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.
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Child payments
Adult care policies
Maternity, Paternity
and Parental Rights;
wider family and
Grandparental Rights
Raft of
Policies
“Family Friendly”
Labour Market Policies
Public/Private Child
Care (Availability and
Cost)
Retirement Policies
Kindergarten and
School Policies (age
bands, length of
school day)
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:
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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
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
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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
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.
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Policies
•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)
•Child payments
•Retirement Policies
•Adult 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
arrangements
•Father's participation in child care
•Men's participation in domestic work
•Maternity/Paternity/Parental leave
take up
•Grandparent proximity
•Use of child care (formal and
informal)
•Use of elder care
•School hours/kindergarten hours
Labour Market Cultures and Structures
•Employment/Unemployment/Nonemployment rates
•Proportion of informal vs. formal
labour
•Proportion of women in the
workplace at varying ages
•Effective 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 children
•Proportion of grandmothers in the
workplace, varying ages and numbers
of grandchildren
•Gender segregation in the workplace
•Gender pay gaps
•Women's wages
•Child care costs
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.
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.
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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
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.
2
Using SHARE 2004 and ELSA 2008
Colleagues at the Institute of Gerontology, King’s College London are examining the extent to which these
differences are driven by demographic factors
3
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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, childrearing 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.
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
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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.
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 Portugal
1.1 Implicit necessary grandparenthood: Romania and Italy
13
2. Exclusion of grandparenthood: Denmark and Sweden
2.1 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
Denmark
France
Germany
Hungary
Italy
Netherlands
Portugal
Romania
Spain
Sweden
UK
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
66
44.5
22
32
35
10
69
58
42
47
25
18
24
40
3
20
68
6
6
19
34
36
16
31.6
37
65
45
22
25
36
39
19
39
.
21
26.4
80.5
38.1
4.6
68.1
85.3
42.9
.
16.9
.
22.3
13.8
86.1
30.8
5
68.3
80.9
66
.
14.8
12.1
13.1
21.6
3.9
11.8
16.7
15.6
.
11.8
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.
The most common regimes of employment are full-time, part-time and not in employment4. 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
4
Other types of employment include temporary work, shift work that might combine intensive work days or
14
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
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
15
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 fulltime 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.
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 fulltime 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
16
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
Grandmothers looking after daily
Mothers aged 25-49 out of employment and grandmothers (grandparents) looking
after their grandchildren daily
35%
30%
RO
y = 0.0068x - 0.0803
R² = 0.4828
p<0.05
25%
20%
IT
15%
ES
HU
PT
10%
DE UK
FR
5%
DK SE
0%
0
5
10
15
NL
20
25
30
Mothers out of employment
35
40
45
50
Source: SHARE 2004; Eurostat LFS 2011
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
17
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
Grandmothers looking after daily
Women aged 50-64 in employment and grandmothers (grandparents) looking after
their grandchildren daily
35%
30%
RO
25%
20%
IT
y = -0.0063x + 0.4353
R² = 0.5827
p<0.05
15%
10%
ES
PT
HU
DEUK
FR
5%
NL
0%
0
10
20
30
40
50
SE
DK
60
70
80
Women 50-64 in paid work
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
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
18
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
65
23
9
5
16
6
31
2
16
31
4
25.1
9.1
17.5
30.3
4.5
No
19
0.29
83.56
6.5
7
5
-
Low
Low
High
High
Low
High
High
High
Low
Satisfaction public
support for families
470.55
0.03
127.46
17.64
43.56
151.51
64.88
65.3
148.88
Regional variation
1.56
0
0.44
0.11
0.17
0.45
0.33
0.54
0.58
Ratio of child to
carer
Gross cost on
average in %
average wage*
Formal entitlement
Yes
No
No
Yes
No
No
No
No
No
Social expenditure
on child day care
PPP
73
40
19
7
27
47
33
8
39
49
35
Social expenditure
on child day care
(% GDP)
Denmark
France
Germany
Hungary
Italy
Netherlands
Portugal
Romania
Spain
Sweden
UK
% Children in 30+
hours
% Children in
formal care
Children aged 0-2
68.7
49
37
22.5
22
48
11.5
34
19
62.4
Children aged 3-5
Denmark
France
Germany
Hungary
Italy
Netherlands
Portugal
Romania
Spain
Sweden
UK
96
96
90
75
91
90
78
54
91
83
44
36
52
72
12
69
17
45
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
1.56
0
0.44
0.11
0.17
0.45
0.33
0.54
0.58
470.55
0.03
127.46
17.64
43.56
151.51
64.88
65.3
148.88
95
64
87
20
Yes
Yes
0.29
83.56
Low
Low
Low
Low
68.7
49
37
22.5
22
48
11.5
34
19
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
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,
20
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 fulltime, 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
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
21
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
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
5
6
R2= 0,4331 and p<0.05
R2= 0,3512 and p
22
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 preschool 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.
Grandmothers looking after daily
Pre-school children suffers with working mother and grandmothers (grandparents)
looking after their grandchildren daily
35%
30%
RO
y = 0.0033x - 0.0374
R² = 0.487
p<0.05
25%
20%
IT
ES
15%
HU
10%
5%
SE
DK
0%
0
10
FR
NL
20
30
40
UK
PT
DE
50
60
70
80
% Individuals
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,
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,
23
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 parttime 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 outsidefamily 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
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.
24
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