The Influence of Policies and Cultural Beliefs on Carrying Arrangements: A Micro-Level Analysis of the

Czech and Slovak Republics

Paper presented at the 10th Annual ESPAnet Conference at the University of Edinburgh

by Steven Saxonberg (Professor at the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, and Hana Maříková (Researcher at the Czech Academy

of Science, Czech Republic )

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IntroductionFeminist scholars have been paying increasing attention to the manner in which social policies influence gender relations. Most studies in this area have concentrated on the macro level, so little is known about these relationships at the micro level. This is especially true of the post-communist countries. In this study, we analyze the relationship between social policies, cultural norms and the caring choices that families of child children make in the Czech and Slovak Republics. In particular, we analyze what factors influence their decisions to either have the mother stay at home with the child, the father, using childcare facilities, family members or alternative solutions. Obviously, such choices have great influence on gender relations. If the mothers stay at home until the children begin school, then they will have trouble competing with men in the labor market, but if men share equally in the parental leave time or of mothers send their children to childcare facilities at a relatively early age, then women can compete more equally with men in the labor market.

We have chosen these two countries because both Slovakia and Czech Republic have rather similar family polices, but still display cultural differences in relation to family values. For example, studies show that the more secular Czechs are relatively more favorable toward gender equality than the more Catholic Slovaks (Saxonberg & Sirovatka 2006a). Some small differences are emerging in parental leave policies between the Czech Republic and Slovakia, such as the fact that the Czech Republic added one more year of parental benefits than Slovakia and more recently replaced the completely flat-rate benefit with a three-tier benefit, which pays more per month if one decides to stay at home for a shorter period and pays less per month if one decides to stay at home for a longer period. Nevertheless, these two countries are much more similar in their parental leave policies and childcare policies than their neighboring post-communist countries. For example, in Poland the parental leave benefit is means-tested so a majority of parents do not receive it and in Hungary parents can receive an insurance-based benefit that pays 70% of their previous income. Similarly, in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the percentage of children attending kindergartens has actually increased since the fall of communism, while almost all public nurseries have been closed. In contrast, in Hungary access to nurseries for children under three has only decreased slightly, while in Poland access to nurseries has become greater than in the Czech and Slovak Republics, while access to kindergartens is only about half as high as in these two countries (Saxonberg 2003, Saxonberg & Sirovatka 2006a). Thus, no country has more similar family policies to the Czech Republic than Slovakia, so given these institutional and policy similarities, it will be easier to compare how cultural attitudes differ and influence choices.

Culture or Institutions?A long-standing debate has emerged within the social sciences about the relative importance of institutions (including state policies) and cultural values in influencing human behavior. Even though in recent decades the institutional approach has dominated (i.e., North 1991, Skocpol 1979, Weir & Skocpol 1985) many scholars have still argued that cultural plays a more important role than institutions (i.e. Eckstein 1988, Inglehart 1997, Inglehart & Welzel 2005, Putnam 1993). This study aims to bridge the gap between the two schools by analyzing at the micro level the relative impact of both culture and institutions and the manner in which the two interact.

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More recently, the relationship of cultural values and welfare state institutions has also increasingly gained attention in comparative welfare state analyses (Schmidt, 2000; Clarke, 2002, Opielka 2001; Pfau-Effinger 2005a; van Oorschot 2007; Saxonberg 2003-4; Svallfors 1997) as well as in the particular field of policies towards families and gender (Duncan 2003, 2005; Pfau-Effinger 2004a, 2004b; Mosesdottir 2003; Saxonberg 2003, 2004; Saxonberg & Sirovátka 2006b, 2007, 2009). Pfau-Effinger (2005a) has shown that in European societies, different development paths of policies towards family and gender exist, and we can mainly explain these differences by variations in the dominant cultural family models between these societies.

However, researchers have paid much less attention so far in applying a systematic comparative perspective to investigating the impact of cultural values and family policies on the decisions of citizens to utilize the opportunities provided by different types of social policies at the micro level of family households. Our project will conduct such an analysis. By interviewing families to see how they reason behind their choices to utilize different types of family policies, we will learn more about the relative importance of cultural values and institutions for the actual decisions they make and cross-national differences will also become more apparent. By focusing on the decision-making process among citizens rather than policy makers, our study brings in an often neglected perspective to the debate on institutions.

The Relationship between Family Polices and Gender EqualityOne of the biggest changes in West European society in recent decades has been the great increase of the share of women in the labor market. Several social scientists have argued that women have become more active in the labor market as society has moved from an industrial society based on heavy industry to a knowledge-based society, which rewards mental strength more than physical strength (i.e. Inglehart & Norris 2003). Along with these economic changes a process of individualization has been taking place, in which preferences for career and caring choices have become more pluralized (Giddens 1991, Beck & Beck 1992, 2001). West European governments have applied different instruments to promote the reconciliation of family responsibility and parents’ employment, ranging from increased support for childcare facilities, cash-for-care benefits, and the introduction of paid maternity leaves, parental leaves, father leaves and family allowances.

Meanwhile, in the post-communist Central and East European societies a slightly different process has taken place, which has been less theorized by mainstream social scientists. Rather than increasing their share in the labor market, women in post-communists countries had nearly full employment as their starting point and since the collapse of communism many women have left the labor market either because they want to or because they have lost their jobs. Yet, this process is happening at the same time as their society is become more “post-modern,” more knowledge-based, and more individualized. Even though women’s share in the labor market has decreased since the collapse of communism, while it has increased in Western Europe, these trends should not be exaggerated, as women’s share in total employment in post-communist Central Europe remains higher than the western average (Saxonberg & Sirovátka 2006b). Furthermore, most women in Central Europe still want to participate in formal employment as the collapse of communism has opened up new opportunities for women in the more “modern” sectors, such as tourism, banking and services, and almost women all think they must be employed in order to survive economically, as few families can survive on one income. Thus,

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policies that have tried to encourage women to leave the labor marked rather than help women balance work and family have basically led to a drop in fertility rates rather than a drop in female labor market participation (Saxonberg 2003a, Saxonberg and Sirovátka 2006a, b, 2007, 2009).

Among social policy researchers family policies have become a highly controversial issue. Whereas most researchers have supported public childcare provision, many have been more critical of the paid parental leave schemes. They argue that it is detrimental for mothers, for it keeps them out of the labor market for long periods, which jeopardizes their income chances and makes it more difficult to have a career (for ex. Leira 2000). Thus they claim that real “choice” only exists for mothers when they are commodified and “freed” from caring duties (Langan & Ostner 1993; for an overview see Knijn & Ostner 2003). They are also critical of cash-for-care systems, because they in part establish precarious, marketized forms of childcare (Daly & Lewis 2001).

Other scholars take a more positive attitude toward parental leaves and claim that they can be shaped in a manner that encourages fathers to stay at home with their children (Hobbson 2002, Sainsbury 1996, 1999). They note that if fathers share equally in the childraising tasks, then paid parental leaves can actually increase the choices and opportunities of women, since they can choose to have children without having to give up their careers.

These debates have generally taken place within the context of a discourse that is state-centered and focused on how different types of welfare regimes influence gender relations (for example, Lewis 1993, 1997; Orloff 1996; Sainsbury 1994, 1966, 1999; Saxonberg 2013). Scholars are beginning to question this approach for leaving out the influence that culture has both on the policy choices that politicians make in designing family polices and the influence it has on the actual choices that parents make as to how to use the caring options that these policies provide (Duncan 2003, 2005; Pfau-Effinger 2004a; 2005b). Even if two countries would implement the exact same parental leave and childcare policies, it is not clear that parents would make the same choices, since they would make these choices under the influence of different cultural contexts.

Catherine Hakim (2000) goes so far to argue that family policies have little influence on behavior, because in all industrialized countries, three inherently and culturally groups of women exist. Scholars have criticized her for underestimating structural and evaluative constraints, as well as her assumption that women’s choices depend on biological essentialism (e.g. Crompton & Harris, 1998, Duncan 2005, McRae 2003). Other studies have also showed that clear differences exist in the preferences between women living under different welfare regimes (i.e. Kangas & Rostgard 2007).

Even though many cross-national studies exist at the macro level, international comparative studies at the micro level are rare, which analyze the ways in which mothers and fathers perceive their options to choose between different forms of childcare, and their motivations to decide in favor of a specific caring arrangement. Those few studies that have been done at the micro level there have usually concentrated on other aspects, such as how couples negotiate over money and work in Sweden (Ahrne & Roman 1997), how families reason about economic issues when the father in Berlin goes on father leave (Kassner & Rüling 2005), how female bankers and doctors in the U.K., France and Norway reconcile work and family (Crompton 2001, Crompton & Birkelund 2000), the participation of fathers in family life in the Czech Republic (Maříková 2003). Such studies usually have not

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concentrated on the important issue of policies, both concerning how policies influence choices, how cultural values mediate the influence of policies and how changes in policies might chance future behavior.

MethodologyWe conducted nearly 70 semi-structured interviews with mothers and fathers

of 6-year or 7-year old children, who are in their first year of school. This allowed us to interview those parents, who have recently had to make concrete choices about who should care for their children until they began school. We interviewed an equal number of fathers and mothers. The study was limited to parents from urban areas (coming from inner cities or middle class suburbs), who live in the largest cities of each country, as we are more likely to see variations in gender roles and attitudes in cities than in more conservative rural areas. This is especially true of the more cosmopolitan capital cities. In the Czech Republic we choice Prague and Brno, while in Slovakia we chose Bratislava and Banska Bystrica.

We recruited interviewees by inviting the parents of children attending school classes in different urban areas. We interviewed parents from schools in a predominantly working-class area and in a middle-class area for each city, so that we could have some variation in socioeconomic background among the interviewees. This is the cheapest method for finding parents from different class backgrounds who recently had to make decisions about who should care for their children.

The Mythology of ThreenessOne of the most interesting results of our interviews is the manner in which parents of young children have internalize the norms around the “mythology of threeness” that has arisen in the post-communist Central East European (CEE) countries (Saxonberg 2011). As in most of continent Europe, the CEE countries have daycare divided into groups of children under three (who attend nurseries) and for children from three to six (who attend kindergartens). Nevertheless, institutions and norms around threeness developed in a much different and stronger manner than in the West European countries. First, kindergartens became much more widespread and popular than in most West European countries, because already in the 1800s these developed as publicly sponsored Volkskindergärten, which – in contrast to the German and Austrian kindergartens that were expensive and only open part-time – were free and open all-day, so that mothers could work. Even conservatives, who were against working mothers supported these Volkskindergärten, because they were part of the nationalist project of building up the vernacular languages. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the regular kindergartens taught in German, but the Volkskindergärten taught in the local languages (Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Slovenian or Slovak).

While the kindergartens became popular, the nurseries lost in popularity during the communist era for several reasons. First, when the communists came to power, Stalin forced them to close the ministries of social welfare, as communist economics was supposed to solve all the social programs. As a result, they had to move the nurseries to another ministry and rather than move them to the ministries of education (which had responsibility for kindergartens) they moved them to the ministries of health. Thus, young pre-school children became healthcare issues and children attending these institutions had nurses take care of them rather than teachers, who would have had better training in pedagogical and psychological issues. Second, since this expansion of nurseries took place while the regimes has a productionist ideology, the main goal of these nurseries was to keep the children from becoming

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sick, rather than any humanistic-psychological-pedagogical goals. This productionist approach induced policymakers to have rather large groups of children for each nurse, since that made the nurseries more “efficient” and cost-effective than smaller groups. Ironically, the relative largeness of the groups meant the sicknesses spread much more quickly, so nurseries received poor reputations not only for their lack of pedagogy but also for the high rates of illness there.

In the 1960s CEE policymakers started to become concerned by the high rate of illness at the nurseries and began reasoning that if mothers are spending a lot of time at home with their sick children anyway, then it would be cheaper to give them three-year maternity leaves than it would be to continue expanding nurseries. Thus, Czehoslovakia, Hungary and Poland all introduced “extended maternity leaves,” which complemented the shorter and more generous maternity leaves, so that mothers could stay at home for three years. The types of benefits varied among countries, but Czechoslovakia introduced a flat-rate system and even after the collapse of communist and the breakup of Czechoslovakia, both the Czech Republic and Slovakia continue to have flat-rate benefits, although in order to meet EU standards, the extended maternity leaves have been opened for fathers and are now officially called “parental leaves.”

Despite these similarities, there are some differences in the parental leave benefits. In 1995 the Czech Republic added a fourth year of benefits, but since mothers lose the right to get their job back if they stay at home more than three years, it has still become the norm for mothers to stay at home for three years in both countries. In 2006 the Czech Republic doubled the flat-rate benefits, which has made them much higher than in Slovakia. Later a new government introduced a more complicated system, where mothers (who have an income near the national average) can choose to receive benefits for two years and receive more money per month (but the same amount totally) than if they stay at home for three years. If they stay at home for four years they receive less money per month. However, since the national governments stopped supporting nurseries in the early 1990s and gave responsibility for running them to the local municipalities, the vast majority of nurseries have closed down in both countries, which means that even if mothers receive higher benefits for two years, few actually take this shorter leave, since hardly any public nursery places exist and private alternatives are too expensive. Thus, the minister of labor and social affairs, who introduced the reforms admitted when proposing the changes that the vast majority of women would choose the three-year option, which meant that three years remained as the magic number for post-communist countries (Čápová 2008a, b)Moreover, since the benefits only pay a flat rate and since fathers usually have higher incomes than mothers, then fathers have little economic incentive to share in the leave time. Thus, in Slovakia, in 2006 only 2.6% of all recipients of parental leave benefits were men (Repková 2007: 70), while in the same year in the Czech Republic, the level has been even lower at only 0.8% (Český statistický úřad: 2006 and Maříková 2008: 75).

Popular psychologists have helped spread the myth that it is “natural” for the mother to stay at home with the child during the first three years. For example, the univresity lecturer, Lenka Šulová (2003: 10), claims that it is necessary “to truly fight at least for the first three years so that a child can stay in the family … so that this amazing value our country provides is taken care of.” Similarly, the head of the Czech Psychological Association, Professor Jaroslav Šturma (1998) argues that the child stay at home for the first three years and it is “natural” for the mother to be the sole person who takes care of the child for these three years. He labels attempts at inducing

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fathers to share in the leave time a “false emancipation” and adds that “we can see that men’s intuitive parenting is no good in this case because he does not have an opportunity for a close symbiotic communication and cohabitation with the child. It’s not arranged that way.” Jeroným Klimeš, who appears often on Czech TV, goes so far as to say that “placement in these facilities before the age of three constitutes child abuse” (cited in Hamplová 2010).

Given this environment it is not surprising that the interviewees basically accepted this norm of threeness and thought that three was the ideal age for children to begin going to daycare (i.e. kindergartens). Parents mostly use psychological arguments as to why children should stay at home during the first three years as they believe that nurseries do not help children develop their skills. However, this belief is limited to threeness, as they are generally supportive of kindergartens and believe that children should attend daycare at some point, because once they reach this “proper” age, they need to be with other children to develop psychologically and because kindergarten teachers are able to teach the children things that the parents are not capable of doing. This also shows that they cannot imagine pre-school for children under three having anything to do with pedagogy, because they accept the mini-hospital, healthcare model as “normal” for nurseries. They are not aware that in most Western countries, employees at pre-school facilities for children who are under three are either teachers or childminders, but usually are not nurses.

Nevertheless, in Slovakia, four parents actually did send their children to daycare before the age of three, but at 2.5 years, it was still close to the three ideal. In addition, none of them did so because they really wanted to. In two cases it was became the mother felt forced to return because of financial pressures and in the other two cases their children were very sociable and preferred going to daycare.

Even though we asked all the parents whether their views would be different if the nurseries had a high quality and were free, views changed little, because the respondents had a difficult time differentiating between what is and what could be. They simply took their current situation as also the hypothetical and even ideal situation. Of course, good reason exists to assume that if these countries gave up their healthcare model of nurseries and introduced high quality, low cost (or free) daycare for children under three, then the daycare centers would gain a good reputation, which would change people’s attitudes. Unfortunately, we cannot test this, but what we can see is that apparent inability of the respondents to conceive that daycare could be run differently than it already is.

Interestingly, the one person, who sent her child to daycare before the age of two, has a very positive experienced with is. When asked how the nursery was, she replied:

Excellent. Completely fantastic! We even wrote them a commendatory letter because there were just two nurses and one helper for ten children. They always had enough for the children to do for the whole week. It was rather a motherly type of care where they held the children, cuddles with them, it was... It wasn’t as if they just had ten children that they needed to handle. They were fantastic. Excellent! They welcomed the children by picking them up and giving them a kiss. At the same time, our daughter learned lots of songs, poems, and make great progress. We were very pleased (FBRMC2).

When asked “if free daycare were available and you were convinced that the quality were very high, would that have influenced your decision?” one mother admitted that she might have been willing to send her child there at the age of two, but only up to 4 hours per day:

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It might have influenced me to put the children there for a certain part of the day. At the age of two, they could have gone there for the mornings. That way, the combination of work and children would have worked. I would have spent 4 hours doing some activities relating to my job. Perhaps the child would have eaten at the daycare, and after lunch, I would have picked them up and devoted myself fully to the child. I think it would have been ideal this way. I think it could have functioned this way (WPMC4)..

So even if she was willing to diverge partially from threeness if the conditions were ideal and high quality daycare were offered for children under three, she still would have waited until her child was two and even then she would not have sent her child to daycare for more than four hours.

This statement that a Slovak father made give a nice, representative view of how most Czech and Slovak respondents reasoned when accepting the mythology of threeness, while supporting daycare for children above three:

In my opinion the child should stay with his or her mother as long as possible, but on the other hand when it's time for the child to go to the kindergarten, the collective is needed as well so that child can learn. I think it's convenient to stay with the wife until the age of three and then to go to a kindergarten. Because if the child stays with the mother until the age of six at home, it misses a lot of things. It doesn't have a contact with other children and so it can't learn many new things. So I think it's good like this (MB1_).

Another Slovak father provides an example of how the majority of respondents non-reflectively accept the norms of threeness. When asked whether he had every had any doubts about any of the decisions that you made? He defended the decision to keep the child at home for three years and then send the child to kindergarten:

Not really, because we took it at the time like some kind of a standard... standard process, that he goes to a kindergarten with other children, that it is some kind of a normal process, well and then he started going to a school.

Yet another Slovak father also shows how greatly threeness has embedded itself among the population, in that parents think the child should stay at home for three years, but it is also important to attend kindergarten when they turn three. Thus, although some parents prefer having children stay at home for a longer period, few want the children to stay at home into beginning school and nobody, whom we interviewed advocating having mothers become stay-at-home housewives once their children began school:

Disregarding a financial constraints I think, that until a certain age, three years old, only parents should provide an education for their child. Maybe grand parents partially, but they tend to spoil children in general. And then there is a collective, which is, according to me, quite important part of live for small children so that they realize it isn't just them in this world and that they start thinking in the spirit of a collective and that they, I don't like this word, but they start to live socially. Of course, I don't want to confuse you, not like during a communism. No, no, no. Socially in a larger sense of a word. Not like a left- wing socialist, OK? (MB3)

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However, one father, who has foreign friends, who sent their children earlier than three to daycare, admits he could imagine sending his children to daycare before the age of three if the quality were high and if it were affordable, both of which continue to be problems in Slovakia:

Actually, maybe yes [we would send the children to daycare under those conditions]. We have many friends from abroad, where the system force people, mothers especially, to give children to nurseries at early age. As we know them personally and we see that the children are completely normal and that it simply works like that there, I think if there was such opportunity here, we would try it. But there is no such opportunity here in Slovakia. Because you have to pay for a nurseries and it's quite expensive. Parents have to do some compromises then. If they have no financial constraints they give the child to nurseries. If an employer makes them to work, they have to, but I think that it doesn't work like this in Slovakia, so far [MB4].

This answer also shows the interaction between institutions and cultural norms: if one has direct or indirect experiences with high quality daycare for children under three, one is more likely to question the mythology of threeness. In fact, the one father, who sent a child to a nursery, claims that it was “totally brilliant and so was the kindergarten. Super. There wasn’t any problem, not with the first, nor the second. Not even with adaptation, really nothing” (MB5). This once again shows that when people actually have experience with high quality daycare, their norms are likely to change.

Can Fathers Share in the Leave?As already noted, although fathers have the right to parental leave benefits, they have little financial incentive to use this right. Consequently, it was not surprising fathers had not gone on parental leave in any of the families that we interviewed. What is surprising, though, is that mothers are almost unanimously against the idea, while some of the fathers (especially those who are well educated) could imagine going on leave if they would not lose too much of their salary.

Again, respondents had trouble imagining a system that was different than the existing one. For example, we asked the parents if they would have done anything differently if they received 100% of their income while going on parental leave and they could divide the parental leave as they would like. One interviewe – a female journalist (who became a teacher after having children, so she could work part time) – replied “I don’t think so because my income was ridiculously small compared to my husband’s, and that is still the case even today” (FBRMC1). Thus, she could not understand that under such a system, her husband would have also received 100% of his income if he had gone on leave, so it would not have mattered that her “income was ridiculously small compared to [her] husbands.” Even though she was a highly educated person, who could have continued to pursue a career as a journalist if she had not had to leave the labor market for such a long period of time, she reasons:

I would not have liked to have my husband stay at home. I am too traditional for that. It’s hard to even imagine. I am sure my husband would have managed. When I leave town I am never worried about leaving the children with him, but it’s hard to imagine. In my case, I think three years is an optimal period to be on maternity leave.

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Again, we see that interviewees have trouble imagining something that is different than what they are used to. “It is hard to even imagine” having her husband staying at home and she also thinks that the period, which women are “supposed” to stay at home in the Czech Republic is also “optimal.” She even admits that her husband would be capable of taking of the child, but she was still against the idea.

One father (MPMC4) claims that in the ideal situation, both he and his wife would have stayed at home with the child until the child began school. He adds, “the moments with the child are irreplaceable. They are unique and they disappear. They might seem to be all alike, but each one of them is worthwhile experiencing.” Yet, even though he would have liked to stay at home with the child, he still thinks that for biological reasons, the mother should be the one who is responsible for the child during the first two-three years:

It’s clear that in the first years of the child’s life, the most important person in the world is the mother. I don’t think that the father can fully take her place in the first two or three years. From age three and on, I would say that the roles of the parents complement each other. Ideally- I don’t even know what I’d define as ideal. I think that both parents do whatever is needed at the moment. It is done by whoever has the time, strength and energy.

Thus, even he is caught up in the imagery of threeness and the idea that it is “natural” for the mother to be the primary carer for the child for the first three years. Although he believes that after the first three years, both parents could share the leave time equally.

Even when a mother was positive toward the idea of sharing parental leave time with her husband if there had not been any financial penalties for this, she was still thinking in terms of threeness. When asked how she would have arranged to care for her child under an ideal situation (which would mean that daycare could possibly have begun earlier), she replied:

Well, ideally, the parents would have taken turns staying home until the child would have been three. This would have been the most ideal. Perhaps taking turns every month, or I don’t know. I would have like the option. I think that even my husband would have welcomed this. He was unhappy that he only saw the children sleeping at night and sleeping in the morning before leaving. I was even tired of him seeing them only sleeping. I took care of them alone for the entire 20 hours. So taking turns at home would have been amazing up to the age of three. I think that the first year, or half year, the mother would have been home, then the father would have been home the second half year (WPMC4).

Belief in separate gender roles are so strong that even a well-educated female cardiologist was strongly against the idea of her husband taking parental leave. This is true despite the fact that because of her job demands, she herself was forced to return to work after one year and give up the right to 2-3 more years of paid parental leave benefits:

We didn’t consider it [the possibility that the father could stay at home]. [laughs] Not only does he have the type of profession where if he stayed home for long, then... Well, they say that if a surgeon is on vacation for two weeks or three weeks, then the surgeon’s fingers just don’t work the way they should when he or she is in the operation room. So we didn’t even consider it and I, basically, wanted to enjoy the children, so I didn’t want him to take my place. I think that women and men each have their role. I believe this is the way it is set and I am completely against feminism. From the medical perspective, this is the way it should be, so we really didn’t consider changing anything. I wanted to be with the children. I have the mother role, even though they love their father and welcome him. Out of experience, this is what I agree with, traditionally (FBRMC2).

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One mother mother agreed that if there were no financial constraints and her husband would have wanted to stay at home with the children while she returned to work “that would not be a problem.” However, she accepts it as a “fact” that her husband will be the one in the family to have a career and that it is natural, as men are better than women at “taking care” of the family:

My husband always has more opportunities. It depends on my husband, since he is financially more secure than I am. He has greater career growth, than I do with the children. During the period that I was on maternity leave, he was promoted twice. I think that the man can take care of the family better than the woman. An exception would be if she is, for example, a lawyer (WPWC5).

In one case, the father got sick when the child turned three, so he stayed at home and became the main parent taking care of the child, as the mother returned to work. Yet, despite the fact that the father took care of the child for one-and-a-half years, she was still critical of the idea of having fathers going on father leave: “If I were to tell you that my husband should be on maternity leave for half a year, I could not imagine it” (WPWC4). However, she did think that although mothers should have the main role of taking care of children, fathers should play a greater supportive role as helpers. Thus, she supports a two-month mandatory father leave when the child is born, so that the father could help the mother during the first stressful period after the mother gives birth:

They should spend time together, especially at the beginning. When you return from the birth center, there should be time for the woman to regenerate and the (man) to familiarize himself with everything. If two months were mandatory, I would be fine with that. Simply, in the beginning [of the mother’s maternity leave].

Some fathers could imagine sharing the parental leave time if there were no financial constraints, but they were often ambivalent and even contradictory in their answers. For example, one man agreed several times in the interview that it was “natural” for the mother to stay at home with the child during the first three years, yet, when asked if he could imagine going on father leave if no financial restraints existed, he replied.

Do you mean the maternity leave as a paternity leave? Yes, I can imagine that, absolutely. I've got few friends who have done that recently and I like it, it's great. It's obvious that they are satisfied. I've got a friend whose wife needed to return to work, she was doing some practice and she didn't want to fall behind, so he decided to stay at home with their child and it has worked really great for them. I think it would be similar in our case. I wouldn't have a problem with that (M3B_).

Even though some fathers could imagine going on father leave if their wives would “let them,” the majority were skeptical of the idea. One father in Bratislava (MB1) replies:

No, I wouldn’t like to stay at home. I was used to be among people, not like that....

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I don’t know how to cook, I don’t, different type of care is needed, I don’t know how to iron, wash clothes, all this is needed and I don’t have a good relationship with this kind of work, so that is why.

Thus, he seems to imply that cooking, ironing, etc., are not something that one can learn, but rather is something that women are born with.

Even though one Slovak father found it “self-evident” that his wife should stay at home for three years, he admitted that in some ways she suffered from this:

Well naturally, after two years it was more than hard to stay at home, so my wife started to work on some things, she was preparing herself to coming back to work again and so on. So it was not just like being at home for three years, that is not possible, she would get mad (MB2).

One Czech father even claimed that he actually had planned to go on father leave for a while, but then he realized that the family would have lost too much money:

It was actually even my plan to stay with him [their baby boy] for a while to at least see what it was like. However, considering the job I had, in comparison with my wife, it was clear that she would stay home with the child. Nevertheless, we tried to share responsibilities, caring for the baby during the night, etc. MPMC1

Even though he was more open to sharing parental leave times, he was still thinking in terms of threeness concerning the optimal age to send the child to daycare:

Returning to the previous question about how long to stay at home with the child, I’d like to add that I think it best to stay with the child until he or she turns 3 years old. If there were no financial constraints, I think we could manage to each spend half of the time at home. However, I’d prefer this time was divided into shorter time segments. For example, every six months we would take turns staying at home or something along those lines. Ideally, each of us spending half of the time at home with the child up to three years old is sufficient. After that, the child goes to preschool and is among children.

Another example of the ambivalence toward the issue of sharing time comes from a Czech father, who admits he could have considered staying at home if he would have received 100% of his income, but also admits that if such benefits were available he is not sure he would have really stayed at home, since his wife wanted to stay at home:

I don’t know if we would have solved things differently. Until the age of two of the child, my wife wanted to stay and home and enjoy the time. The other option would have been me staying at home with her. I would have received an income? If I would have received my income on my account that would have covered our living costs, then I would have stayed home (MPMC3).

ConclusionsOne of the most surprising results of this study was the great difficulties that the respondents had in imagining a system that was different than the already existing one. For example, when asking them “If both of you received one hundred percent of their wages up to the second year of the child and could divide up the maternal and paternal relief anyhow you wanted, how would you do this during the period?,” it was quite common for them to still think in economic terms even though the parents

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would receive 100% of their previous income if they stayed at home with the child. A typical reply was:

Well, I don’t exactly know. Our wages are quite different, so I would have to, in some complicated way, calculate how much time I could afford to take off to stay at home (MPMC1).

We received very similar replies quite often. It seems clear that policies matter, as some fathers claimed that they would

have stayed at home if they would have received 100% of their income for a period, but in these cases they also see this possibility as being contingent on whether their wives would “let them.” The mothers often had partially contradictory views in that on the one hand many wanted to stay at home for the three-year period, while on the other hand they admitted to getting restless over being at home for such a long period. Institutions develop in a manner that they are often norm-setting, so if they are designed to encourage mothers to stay at home and if they are designed to have children start attending daycare at the age of three, then parents often accept this arrangement as being “natural.” If they have direct or indirect experiences of something else (because they have foreign friends with good experiences with daycare for younger children or because they were forced because of financial reasons to send their children to daycare at an earlier age) then they are more likely to have a positive view toward daycare for younger children.

According to the “individualization” hypothesis we would expect more variation in caring strategies, but it seems that the vast majority of families follow similar strategies, which comply with the institutional norms that have arisen from the given policies. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that some parents claimed that if they did not have parental leave benefits, then they would not have been able to afford to have the mother stay at home for such long periods and the mother would have returned to work earlier. Meanwhile, as already noted, some fathers claimed that they would have stayed at home for some period with their children if they could receive a high level of benefits, as long as the mother agreed to this. They still took it for granted, however, that the mother is the main carer and that they at most could be a carer. Thus, even if they would stay at home with the child for a few months, they would need the mother’s permission since they would be taking away from “her” time with the children.

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