thus, family policy is mutable shaped by changes in society at micro and macro level.

Family policy research has mostly centred its attention on nuclear and lone-parent families with young children. However, the increase in life expectancy has led to a new family scenario by which more generations are likely to be living at the same time, although the number of family members (siblings, cousins etc.) has decreased (Tomassini, Glaser et al. 2004). As pointed out by Bengston (2001) families are now ‘beanpole’ families. Three-generation families are more common than ever before, which increases the potential for relationships across generations. This has the potential to transform family relationships by creating a new range of possibilities for the provision and receipt of care. This has led to increasing academic interest in intergenerational relationships as they have a growing impact on social, cultural and policy panoramas. Intergenerational relations are not only upwards from adult children to their parents, but also downwards from older parents to adult children and grandchildren (Hagestad 2006). It is argued here that these relations are transforming the way family members interact and provide care for each other.

This paper has five parts. First we reconceptualise child care in policy analysis as two generational, encompassing (in the main) collaboration between mothers and grandmothers. We then present our analysis of 11 European countries in three sections: first, we consider the policy logics of gender and care in each country; we next present our analysis of the relationship between labour market and child care cultures and structures and how these relate to observed grandmaternal care; finally we consider norms and cultures of motherhood, and how these relate to grandmaternal care. We conclude with some closing thoughts.

Welfare state structures and ideologies: work and care

In this section we present our theoretical framework for the analysis which follows, and indicate how we have operationalised this in our research.

Increasing public responsibility for family affairs has been a major factor in changing familial responsibilities within and outside the family sphere. The clearest examples are childcare services and parental leave policies which have aimed at balancing family and work responsibilities (Knijn and Saraceno 2010). Family changes and the need of new child care arrangements, which have been referred to as ‘new social risks’ (Taylor-Gooby 2004, Jensen 2008, Lewis, Campbell et al. 2008), have triggered a whole new complex of relations between families and the State, labour market and civil society. Recent concerns about the social organisation of care point out that increasing participation of women in the labour market coupled with low or even decreasing participation of male in care activities

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is leading to higher demands for childcare and greater strains on mothers. A large body of work has identified family risks arising from mismatched needs for care and responsibilities in the labour market (Pfau-Effinger 2011). These risks mostly come from unstable, precarious and inflexible labour markets that severely disadvantage mothers and children in the spheres of the labour market, social rights and family contexts. Other risk factors identified include higher divorce rates, female and maternal participation in deeply gendered labour markets and jobless families among others (OECD 2011).

The traditional public State support against social risks derived from the labour market (Daly 2000) such as unemployment, retirement or sickness benefits, has been challenged in recent decades with a series of new demands for care outside the labour market, which has focussed attention on the private sphere of family life. Mainstream policy regimes of welfare have been challenged with the analytical concept of ‘ideals of care’, arguing that we need to go beyond the analysis of the labour market configuration and economic settings (Kremer 2007) and centre on the interrelationships between the family and the other societal institutions. Social and family care research is, therefore, irremediably interlinked with the changing nature of society.

There is little doubt that care and work responsibilities both shape family life, and so family policy cannot be separated from societal structures of work and care. This relationship is particularly visible among women. They are caught between responsibilities for childcare and pursuit of a career or the need to actively participate in the labour market, which creates further needs for childcare (Gardiner 2000, Le Bihan and Martin 2004, OECD 2007). Intra-household care time transfers and their impact on mothers societal position was largely ignored in comparative welfare research (Leira 1992), but feminist critiques pioneered the inclusion of these activities and relations within comparative welfare analysis. Most important is an analytical approach that accounts for the interplay of the State, labour market, market and family (Daly 2000, Kroger and Sipila 2005). These relationships have different outcomes according to ‘gender relations’ promoted by the State policies. The extent to which each of these agents is providing care, whether it is childcare, nuclear or elderly care, significantly varies between countries for a multiplicity of reasons ranging from the institutional to the ideological.

Incentives structures help to understand to what extent women are in a position to participate in paid labour and family care (Daly 2000). Incentive structures are thought to be a result of how childcare responsibilities between institutions are regulated by ‘family programs’. However, opportunities are not only structured or shaped by institutional and normative actions, but also by cultural expectations and long-standing gendered practices. Structuralist approaches to the distribution of responsibilities for work and care are limited in explaining variation between and within countries, for example Kremer (2007) argues that formal childcare provision and maternal participation in the labour market are insufficient to explain the observed variability in childcare patterns (Kremer 2007). A series of studies on gender analysis and policy regimes has focussed on how the gender division of labour promotes distinct gender ideologies (Leira 1992), and how cultural meanings about care and gender practices are embedded into social policy (O'Connor, Orloff et al. 1999). These works stress that to explain the existence of variance between welfare states, we must consider the role of ideology in the construction of social policies. More recently, cultural and ideational approaches have emphasized the importance and influence of ideas in shaping and modelling social policies (Pfau-Effinger 2005) and the interplay of

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culture and expectations between the institutions and the social organisation of care (Haberken 2010). These theoretical conceptualisations of welfare cultures have allowed us to break with the rather ontological perspective that normative social policy provision is the unique unit of analysis of welfare institutional arrangements. Rather, welfare state cultures are thought to restrict the range and generosity of social policies within a particular society and limit and inform how and to what extent welfare is provided (Pfau-Effinger 2005).

Most of the analysis of paid work and childcare has focussed exclusively on mothers. Little consideration has been placed on grandparental employment and grandmaternal care. However, we have seen the emergence of a small number of recent studies within the comparative welfare state literature analysing intergenerational relations. This research has focussed on understanding to what extent there are obligations to look after dependant individuals (Saraceno 2008; Beck and Saraceno 2010) and the degree to which institutional settings promote or discourage transfers of care between family members (Larsen and Hadlow 2003, Leitner 2003). Others have studied whether social policies substitute or complement family care (Bolin, Lindgren et al. 2008). Recent research on intergenerational relations has included the social provision for older adults in the analysis of welfare variation (Anttonen, Baldock et al. 2003). The combination of the two sets of family provision (childcare and elderly care) has resulted in typologising a family care continuum based on the degree of ‘familialisation’ and ‘defamilialisation’ that allows clustering of different countries into family regimes (Lietner 2003, Saraceno 2008). However, this intergenerational perspective of family care regimes, despite its contribution to mapping regimes of social care, has a series of limitations. The definition of intergenerational relations has been restricted to two-generation pairs. The middle generation is seen as having the pivotal role in intergenerational relationships either upwards (to their parents) or downwards (to their children). This dyadic approach from the perspective of the adult child is a limitation of these studies, and diminishes the role played by older parents (i.e. grandparents). Further, the importance of accounting for service usage and policy take-up in defining and constructing welfare cultures and policy regimes tends to be obscured in this analysis. Moreover, welfare state interventions are often regarded as neutral and inherently positive. Yet social policy interventions can produce contradictory and unwanted results that can exacerbate inequalities or create inequalities between individuals that previously did not exist. We argue that family childcare organisation is at least in part a consequence of the organisation of the labour market, cultural expectations and policy imperatives or ideals of care at the level of at least three (if not four) generations, and failing to account for this leaves a deficit in understanding the impacts of social policy.

Model of analysis and operationalisation

Following the approach developed in the discussion above, we examine the complex relations between policy frameworks and outcomes, labour market and gender cultures and structures across 11 European countries1. The principal objective is to analyse the different country settings that help to explain the level and intensity of involvement of grandparents, more particularly the extent to which grandmothers provide care to their grandchildren. Thus, we aim at disentangling the family and care policy settings to determine under what circumstances and to what extent grandparental practices are encouraged,

1 Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden and the UK

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supported or assumed and their implications on family and care practices. We also account for the labour market practices of mothers and grandmothers and individuals’ attitudes towards childcare responsibilities.

We first aim to identify policy interventions that affect the relationship between family care responsibilities and labour market participation from a three-generational perspective. These interventions are crucial to the organisation of childcare. Each country has a similar range of policies that define and modify the set of available time and economic resources for families to support dependent individuals. Some of these policy interventions pertain to children and others to older individuals. We consider that family policies cannot be considered in isolation. In each country, a raft of policies must be considered (see Figure 1). Furthermore, we understand that these policies interact with each other in various forms and create for each country a unique policy environment. We argue that the institutional configuration of work-care support for individuals in specific circumstances partly explains the differences between countries in grandmaternal support. The impact of these policies on family and work practices is, however, constrained by the social and cultural organisation of work, family and care. In other words, policies are informed and inform the social and cultural contexts in which these policies are negotiated and applied. It is only by understanding these contexts for policies that we can understand how the policy environment really reflects, and supports or fail to support, grandmaternal care. In assessing these social and cultural contexts, we look at individual and social rights conferred by policies, but also at how they operate in practice and how the practice relates to cultural factors.

Maternity, Paternity and Parental Rights;

wider family and Grandparental Rights

“Family Friendly” Labour Market Policies

Public/Private Child Care (Availability and

Cost)

Kindergarten and School Policies (age

bands, length of school day)

Retirement Policies

Adult care policies

Child payments

Raft of Policies

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Figure 1: Conceptual Framework for Understanding the Interaction between Policy and Grandparenting

This framework for understanding grandparenting remedies a number of conceptual problems with previous comparative analyses of family policy, which have either failed or failed adequately to take into account cultural practices, or have failed to consider the intergenerational issues that arise when policies, structure, culture and practice differ for the two generations involved in grandparenting relationships. Both parents and grandparents are living within culturally specific labour market and family structures, and these may apply differently to the generations that are parents of dependent children, and grandparents of dependent children.

The nature and logics of our selected public policies are key to identifying the family care expectations posed upon individuals within the family Public policies set expectations for groups of individuals such as mothers, fathers or relatives and describe what it is normatively accepted. They do so by granting status to individuals that perform differentiated roles, such as for example a working mother or non-working mother. Thus, we understand each set of policies as encapsulating a particular societal organisation of family, work and care. In this research, we are particularly interested in understanding family and social care ideals promoted through public policies in the various selected countries, since they produce and reproduce family care practices.

We identify policy logics for family and care systems through the analysis of three axes:

a. General and alternative eligibility and qualifying criteria: who is entitled and the conditions under which individuals are entitled to claim benefits;

b. Material and symbolic dependencies between actors and institutions: the constellations of economic and time dependencies created within households and between institutions;

c. Distribution of care obligations and responsibilities between the State, family and the market.

The policy areas we look at include childcare, care of older people, family policies and retirement policies. All these policies play a crucial role for understanding the wider social organisation of work and care. We have included all kinds of parental and non parental leave for care, cash benefits and available formal services. Apart from the institutional characteristics of each of the selected policies, we have collected data related to policy outcomes such as ‘childcare usage by age-group of child’ and ‘the percentage of individuals aged 65 and over in institutional care’. We argue that these kinds of usage indicators are a reflection of policy and societal environments, creating the setting for intergenerational relations.

The range of available options, conditions and levels of universality for combining work and care differ between countries. Some countries offer more comprehensive services and benefits in-kind for (especially) mothers combining work and care, which results in less need for grandparental or other forms of non-parental care. In other countries, there might be little public childcare provision which leads to more care by mothers, again meaning childcare provided by grandparents might not be needed. Policies that provide for the care of older people can also be viewed from the perspective of acting as a

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driver of labour market participation of daughters (sons to a much lesser extent) rather than a central element of public support for household members. In this way, the social organisation of the care of older people also impacts on whether mothers might be out of the labour market and thus potentially available to provide care for their children. (Daly and Lewis 1998; Pavolini & Ranci 2008).

But it is not only policy logics that matter. Family and care needs, opportunities and inequalities are situated in a complex network of societal and individual practices through which new and old sets of relations, values, norms, reciprocities and risks, are constructed and reconstructed. Thus, as well as looking at the raft of policies for each country (and the logics of those policies in terms of gender/family relations, and labour markets), we examine a raft of indicators that measure structural frameworks and cultural factors that reflect how people live their lives in those countries, regardless of their strict rights under the policy. The list of indicators is shown in Figure 2. In some cases, an indicator might reflect both labour market cultures and family cultures, (for example proportion of dual-earner couples), but for simplicity sake, these are shown only once.

The extent to what individuals participate in the labour market is a major component that shapes childcare needs and demands. A large number of strategies have been developed in recent decades to promote women’s work, for example the Lisbon Strategy of the European Union set an expectation of increase in women’s labour market participation to 60% by 2010. However, the labour market structure is different in each country, with different policy environments and individual preferences. These form a field of possibilities for paid work and the opportunities to remain in paid work, as well as the ability to combine paid work and care. We argue that the level or percentage of women’s employment, especially mothers, is a revealing element of labour market structure that informs and shape individuals’ and families’ opportunities and availabilities for providing child care. As such, a high percentage of mothers working full-time will mean less availability to care for their children, although the opportunities to access formal childcare or other benefits in-kind may increase with the greater economic resources from paid work. Women’s labour market participation also informs the organisation of other child care resources such as grandparental care and other forms of formal and informal childcare. The needs of families with both parents or lone parents working for alternative childcare such as care provided by grandmothers are greater. For the grandparent generations, trends and timing of retirement construct childcare opportunities and release individuals from the labour market. Retirement patterns establish a new set of economic relationships and dependencies between household members that make possible and constrain the range of opportunities to offer grandparental care. The combination of these various elements results in a series of transitions and negotiations at the family and other childcare levels. As such, families, and particularly mothers and grandmothers, act according to their current working situation, their available family and non family resources and own preferences that are informed and shaped by culture. They might choose among three different options regarding the labour market: job continuation (remaining as full-time employees), conciliation (part-time contracts) and being out of the paid labour market. These options might be part of a transition, or a continuation of their previous situation. Whether they are transient or continuing, child care can be thought of as being organised in three ways: exclusively family care, family-service combination, and exclusively service. Finally, within family care we can distinguish mother –nuclear- care and grandparental –other family- care. Services, on

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the other hand, can include formal and informal services, including childcare in the formal and informal economies.

Based on the theoretical framework presented, we have collected approximately 250 indicators for each of the eleven countries under study that measure structural frameworks and cultural factors that reflect how people live their lives in those countries and show the wider social organisation of work, family, retirement and care in that country. These indicators are shown in Figure 2, and are organised into (1) policy; (2) family cultures and structures; and (3) labour market cultures and structures. It is anticipated that the data collected for each indicator will in due course be available as an open web source. The reference year for the data is 2008, although in particular cases the data might refer to a different year.

Figure 2: Indicators for policies, family & gender cultures and structures, labour market cultures and structures

Family strategies are an important element in understanding the intricacies of the organization of social care, but inferring strategies is difficult for social researchers. The intersection of intentions, motivations and structured possibilities lead to complexity at the interplay between the micro and macro level. Cultural expectations might conflict with structural organisations; people might conform or might act in ways that are dissonant with policy expectations, and the policies impact on these groups very differently. Child care provided by grandparents is a response to a series of circumstances constructed and reproduced by individual decisions of labour and care and structural constraints of labour markets, public-private markets of care and ideological imperatives on what is best for children.

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Policies

Maternity, Paternity and Parental RightsWider family and Grandparental Rights“Family Friendly” Labour Market PoliciesPublic/Private Child Care (Availability and Cost)Kindergarten and School Policies (age bands, length of school day)Child paymentsRetirement PoliciesAdult care policies

Family and Gender Cultures and Structures

Attitudes to child care (among both generations)Attitudes to paid work (among both generations)Attitudes to elder care (among both generations)Gender role attitudes (among both generations)Proportions of couples in breadwinner-carer/part-time carer and dual-full- time-worker arrangementsFather's participation in child careMen's participation in domestic workMaternity/Paternity/Parental leave take upGrandparent proximityUse of child care (formal and informal)Use of elder careSchool hours/kindergarten hours

Labour Market Cultures and Structures

Employment/Unemployment/Non-employment ratesProportion of informal vs. formal labourProportion of women in the workplace at varying agesEffective ages of retirement (men and women)LLI/Disability rates, especially 50+Pension income relative to income from employment (replacement rates)Proportion of mothers in the workplace, varying ages, ages of children and numbers of childrenProportion of grandmothers in the workplace, varying ages and numbers of grandchildrenGender segregation in the workplaceGender pay gapsWomen's wagesChild care costs

We therefore argue that the cultural, structural and family care institutional systems ought to be analysed from a three-generational perspective. Cultural expectations of childcare, social policies for families and structural conditions contribute to shaping identities of motherhood, parenthood and grandparenthood. This analytical approach breaks with the body of research that focuses on legal norms and institutional (welfare) profiles to explain intergenerational regimes of care (see for example Kalmijn and Saraceno 2008, Saraceno 2010). We also introduce a new focus on grandmothers as active players in the organisation of childcare.. Grandparental care regimes, i.e. the level and intensity of grandchild care provision, are a consequence of institutional and structural frameworks as well as cultural expectations embedded within ideals of care of who should be responsible for providing childcare.

Having set out our theoretical framework, we now turn to our empirical analysis, first examining the policy logics in each country from a three-generational perspective.

Grandparenting in Europe

This research looks into factors that promote or hinder grandparental childcare. The frequency and intensity of grandchild care is notably different in each of our countries. We expect therefore that childcare needs, individuals’ opportunities to provide childcare and cultural norms and values all differ. We have observed grandparental participation for grandmothers of children of all ages2. In the 11 selected countries the regularity of care, i.e. whether any childcare has been provided in the last year without the presence of any of the parents, is very high in Romania (92%), and high in the UK (63%), which suggests high family commitment between generations. Germany (40.3%), Italy (41.8%) and Spain (42.2%) have the lowest percentage of grandmothers reporting that they have provided any childcare in the past year. In the middle we find Sweden (50.8%) and France (50.7%). Finally, there is a group of three countries with a mid-high percentage of grandmothers providing regular childcare: Denmark (58.9%), Hungary (55.7%) and the Netherlands (56.9%). However, this classification of grandmaternal provision of care radically changes when looking at the intensity of the care. Intensive childcare is here defined as grandmothers providing daily childcare to their grandchildren (20 to 30 days a month or reporting that they provide daily childcare without specifying how many days a month). Three main groups of countries have been identified. A first group of countries with high percentages of grandmothers providing daily grandchild care is formed by Romania (30%), Italy (21.69%), Spain (16.75%), Portugal (14%) and Hungary (12.5%). The second group is constituted by Germany (8.34%), the UK (7.56%) and France (6.90%), which are somewhat in a middle position of intensive grandmaternal childcare. Finally, the countries with a low percentage of intensive grandmaternal care are Denmark (1.59%), the Netherlands (2.33%) and Sweden (2.34%). Romania is a unique case as it scores high in both frequency and intensity. However, it is much more common that countries score high (or low) in one category and low (or high) in the other. For instance, Denmark and the Netherlands score high in frequency but low in intensity. By contrast, Italy and Spain show a low percentage in regular care, but high percentages of grandmothers providing intensive childcare to their grandchildren. A different picture is observed in countries such as Germany with very similar results of regular grandmaternal care

2 Using SHARE 2004 and ELSA 2008

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to Italy and Spain but substantially lower rates of grandmothers providing intensive care. Similarly, Sweden and France with almost identical results in regular grandmaternal care (50.8% and 50.7% respectively) present substantially different results when looking at intensive care (2.34% and 6.90% respectively). All in all, we find great variability in frequency and intensity in the 11 selected countries, which suggests that there are significant differences in the institutional, structural and cultural conditions that help explain the participation of grandmothers in the provision of childcare3.

We argue that these differences in the frequency and intensity of grandchild care respond to family needs and opportunities for the organisation of childcare. We suggest that the major sources of variability are the level of participation of mothers and grandmothers in the labour market, the cultural acceptance or rejection of the family as the main provider of care and the institutional settings available for parents to care for their children (i.e. child care services or cash benefits to look after children).

We suggest three hypotheses:

1. Countries with a high percentage of mothers working full-time are more likely to rely on grandparental care.

2. Countries with low public institutional support and high expectations of family care rely on mother--care to a larger extent and hence grandparental support is less needed.

3. Countries with high commitment to childcare provided within the family are expected to have a higher percentage of grandmaternal support

Ideologies of care and family

Family and care policies have usually been classified according to the degree of responsibility assigned to families in the provision of care, and the extent to which welfare states’ arrangements promote an equal distribution of responsibilities within the family between men and women. However, grandparental policies are scarce, and grandparental roles and rights are invisible. We aim to consider the policy-ideological position for grandparents through accounting for the ways that family ties are implicitly constructed by social policy.

Care is a central concept in our understanding of the logics behind the distribution of responsibilities and obligations of care between the State, family, market and associations. We investigate characteristics of family and care policies, namely: maternity, paternity and parental leave; other leaves due to a sick or ill child or parent; childcare institutional services; child benefits (birth grants, child-rearing allowances and child benefits) and family allowances; long-term care services and cash benefits; retirement pensions. We consider how, through these policies, the State promotes, encourages or dissuades the roles of parents and grandparents, formal and informal care. Thus, family cultures might be drawn on two axes: strong to weak nuclear family responsibilities and strong to weak extended family responsibilities.

3 Colleagues at the Institute of Gerontology, King’s College London are examining the extent to which these differences are driven by demographic factors

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A first group of countries is distinguished by the high reliance and activation of the members of the nuclear family to provide and organise childcare; parents are almost exclusively the recipients of public rights and benefits. This regime called ‘grandparental exclusion’ only ascribes public State rights to direct in-household carers (parents or partners). There is no recognition of formal provision by other members of the family to provide childcare, while collective agreements between employers and employees might grant certain flexibility for providing child or elderly care. Wider family care is deemed to be exclusively granted for urgent or unexpected need. The characterisation of the regime of care is marked by a great homogeneity of conditions to access to leave benefits and the greater universality of cash transfers and benefits in kind, with large public provision for children of all ages, which acts as a measure to promote the work of family members. This is a right for children from particularly the age of one. Mechanisms of public within-nuclear-family support compensate for income losses thus ameliorating financial dependencies between family members during the first year of the child’s life. This strong explicitly promoted household care is rapidly compensated by a strong offer of public childcare services and the availability of child benefits to ensure the economic well-being of families. Cash benefits are generous and universal, which reduces dilemmas between work or care. Two of the countries studied are paradigmatic examples of this regime: Denmark and Sweden. There is a third country (France) that shares some aspects of the family and care organisation. However, there are significant features of the policy logics on family and care that clearly distinguishes France from the two Nordic countries. The opportunities for grandparental care are more extensive as the organisation of institutional services for childcare is substantially less publicly enforced. A second group of countries, we call the ‘institutional grandparent’ regime constituted by Hungary, Portugal and Spain is characterised by a strong promotion of care within the family. However, contrary to the Nordic countries, such enhancement of family members is not limited to parents, but also extended to other relatives outside the household. The distribution of opportunities to work and care is limited, particularly as a result of the low institutional childcare support for children aged below 3. Public provision for dependent elderly people is limited and mostly centred on the activation of a family member to look after the dependent individual. The logic of care towards elderly dependents is mostly organised within the family, and severely limited in institutional resources. Institutionalisation of care for older people is not very strong and the policy logic imperatives are even stronger than for childcare public provision.

However, the ‘institutional grandparenthood’ family regime extends to a group of countries, Romania and Italy, where the State does not endorse the role of grandparents in family care, but rather takes for granted that within family care relations between two generations are a private issue. Thus, public support for grandparents to look after their grandchildren is not explicitly supported. Family care within the family is supported through cash benefits, although the extent of these cash benefits is not as thorough and generous as in the group formed by Hungary, Portugal and Spain. A common characteristic of Romania and Italy with the other countries of the ‘institutional grandparenthood’ regime is the sparse and incomplete public services for children. However, three characteristics can be identified: a strong division between age groups in child care (0-2 and 3-5); large use of informal childcare combined with grandmaternal care; and the scarcity of outside family care.

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Finally a third regime of family and care is characterised by the indifference of the State in the matter of grandparental support for families, in the Netherlands, Germany and the UK. Although the family is a pillar of the system in each of the countries of the regime, scarce public institutional childcare support and a large reliance on the market for the provision of childcare services is common in the three countries. The opportunities to work are however different in the various countries of the regime. The Netherlands work logics are more accentuated than in Germany and the UK in that the promotion of a dual-earner is a priority in the Netherlands.

To summarise:

1. Institutionalisation of grandparenthood : Spain, Hungary Portugal1.1 Implicit necessary grandparenthood : Romania and Italy

2. Exclusion of grandparenthood : Denmark and Sweden2.1 Partial exclusion : France

3. Indifference : Germany and the Netherlands and the UK

Work and gender cultures and structures

We now turn to consider observed female labour market structures, more concretely the employment rates of mothers with young dependent children (see Table 1). We focus our attention on the participation rates of mothers with children aged younger than 6, since their needs for childcare are much more acute than older children. These needs are especially acute where mothers work full-time as they are less available to fully meet their children’ care needs on a regular and daily basis.

Table 1: Percentage of mothers by working status and age the child and gender pay gap, by country (2008), in parenthesis the percentage of mothers with children all ages

Mothers with children below 6

in FT employment

Mothers with children below 6

in PT employment

Mothers with children below 6

out of employment1

Mothers with children aged 0-2

working 40+ hours

Mothers with children aged 3-5

working 40+ hours

Gender pay gap2

Denmark 66 18 16 . . 12.1France 44.5 24 31.6 21 22.3 13.1Germany 22 40 37 26.4 13.8 21.6Hungary 32 3 65 80.5 86.1 3.9Italy 35 20 45 38.1 30.8 11.8Netherlands 10 68 22 4.6 5 16.7Portugal 69 6 25 68.1 68.3 15.6Romania 58 6 36 85.3 80.9 .Spain 42 19 39 42.9 66 11.8Sweden 47 34 19 . .UK 25 36 39 16.9 14.8 19.8 (1) Out of employment includes mothers that are unemployed or temporarily inactive.(2) Gender pay gap (unadjusted) is the difference between male and female earnings expressed as a percentage of male earnings. Source: Eurostat LFS, 2011; OECD statistics, 2011.

13

The most common regimes of employment are full-time, part-time and not in employment 4. These three main types of work status are found to different degrees in each of the 11 selected countries. Thus, childcare needs and opportunities will be different in each country. In this discussion we focus on women (mothers and grandmothers) as several studies have shown that the childcare provided within the family is typically provided by women. We first report the main findings regarding the female labour market participation for mothers of young children and women aged 50 to 64. Mothers working full-time in the labour market need more childcare support to conciliate work and family life. Thus, countries with high percentages of maternal full time employment might lead to high participation of grandmothers in childcare duties. This equation, however, is not straightforward. Grandmothers are not always available as they might participate in the labour market themselves or care for a dependent husband, parent or other relatives. In any event, grandmaternal childcare support might interact with institutional childcare provision in the form of day care, nursery or kindergarten places. Extensive public childcare is expected to offset grandmaternal care, especially intensive grandmaternal care.

We have found notable differences in maternal employment in the 11 selected countries, indicating distinctive motherhood labour market participation regimes. First, Denmark and Portugal have the highest percentage of mothers in full-time employment (66% and 69% respectively) followed by Romania (58%). In these countries then childcare needs are expected to be met largely by formal or informal services and/or grandmothers. . Second, the Netherlands and Germany have the largest percentage of mothers employed in part-time jobs (68% and 40% respectively). This work regime allows for greater conciliation between childcare responsibilities and economic independence achieved through participating in the labour market. In these cases, the intensity of grandmaternal care is expected to be low as long as mothers have access to formal or informal care services. Lastly, Hungary and Italy have the highest percentage of mothers out of employment (65% and 45% respectively) with Denmark and Sweden at the other extreme with the lowest percentage in this working category (16% and 19% respectively). There is less need for grandmaternal support in countries where mothers have more availability to look after their children and vice versa. The maternal employment distribution of women with children of all ages is almost identical to the distribution of women with children aged below 6.

All in all, three and a half regimes can be somewhat distinguished among these eleven countries. First, a high employment participation regime with full-time work predominating, but high levels of overall employment including part-time work. This first regime is prevalent in Denmark, Portugal and Sweden. Secondly, a ‘polarised’ regime where the percentage of mothers in full-time predominates, but the percentage of mothers out of employment is high to moderate (France, Romania and Spain). A third distinctive group is the part-time regime where mothers are mainly employed in part-time jobs and where full-time employment is low (Germany, the Netherlands and the UK). Finally, we have distinguished a regime that would fit with the second ‘polarised’ regime but somewhat differs from the

4 Other types of employment include temporary work, shift work that might combine intensive work days or

14

other three countries in that the predominant category of mothers is out of employment (Hungary and Italy).

The differences in maternal employment rates in the selected countries are revealing when observing the proportion of mothers working intensive hours, that is, mothers working 40 or more hours a week. However, it is important to note that we now observe mothers with children aged 0 to 2 and 3 to 5 as two distinctive groups. We argue that mothers working more than 40 hours a week are faced with the greatest difficulties in conciliating work and family life responsibilities, and, therefore have the greatest need to organise alternatives to maternal care. Thus, countries with large percentages of women in intensive paid work are expected to face greater demands for childcare, and we then expect to see much greater support from grandmothers. In such cases, grandmaternal intensive care (daily care) is expected to be more likely as the opportunities to find enough care from formal care services might be lower. The differences between countries are again large but do not exactly correspond to the wider labour market structure previously seen. There is a different pattern for Hungary and Romania in particular. Whereas Hungary showed one of lowest percentage of mothers of young children in employment (only 35%), it scores among the highest in mothers working 40 or more hours (80.5% for children aged 0 to 2 and 86.1% for children aged 3 to 5). By contrast, Germany scores a much higher proportion of mothers in intensive work than the overall structure would suggest, although paradoxically this is only true for mothers of the youngest children (aged 0 to 2). Romania, Portugal and Spain have the highest proportion of mothers working 40 or more hours for the children’s age group 0 to 2 (85.3%, 68.1% and 42.9% respectively) and for the 3 to 5s (80.9%, 68.3% and 66% respectively). Portugal is remarkable as almost the totality of mothers working full-time work more than 40 hours a week.

In this last group of countries, our hypothesis relating maternal availabilities to provide childcare and grandmaternal participation in childrearing is validated. Countries with a large proportion of mothers in intensive work have the greatest percentage rate of grandmothers providing intensive childcare. This also holds true in the opposite direction for countries with low percentages of mothers in intensive working hours. The Netherlands remains as the country with the lowest percentage of mothers in full-time and intensive full-time work (about 5% in both age groups), which leads to lower needs for daily childcare and a low participation of grandmothers in such intensive care regime.

The conclusions we can draw from mothers’ labour market structures are that different childcare needs can be foreseen in these eleven countries as the mothers’ availability to look after their children is substantially different. We can conclude that childcare needs are expected to be more intense in countries where the percentage of mothers in full-time employment is high such as Portugal, Denmark and Romania and to a certain extent Sweden, but also in Spain where the percentage of mothers in intensive work is among the highest. On the other hand, needs and opportunities are expected to be moderate to low in countries such as Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK with the large majority of mothers in part-time jobs and/or out of employment. However, an exception for Hungary must be made as the large majority of women in employment work more than 40 hours a week, which can exacerbate their needs for child support.

15

Our first hypothesis predicts that frequent and regular grandparental involvement is expected to be related to the extent to which mothers participate in the labour market. We formally consider the association between proportion of mothers working full-time with both regular and intensive grandmaternal care in order to validate our initial hypothesis (hypothesis 1). We find that the relationship between these variables is not clear, denoting that the organisation of childcare for full-time mothers has other components that help explain country differences in grandmaternal help. The same results are found for mothers with children aged below 6 working full time – again the association is not clear. There is also a lack of association between single mothers in full-time employment and the regularity and frequency of grandmothers providing childcare. On the other hand, a strong, positive and significant relationship is found for mothers working 40 or more hours a week and grandmothers providing very intensive care (i.e. daily care). As such, countries with a high percentage of mothers working very intensive hours rely on a much larger scale on grandmaternal care. This is in line with our hypothesis on the exchange of availabilities of mothers to provide childcare and grandmaternal support.

The clearest association and one that explains a great deal of the variance in grandmaternal intensive involvement is the proportion of mothers who are not in the paid labour market, though in a paradoxical direction. Figure 1 shows the very clear positive relation between the rate of maternal absence from the labour market and increases in the rate of intensive grandmaternal childcare. This is contrary to the expectation of lower grandmaternal support in countries with low full-time employment. This is an example of the ecological fallacy – the mothers who are needing the intensive assistance from grandparents are those who diverge from this care norm – i.e. they are the mothers in the paid labour market but living in a country where this is not the norm. In such countries, with a greater cultural or normative imperative for care to remain in the family, the organisation of childcare outside the family becomes particularly difficult, as childcare services are scarce, expensive and/or do not cover all the needs). Figure 8: Mothers aged 25-49 out of employment and grandmothers looking after their grandchildren at all as % of all grandmothers

10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 500%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

DE

NL

ESIT

FR

DK

UK

PT HU

RO

SE

f(x) = 0.00681287962244867 x − 0.0802556627595455R² = 0.482831081880772

Mothers aged 25-49 out of employment and grandmothers (grandparents) looking after their grandchildren daily

Mothers out of employment

Gran

dmot

hers

look

ing

after

dai

ly

Source: SHARE 2004; Eurostat LFS 2011

16

We now turn to consider the structure of employment for older women aged 50 to 64. This variable helps to explain the availability of these mid-life women to provide childcare, but also reflects the gender and labour market structures of each country. It is expected that in countries where there are large percentage rates of mid-life women in the labour market, the probability of grandmothers providing intensive childcare should be lower. In these countries, families with young children would have to find alternative childcare support systems. Grandparent care is a function of the interaction between these two-generational labour market structures. In particular, a high percentage of both mothers and mid-life grandmothers working full-time would indicate a low grandparental-care regime. Similarly, lower working percentage rates in both groups would lead to a more familialising regime but a low grandparenting regime, since in this scenario, mothers would take responsibility for their children on a full-time basis, leading to less demand for grandmothers to look after children. By contrast, a high percentage of mothers working full-time and low participation rates of older women would create spaces of grandmaternal opportunities for caring after their grandchildren (high grandparenting regime).

The labour market effect from proportions of mid-life women working is important, as shown in Figure 3. Those countries with a larger percentage of women aged 50 to 64 in paid work are the ones where intensive grandmaternal care is lower such as in Sweden, Denmark or the Netherlands. By contrast, countries with low percentage of working women in this age-range present many more grandmothers providing intensive care. In these countries, namely Italy, Romania, Spain and Portugal, childcare needs are higher as there are more mothers in intensive work. The same countries with a larger percentage of mothers out of employment also have the largest percentage of women aged 50 to 64 out of employment, which indicates a structural continuity between generations of low labour market participation rates for women in these countries.

Figure 3: Women aged 50-64 in employment and grandmothers (grandparents) looking after their grandchildren daily

30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 750%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

DE

NL

ES

IT

FR

DK

UK

PTHU

RO

SE

f(x) = − 0.00630271750000003 x + 0.435319177500002R² = 0.582687973955629

Women aged 50-64 in employment and grandmothers (grandparents) looking after their grandchildren daily

Women 50-64 in paid work

Gran

dmot

hers

look

ing

after

dai

ly

Source: SHARE 2004; Eurostat LFS 2011

We conclude from this analysis that grandmothers’ childcare provision is part of an exchange of availabilities and demands for childcare within the family members. The availability of mothers to look

17

after their children offsets the demand for grandmaternal care involvement (the only exception is Germany where grand maternal involvement is lower than the one we should expect). The presence and provision of any grand maternal grandchild care is conditional upon mothers’ availabilities to satisfy the daily care of their children, which is fully achieved by their absence from the labour market. If they are in paid work, then grandmother’s own likelihood of being in paid work becomes a factor to consider. However, the intensity of grandmaternal care provided by grandmothers might relate to the ease with which outside family care such as a place in a day care centre, kindergarten or nursery can be found.

The formal childcare infrastructure is also an important element in modifying the needs for childcare. In this section, we observe the type, extent and provision of formal childcare. All European countries have clearly established an institutional division between young infants (normally from 6 months to the child’s third birthday) and children from the age of 3 to compulsory school (between the age of 5 and 6 depending on the country). This division is based on the different type of and objectives of the institutions. In the case of children aged younger than 3, the large majority of European countries emphasise the care component and exclude the educational curriculum. By contrast, the second phase (pre-school children aged 3 and older) tends to contain an explicit educational component. A large majority of countries consider this second phase part of the schooling period. Thus, the large majority of children are expected to receive some institutional care from the age of 3 onwards.

We can then argue that a higher maternal childcare availability leads to lower childcare needs to organise and provide childcare outside the family. Thus, formal childcare services are less needed in countries where a large majority of mothers are out of employment. Equally, it can be argued that grandmaternal care offsets the needs for formal childcare services. Table 2 shows the distribution of usage of formal institutional childcare services for children aged 0 to 2 and 3 to 5 years and the percentage of children of the same age groups in 30 or more hours a week. We have considered childcare usage as a more valid and reliable indicator to explore the differences between countries than theoretical coverage. Table 2 also contains a series of indicators about the cost of child care services, quality, regional variation, satisfaction with the public support for families and institutional childcare preferences. As such, countries with large percentages of children in formal care institutions, particularly in more than 30 hours a week, where regional variation is low and the satisfaction high are indicative of a low grandparental regime. On the other hand, those countries where the percentage of children in formal care services, particularly in 30 or more hours a week is low, where the cost is high, the regional variation high and the satisfaction low are more prompt to have a strong grandmaternal regime.

Table 2: Institutional childcare

Children aged 0-2

% C

hild

ren

in

form

al c

are

% C

hild

ren

in 3

0+

hour

s

Form

al e

ntitle

men

t

Gros

s cos

t on

aver

age

in %

av

erag

e w

age*

Soci

al e

xpen

ditu

re

on c

hild

day

car

e (%

GDP

)

Soci

al e

xpen

ditu

re

on c

hild

day

car

e PP

P

Ratio

of c

hild

to

care

r

Regi

onal

var

iatio

n

Satis

facti

on p

ublic

su

ppor

t for

fa

mili

es

18

Denmark 73 65 Yes 1.56 470.55 Low 68.7France 40 23 No 25.1 0 0.03 6.5 Low 49Germany 19 9 No 9.1 0.44 127.46 - High 37Hungary 7 5 Yes 0.11 17.64 22.5Italy 27 16 No - 0.17 43.56 7 High 22Netherlands

47 6 No 17.5 0.45 151.51 5 Low 48

Portugal 33 31 No 0.33 64.88 High 11.5Romania 8 2 No 0.54 65.3 High 34Spain 39 16 No 30.3 0.58 148.88 - High 19Sweden 49 31 4.5 LowUK 35 4 No 0.29 83.56 62.4

Children aged 3-5

Denmark 96 83 Yes 1.56 470.55 68.7France 96 44 Yes 0 0.03 Low 49Germany 90 36 Yes 0.44 127.46 37Hungary 75 52 Yes 0.11 17.64 22.5Italy 91 72 Yes 0.17 43.56 Low 22Netherlands

90 12 Yes 0.45 151.51 Low 48

Portugal 78 69 0.33 64.88 11.5Romania 54 17 0.54 65.3 34Spain 91 45 Yes 0.58 148.88 Low 19Sweden 95 64 YesUK 87 20 Yes 0.29 83.56 62.4(1) Percentage average wage per a two-year old child attending accredited early-years care and education services(2) Compulsory schooling starts at the age of 5 (primary school begins at the age of 4).Source: EU-SILC 2008; OECD family policy database, 2007; Eurostat (2009) ‘Reconciliation between work, private and family life in the EU.

The diversity of childcare usage, structure and logics of childcare systems for children aged 0 to 2 and 3 to 5 is large in the 11 selected European countries. For some indicators, it has not been possible to distinguish the two age groups, for example social expenditure and satisfaction with public support for children. Also, data for the average cost of childcare services is only available for children aged 0 to 2. As a general rule, however, childcare services for children aged 3 to 5 are strongly publicly subsidised, which radically reduces the costs of this kind of service.

Table 2 presents acute differences between countries, which might help explain variation in mothers’ employment and grand maternal involvement in the provision of childcare. For instance, formal childcare usage of children aged 0 to 2 ranges from 73% in Denmark to 7% in Hungary. Various groups of countries can then be distinguished according to the level of children’s participation in formal care services. As such, it is high in Denmark (73%), medium in Sweden (49%) and the Netherlands (47%), medium to low in France (40%), Spain (39%), Portugal (33%) and the UK (35%), low in Italy (27%) and

19

Germany (19%) and very low in Hungary and Romania (7% and 8% respectively). However, these differences change when we consider the intensity of childcare provision (30 or more hours a week). With the exception of Denmark (65%) that continues to rank the highest of all countries, and Hungary (5%) and Romania (2%) with the lowest percentages of childcare provision and intensity, we find notable changes between the extent of childcare usage and the level of intensity formal services used. Portugal and Sweden score the highest percentages of children aged 0 -2 in intensive formal care receiving 30+ hours of formal care a week (31%) followed by France with 23%, Spain and Italy (both with 16%), which contrast with the low percentage of children attending formal care services in these countries. In Germany (9%), the Netherlands (6%) and the UK (4%), the intensity of childcare is low, while the Netherlands and UK at least score relatively high in overall provision. These are the countries with the greatest percentage of mothers working part-time. Thus, childcare usage is sparse and generally low, but this does not necessarily means that grandmaternal support is expected to be higher since mothers fill the childcare gaps that stem from the lack of institutional support.

These differences in the extent and intensity of childcare usage of children aged 0 to 2 are also reflected in other indicators such as regional variation of services and the satisfaction with public support for families and even the preferences for formal services. Only two of the 11 countries have formal entitlement to formal care for children aged 0 to 2. Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Sweden have low regional variation in childcare provision, while Germany, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Spain have high regional variation. The values of regional variation are in concordance with the level of satisfaction of public support for families. Countries with low regional variation register higher levels of satisfaction and vice versa. The cost of childcare services is also a good indication of the expenditure families must incur to access childcare services. Thus, in countries where formal childcare services are expensive the proportion of children using these services is expected to be lower than countries with more universal and affordable childcare services. However, paradoxes are found as countries such as Hungary with the lowest gross cost on average, yet show the lowest percentage of children in institutions.

Countries with high percentages of childcare usage are more likely to have more mothers working full-time, with the grandmaternal regime expected to be low. This is the case in Denmark and Sweden where the percentage of mothers with young children in employment are the highest of all countries. On the other hand, in countries such as Portugal and Spain with much lower childcare usage but extensive maternal employment, the grandmaternal regime is expected to be strong. Thus, childcare usage of children aged 0 to 2, particularly intensive childcare usage, is a result of needs, formal childcare availabilities (cost and regional variance), satisfaction and trust. Within family care is stronger in countries with low public childcare support. Therefore, strong grandmaternal regimes are expected to be found in such countries.

For families with children aged 3 to 5. The variation in childcare usage is generally small. Almost all countries register values of about 90%. It is significant to notice the values of childcare usage for Italy and Germany. Whereas the childcare usage of children aged 0 to 2 is particularly low, the usage of formal care/education services is high in both countries (90% and 91% in Germany and Italy respectively). Only Romania (54%), Hungary (75%) and Portugal (78%) show below average percentages of childcare usage. However, the percentage rates of children in 30 or more hours in formal care

20

services aged 3 – 5 are very high for Denmark (83%), Italy (72%), Portugal (69%) and Sweden (64%). Medium to low values are found in Hungary (52%), Spain (45%), France (44%) and Germany (36%). Finally, the Netherlands (12%), Romania (17%) and the UK (20%) are the countries showing the lowest percentages of child care usage. Although all countries have a formal entitlement to educational services for children aged 3 to 5, the hours of service are limited and sparse, which partly contributes to the prevalence of care within the family either through mothers or grandmothers.

Apart from this more descriptive analysis of formal care services, we have explored the extent to which the proportion of mothers in full-time employment explains the usage of formal care services and grand maternal care (regular and daily). Thus, we would expect to find a greater percentage of children in formal care services in countries with high maternal employment and low regular and particularly low intensive grand maternal childcare support. This relationship is aligned with perspectives that advocate for a structural effect of family and social care policy exchanges. It has been suggested that institutional childcare ‘crowds out’ family care For a large group of children aged 0 to 2 formal childcare provision is limited or severely limited in the eleven selected countries, which puts greater pressures to organise childcare within the family. Therefore, more mothers of young infants would have to remain out of employment to meet childcare needs. Alternatively, childcare arrangements must be organised between other actors such as informal care services or grandparents.

A first look at the effect of maternal availabilities show that there is a lack of a relationship between the percentages of mothers working full-time, and also mothers working full-time with children aged below 6, with formal childcare usage for children aged 0 to 2 and 3 to 5. However, we have found a strong positive and significant relation between the proportion of mothers with children aged below 6 working full-time and the percentage of children in formal institutional care in 30 or more hours a week for children aged 0 to 25 and 3 to 56. We have found no relationship between childcare usage and the extent to which grandmothers regularly participate in the care of for both age groups. However, we have found a strong negative and significant relationship between the percentage of children aged 0-2 in formal childcare and the provision of intensive (daily) grand maternal care. Therefore, there is a clear double component that indicates the intergenerational differences between countries: the exchange of availabilities of time between mothers and grandmothers and institutional opportunities for childcare. The percentage of grand maternal childcare support, i.e. the availability and practices of grandmothers providing childcare within the family, is or acts as a complementary and sometimes substitution mechanism for formal childcare services. The absence, preference and accessibility of such institutional childcare services are indicative of how well families can organise childcare support in the most preferred way.

We now turn our attention to attitudes and preferences of childcare organisation which inform and limit childcare choices and, most importantly grandmaternal childcare participation. Labour market structures and institutional childcare frameworks are only two components of the overall social organisation of childcare. A third element is societal cultural ideological expectations on childcare

5 R2= 0,4331 and p<0.056 R2= 0,3512 and p

21

responsibilities. Individuals share values about what childcare arrangement is best for children. Thus, some societies reflect strong preferences to maintain the major bulk of childcare within the family, whereas other societies prefer childcare to be provided outside the family. These preferences also reflect the extent to which there exists a more or less strong commitment to a gender divided society (i.e. a societal form by which women are mainly responsible for the private-family sphere and men participate in the public-work sphere). We argue that the cultural normative imperatives regarding the organisation of childcare might explain the participation of grandmothers in the organisation of childcare. First, we observe country differences in the extent to which individuals agree or strongly agree with the statement “pre-school children suffer with a working mother”. Second, we investigate the relationship between the provision of grandmaternal childcare and the attitudes towards the desirability of maternal care looking after pre-school children (i.e. whether the person agrees that a pre-school child suffers with a working mother).

Various groups of countries can be identified. The lowest score is found in Denmark with only 8% of individuals who agree or strongly agree that pre-school children suffer with a working mother. Although there is a gap between Denmark and Sweden, Sweden can be categorised with Denmark, with a low percentage of individuals who see high risks associated with non maternal care. A second group is formed by the Netherlands (39%), France (42%), the UK (47.3%) and Germany (50%) and Spain (48%). Once more, those countries with the largest percentage of mothers working part-time have a tendency to cluster together. Finally, there is a dispersed group of countries with more than 50% of the population regarding family care by the mother as the best option for pre-school children. In this group there are Romania (53%), Hungary (56%), Portugal (65%) and Italy (75%). This group of countries is mostly characterised by a low proportion of mothers in employment, with the exception of Portugal where the large majority of mothers work full-time. It may be considered somewhat surprising that in Portugal a large majority of the population is in favour of within-family childcare.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 800%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

DE

NL

ES

IT

FRDK

UK

PTHU

RO

SE

f(x) = 0.00328371364343329 x − 0.0373609290834779R² = 0.487014118913158

Pre-school children suffers with working mother and grandmothers (grandparents) look-ing after their grandchildren daily

% Individuals

Gran

dmot

hers

look

ing

after

dai

ly

We hypothesise that in countries where the cultural expectation is for maternal care, that where mothers are in the labour market, there will be a preference for grandmaternal care over formal care,

22

which in turn may cause there to be less policy interest in developing formal care services. The cultural expectations surrounding the redistribution of family responsibilities are argued here to have an impact on the preferences for organising childcare. As we expected, cultural expectations for the organisation of childcare play a strong role in predicting intensive grandmaternal care. We found a strong and positive relationship between the percentage of individuals in the population who agree or strongly agree that pre-school children suffer with a working mother and grandmothers providing childcare on a daily basis. On this variable, those countries with low public services support for young infants and greater grandmotherhood availabilities are clustered together. In these countries (Italy, Portugal, Hungary, Romania and Spain) the gender and care ideological structures tend to be more pro-family, which in part would explain the larger proportion of grandmothers providing intensive childcare. However, this is partly as a result of a paradox that stems from the divergence of attitudes and practices between cultural and structural imperatives on the organisation of childcare (i.e. mothers must look after children) and the actual behaviour or practices of mothers in the labour market, especially those mothers with young children. On the other hand, countries with high percentage of mothers in part-time employment are somewhat in a middle position (Germany, the UK and the Netherlands). France clusters in the group of part-time employment, although full-time mothers are the predominant group.

Conclusions

Grandmaternal childcare support operates in the selected countries in distinctive ways. The labour market structures of availabilities (mothers and grandmothers), childcare institutional support for families with children, and cultural expectations, each partly explain the extent to which grandmothers provide daily childcare, and between them provide a very good explanation for country differences. Little support, however, has been found to explain the variability in grandmaternal occasional provision of care or more regular care that is less intensive. Denmark is an example of a country in which regular support from grandmothers is among the highest although childcare institutional support and cultural expectations might indicate the contrary. One explanation might be found in the extremely low percentage of grandmothers that provide intensive childcare, which suggests that grandmaternal care is favourably viewed as a sporadic resource for families in the event of emergencies or occasional needs. Similar patterns are found for Sweden, although the degree of within family care is higher and outside-family care lower than in Denmark.

The social organisation of childcare has been struck by a multitude of macro-level changes in family arrangements, social policies, and family and care norms. Women’s increase in participation in the formal paid market and the structure of nuclear families has resulted in the need for childcare provision outside the nuclear household. New childcare demands or family ‘risks’ have arisen, which have two implications. First, family childcare has been redefined and more inter-household care exchanges might be expected between grandmothers and grandchildren; second, a growing demand for social policies to tackle childcare demands and other family risks, which compete for resources for tackling other social risks such as the care needs of older people.

The distinction between within and outside family care is particularly crucial as traditionally childcare analysis has categorised or divided childcare into maternal and non-maternal care. This dichotomy does

23

not grasp the complexity of common transfers of time and care strategies within families, particularly between generations. We acknowledge transfers between household members (i.e. mothers or fathers looking after children) but need to extend this conceptualisation to intergenerational transfers in the care of children. These relationships of care between generations are here conceptualised as within family care relations, negotiated between mother and grandmother within a constraining or enabling structural and cultural context. These kinds of care can be normatively distinguished from usage of formal and informal services by non family members whether within the household or outside.

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