Childcare

This study examined factors that influence parents’ decision on the choice of day-care centres for their children in a peri-urban community in Ghana. The descriptive survey design was employed. Using the simple random and the convenience sampling techniques, a sample size of fifteen (15) registered private day-care centres and one hundred and thirty (130) parents were selected for the study respectively. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection and analysed using descriptive statistics (frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations). The study revealed that, the environment and neighbourhood dominated the influential factors for the selection of day-care centres (M=3.30, SD=0.59), followed by parents ‘preference (M=2.47, SD= 0.50), including how educated or trained the staff is in child development, the number of children to number of teachers, availability of adequate and appropriate teaching learning and play materials, centres’ operation within hours that fit their schedule and staff that is warm and trustworthy. The study further established that, there was an average and statistically significant influence of social contacts on parents in the selection of day-care centres. Additionally, it was found that parents focused on the developmental aspect of childcare rather than the cost of childcare and income of the family. Besides, even though parents believed that family structure was a factor influencing parent’s decisions in the selection of childcare, it is not as important as other factors mentioned above. Based on these results, it was recommended that school authorities, by making use of the available resources should help improve the environment since parents were more concerned with the environment in which their children spend most of their time.

Grandparents play a vital role in providing childcare to families. Qualitative research and evidence from parents raise concerns that it is grandparents who are socioeconomically disadvantaged who provide grandchild care more regularly, perform more intensive tasks, and care out of financial necessity. However, no European studies have investigated these issues at population level. This study is based on grandparents aged 50+ who looked after grandchildren. Data are from wave 8 of the nationally representative English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (2016/2017). We exploit newly collected information on frequency of grandchild care, activities, and reasons for care. Using multinomial regressions, we first examined the extent to which grandparents' socioeconomic characteristics (wealth and education) are associated with frequency of grandchild care. Second, using logistic regressions, we investigated whether wealth and education are associated with activities and reasons for grandchild care. Overall, grandparents from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds were more likely to provide more regular childcare. Similarly, grandparents in the lowest wealth quartile were more involved in hands-on activities (cooking, taking/collecting grandchildren to/from school), whereas highly educated grandparents were more likely to help grandchildren with homework. Finally, better-off grandparents were more likely to look after grandchildren to help parents and provide emotional support and less likely to report difficulty in refusing to provide care. Our findings show that grandparental childcare varies by socioeconomic status with more intensive childcare activities falling disproportionately on those with fewer resources, and this may act to exacerbate existing socioeconomic inequalities in later life.

The article reviews the available quantitative evidence on the relationship between explicit family policy and women's employment outcomes in 45 high-income countries between 1980 and 2016. At the methodological level, we gathered 238 papers through a four-stage systematic qualitative review. We included articles published in English in international journals or by leading research institutes. Despite the accrued importance of the field, comparative works and national case studies do not sufficiently engage one another for methodological and disciplinary reasons. Our contribution is to integrate the findings from both streams of the literature in two ways. First, we chart systematically the debate describing its evolution over four decades, the disciplines involved (demography, economics, politics, social policy, sociology, and interdisciplinary work), and the geographical and policy breadth of the empirical contributions. Second, we provide a rich guide for scholars in the field by exploring how national case studies fit (or not) the broad trends captured in comparative research and discussing key and controversial debates in the field. In conclusion, we point out also important gaps in the literature and propose new avenues for future research. An exhaustive set of tables provides information on each

Child care is the most indigenous health system that has to draw strength from folk culture beliefs and health practices. Thus, our future exploration should examine child care from multiple perspectives of sociology, anthropology, developmental psychology and preferred healthy practices.

The views expressed in this report are the authors' and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department for Education and Skills. Introduction: Birth to Three Matters 10 Why Birth to Three? 1 0 About the Birth to Three Matters pack 1 1 The relationship between the cards and the literature review 1 3 Chapter 1: The complex nature of the growth, development and learning of babies and young children 14 Principles Which Underpin the Framework 1 4 Research, disciplines, assumptions and values 16 Is children's development and learning compartmentalised or holistic? 1 7 Continuity and discontinuity in children's lives, development and learning 1 9 Risk and resilience 2 0 Can theories provide universal explanations for children's development and learning? 2 3 Defining children's needs 2 5 What this review does and does not cover 2 6 Summary of key 'messages' 2 9 Chapter 2: Influential research and theories concerned with early childhood 3 1 How theories of chi...

Forthcoming at Temple University Press Spring, 2020

This book is the first to create a detailed measure of family policies across U.S. states. The results of this book show that states generally divide into two types: (1) those with expansive childcare resources, inexpensive childcare, long school days, and high rates of maternal employment and (2) those with strong gender empowerment, that have progressive family and gender policies and broad economic and political opportunities for women. Interestingly, states that we usually expect to be the most progressive-California, for example-rank poorly on childcare resources but high on gender empowerment. By contrast, a state like Nebraska, which is traditionally a red conservative state, has some of the best childcare resources in the nation. The book argues states should look to each other to fill their policy voids and provides clear policy solutions for policy makers interested in supporting working families.

The results of this book point to clear policy solutions that state legislators should enact to support working families including: (1) reducing childcare costs and increasing childcare spaces especially in high cost of living states; (2) more effectively maximizing enrollment in the federal Head Start program; (3) lengthening school days; (4) legislating well-paid parental leave to both parents; (5) investing in female-dominated professions; (6) restricting work to enable more flexibility and schedule control for women and men to handle caregiving roles; (7) opening male-dominated higher paying professions, including blue-collar work, to women; and (8) reducing the structural barriers to men taking on more paid and unpaid caregiving.

Leah Ruppanner is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Policy Lab at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on barriers to maternal employment, female representation in government and gender inequality in the home. This work has expansive media coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post and the Guardian.

The COVID-19 global crisis and the “stay-home” response taken by most governments has starkly exposed the dependence of formal economies on the invisible and unpaid care labor of women – a dependence that has intensified during the pandemic as public childcare provision and schools are shut and parents work from home. This article focuses specifically on the childcare and income support provided by grandparents in the United Kingdom and South Africa. In undertaking this comparative analysis the study demonstrates the universality of intergenerational interdependence and the contextual specificity of grandparental childcare and income provision, as well as the differential impacts of suspending, or risking, such supports during the pandemic. Grandparents within and across households make substantial contributions to economic, social, and affective lives, and the study argues for greater recognition of these crucial contributions and the development of a more intersectional understanding of the provision of care work.

The early childhood education sector is not doing well according to ChildForum’s latest survey. The survey asked people involved with early childhood education services if things were currently going well or badly for their service and whether they thought the situation would improve or worsen in the next 12 months.


The survey shows that more needs to be done to help the sector create stability for its services and its workforce in order to concentrate on making sure children’s needs are met.

Childcare Preferences of Parents in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. In spite of recent economic and social developments in the EU and related pressures on labour market participation, family policies in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic are very familialistic. With the combination of long-term leaves and limited access to institutional childcare the reconciliation of parenting and work remains an irresolvable task that has implications for gender equality and specifically for the participation of women in the labour market. This article seeks to examine the relationship between the ideal preferences and real decisions parents make concerning care for preschool-age children against a backdrop of cultural values, economic factors, and institutional provisions established under the system of family policy and childcare policy in the Czech Republic and Slovakia and in relation to gender in/equality in society. The aim is to shed light on the structure and content of parental views on childcare in the context of both real and hypothetical decision-making. As the data show, the ideal preferences and hypothetical choices of parents reflect their actual practice which is determined by the given childcare policies. It is therefore necessary to take this into account in relation to increasing gender equality in society and the participation of both men and women in childcare.

Children as young as one month to 5 years are at risk of the negative consequences of being in early childhood education (ECE), a nationwide survey of more than 600 teachers reveals. 

Teachers are under pressure to provide safe quality care and education but can lack support.

The survey found that a quarter of teachers held reservations about the quality of their centre such that they would not choose to enrol their own child at it or any other centre comparable to the one they worked at.

About one-fifth of teachers reported not having time to develop relationships with children due to insufficient management support of caregiving practices and low teacher to child ratios. In the absence of positive conditions teachers sometimes chose to take work home and arrive before they were scheduled to start work or stay longer after work hours, putting themselves at risk of emotional and physical burnout.

A small but alarming proportion of teachers (12%) reported consistent under-staffing - their centre was operating in breach of the minimum teacher-child ratio regulations.  When minimum staffing ratios are not maintained added stress is placed on teachers trying to provide quality particularly when dealing with many young children with different needs at one time.  There was also concern that while a facility may on paper meet or exceed regulation standards on ratios, adequate staffing for child supervision was not always possible when adults counted as teachers within the ratio were doing other things. The rules for who counts as a ‘teacher’ in various situations do not appear to be always well understood, suggesting a possibility of not enough education on this and a lack of enforcement and regular spot checking by the Ministry of Education. 

Teachers who were significantly more likely to be happy to enrol their child at their centre or another one like it worked at centres with higher than the minimum staffing ratio (p= .05) and staff were paid well (p= .05).  When an ECE centre shows it supports quality it is valuing children and their teachers. 

The results suggest that a greater emphasis by centre operators and the Government/ Ministry of Education on relationships in centres is needed to support all teachers to provide quality care and education.  The ability to develop relationships with children is fundamental to providing quality care that supports children to be capable and confident individuals and meet childhood curriculum (Te Whāriki) requirements. 

It is recommended that the Government and the Ministry of Education focus on quality to ensure that each and every centre supports its teachers well to provide quality care and education. The ministry should be more open about quality assurance problems and limitations, allowing greater transparency. 

Teachers clearly have a unique insiders’ view and are a key source of information about quality and what goes on in centres when parents cannot stay with their children.  It is therefore important that their views are sought and listened to.   
Report by Warwick Marshall and Karen Payne (New Zealand)
This report is available from ChildForum's website.  Also see a news release, and an analysis of responses to the report at the ChildForum website;  www.childforum.com

From researching different theorists and early years' curriculum models throughout my Childcare Level 3 and my Childcare Level 5 courses I believe that there are two main theoretical influences on the early years' curriculum models used in Wales. Although there are more than these two theorists who have had a big influence in current practice, I believe that the most influential theorists are Marie Montessori and Jean Piaget. Marie Montessori believed that children should learn with their senses first, and then secondly followed by their intellectual side. In her research she was inspired by the work of Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Froebel upon which to base her own theory, and utilised their methods when conducting her research. The Montessori methods require a good level of observational skills to help with planning the results of this would then act as guidance and support to children with their learning and understanding, this is easily adapted in to the setting during the planning process. By following the Montessori methods, children are able to receive a stimulating and educational environment, which encourages them to participate in their own learning. It is important to guide the children with their learning, but not to take control of it, which is why in my own and most other early years' settings the planning is child-led. Montessori developed ideas and principles that encouraged independence in the children, like giving a child the opportunity to dress themselves or be creative with a particular activity, such as messy play, sand or paint. Shadowing children to discover their strengths and weaknesses and discover what needs to be challenged in order to tailor guided learning towards those areas is another Montessori method, and, in my setting, we review and evaluate each child's interests, needs and developmental stage to channel our planning towards what is needed by the child. Montessori also stressed the importance of using mistakes as a learning opportunity, as the child can be encouraged to identify what they should do in a situation, for example, it they spill something, using this as a learning experience and helping them to understand what they should do if a spillage happens again. If it appears that the child is having difficulties with this learning, observe the child to find a way that they can learn based on their own understanding. If a child is pronouncing words incorrectly or struggling with a particular word, repetition should be used, not pointing out the mistake, the correct way of saying the word should be repeated back to the child. Montessori also believed that the environment within which children learn, should be prepared to invite the children to explore the areas and activities and that rooms are set out in a way that is appropriate to the height of the children. This is something that has been adopted by Flying Start, where everything that is set out in the setting is at the child's level. It is also important to provide stimulating experiences that the children will absorb as they are in a continual learning environment, even if they don't understand that they are still learning, therefore, providing 'unconscious learning' experiences.

In 2018, with a self-declared feminist prime minister, a federal commitment to gender-based budget analysis, and a Cabinet composed of ministers who are 50 percent women, Canada’s social policy architectureis being transformed. This transformation is taking place alongside the rise of a reactionary conservative populism abroad and on the heels of almost a decade of federal Conservative social policy basedon “family-values” in Canada. Despite its comparatively progressive character, Canada’s social policy architecture remains nested in a liberal welfare state model, with potentially deleterious outcomes especially for mothers, lower income, and racialized women. Further, populist discourses around families, and the social and tax policies associated with them, remain popular among many voters. Such approaches are often regressive and may entrench inequalities, yet they continue to flavour some of Canada’s policies related to families. This article explores some of the consequences of Canada’s family policy incoherence. It examines key federal family-related policies over the last decade, including the Liberal government’s recent extension of parental leaves to eighteenmonths, its income-based targeting of childcare spending, and its 2018 Gender Equality Budget. This exploration: offers a dynamic theoretical framework for understanding gender in relation to law and social policy; considers why families and federalism are complex political and policy terrain; catalogues Canada’s mixed family policy architecture; and recommends that a feminist future in Canadian social policy will require deviation from the current trajectory to include recalibration of parental leaves and an orientation to childcare as a public good.

An imagined childcare guide for parenting, Beng-style, as if it were written by a (fictionalized) Beng diviner and grandmother, but based on ethnographic research written up in more scholarly style elsewhere (especially, The Afterlife Is Where We Come from: The Culture of Infancy in West Africa, by Alma Gottlieb; U. of Chicago Press, 2004).

A paper which analyses the significance of the relationship between employment and masculinity in post-war Japanese society, examining the hegemonic masculinity of the sarariiman (salaryman), and the alternative masculinities of furītā (part-time or casual workers), male shufu (homemakers), and unemployed men.

This paper is an exploration of, and an attempt to broadly define some basic architectural elements necessary for the "domestication" of all-day, educational care settings.  It will combine review of literature and reflection in three areas: the psychological dynamics of architectural space, the way young children experience space, and the architectural programmatics of institutional space.

The paper illustrates the results of a qualitative study conducted in Italy during the lockdown, and aimed at investigating the consequences of remote work on work life balance and gender inequalities in t he division of paid and unpaid labor within heterosexual couples. Drawing from 20 online in depth interviews with 10 heterosexual couples, the paper highlights the expansion of work over other domains, which worsened with remote work. Even if for some inte rviewed men it was an occasion to experience a more involved fatherhood, for the majority of them a rethinking of their commitment in paid work is inconceivable. Conversely, mothers are more keen on considering job requests as negotiable and perceive a per vasive interference of work on
family life, while their husbands often claim that childcare activities may reduce their productivity. Remote work does not allow the redefinition of the working models and does not improve the work life balance of interviewed couples, which is still considerably unbalanced towards job, with a limited space and time for individual activities. Moreover, remote work , even in this unprecedented extreme situation, does not modify gender normative roles within domestic domain and t hus it reproduces and sometimes exacerbates gender inequalities with women trying to balance their double role and fathers expanding the time devoted to work.

Ce numéro 197 des Dossiers d'études de la Direction des statistiques, des études et de la recherche de la Cnaf est intitulé "Revue de littérature sur les assistantes maternelles. Position sociale, conditions de travail et d’emploi et quotidien". Il dresse un état des connaissances sur le métier d’assistante maternelle, afin de proposer des pistes d'investigations à mener pour alimenter la réflexion de la branche Famille.
Ce dossier d'étude recense la littérature française produite depuis les années 1970 sur le métier d’assistante maternelle, expose les principaux résultats issus de ces travaux et met en avant les enjeux et problématiques susceptibles d'appeler des approfondissements.

Child Protection Activities of Political–Social Organizations in the Kádár Era: The Case of Somogy County
In Hungary, during the state socialist period, the Patriotic People’s Front as a mass organization made remarkable efforts regarding mother and child protection supervised by the National Council of Hungarian Women. As a social organization of the Hungarian Socialist  Workers’  Party,  the  PPF  had  control  over  women’s  and  social  policy  and  also  influenced  the  education  of  mothers  and  their  children  with  twofold  aims:  on  the  one  hand, they prompted parents (particularly mothers) to follow the childrearing methods based on the Party ideology, on the other hand, carried out valuable childcare activities with doctors and nurses. The study aims to present the family protection system in the decade following the introduction of the childcare allowance (1967–1981), based on local, archival materials. In addition to the general theoretical and historical context, the paper maps the activities of the Somogy County women’s committees on child and family protection,  based  on  the  archival  documents  of  the  Hungarian  Women’s  Council  and  the  Patriotic People’s Front local bodies. These miscellanies can contribute to the understanding of the impact of family and population policies on small settlements in the Kádár era, such  as  infant  milk  supply  problems,  the  situation  of  mothers  on  childcare  allowance,  family  planning,  further  education,  and  employment.  Besides,  the  study  highlights  that  the issues of historical continuity and discontinuity emerged in a more complex way concerning  family  policy  issues  of  a  given  era  than  the  communist  and  socialist  regimes  aspired to reveal.

Respond to each numbered item in the short list here as either True or False for you. A “True” response may identify a potential area for training. Reflect on whether an item identifies a problem or issue in the way you manage your anger. Anger requires boundaries, and a moral value (e.g. OK or not OK) can be assigned to ways of expressing anger.

The participation of fathers at the earliest stages of child carework can be somewhat undistinguished when mothers handle all of the feeding carework through breastfeeding, but a possible solution to this gender inequity could be to encourage male breastfeeding for fathers. In this study, ten fathers who have a child living with them no older than four years of age were interviewed. A quasi-experimental design was used to examine their thoughts on male breastfeeding before and after they watched an edited version of the film Milk Men and read a handout about facts related to the possibility of male breastfeeding. The findings were examined using a postmodern feminist approach. Fathers had entangled ideas about masculinity and the body or nature that negatively affected their thoughts about the practice, though only one of the fathers overall rejected the idea that men could or should breastfeed. Many of the fathers showed their resistance to the examination of male breastfeeding by tangentially exploring body ownership ideas and using other deflecting strategies. Subverting social norms, three of the fathers were proponents of the idea overall and six of the fathers were on a continuum of  willingness to engage the idea. The positive aspects of male breastfeeding that spoke to some of the fathers were the bonding aspect this type of child carework could involve and the chance for male breastfeeding to lead to more equity among mothers and fathers.

In this article, we employ grandmothers' childcare as a lens to explore the changing relations between familism, individualism and neoliberalism. More generally, we examine the connections between the political economy and the intimate moral economy of childcare work performed by grandmothers. Based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with twenty retired women in Israel, we examine how they negotiate, comply and resist the expectations that they will help 'fill in' the 'care deficit' resulting from neoliberal policies and labour market practices. We show how grandmothers navigate between family ideologies and individualistic cultural imperatives, constituting themselves as agentive subjects who can determine the conditions in which they meet their families' care expectations while challenging the invisibility of their work. Thus, using Israel as a case study, we argue that familism and individualism, working against each other as well as together, create tensions while mediating the political economy and the intimate moral economy based on the love, commitment and ideology of the 'good mother'. More broadly, we assert that neoliberalism strengthens family and familism and, at the same time, familism facilitates the neoliberal labour market and economy while also freeing the state from having to support families with children.

Over the past few years the UK has introduced some significant changes in childcare policy that may mark a fundamental reorientation in the policy outlook. New shared parental leave, enacted by the Coalition Government in 2014 and analysed in this paper, aims to help working parents reconcile work+care and to ‘enable working fathers to take a more active role in caring for their children and [for] working parents to share the care of their children’ (Modern Workplaces Consultation: Government Response to Flexible Parental Leave Proposals, 3 November 2012). The involvement of both parents in childcare was defined as ‘shared parenting,’ with the aim of promoting such practice to dismantle the gendered division of work (Javornik 2014). Here, the Government clearly focused on heterosexual couples.
The Children and Families Act, of which the new Shared Parental Leave regulation is a major feature, is a well-meant piece of legislation, intended to give parents more job security and more control over family life. The policy also aimed to 'create a new, more equal system which allows both parents to keep a strong link to their workplace' - by men spending more time caring. Shared parenting is expected to reduce the gender opportunity gaps, i.e. 'the “gender penalty” that women suffer from taking time out of the workplace with their children’. In this paper, we aim to explore whether shared parental leave is in fact likely to challenge gender inequality through shared parenting.
The new legislation purports to bring equality into the workplace and the home, however, the government has not created a new right here – it is merely allowing parents to split an existing right, making the chances of parents (voluntarily) sharing leave slimmer. Second, it creates a right only to the statutory minimum leave and pay. The Achilles heel of this intervention is that it doesn't apply to occupational schemes. Thus in many workplaces an incentive for the mother to take leave remains.
We argue that the new law is unlikely to encourage more fathers to take parental leave – it appears to provide parents with new rights and choice over how the leave is taken, but in practice, 'the discretion remains with the employers' (Javornik, 2014a; Mitchell 2015). We support this by examining the eligibility, the statutory remuneration and the need for maternal consent to access leave. Using a recent employment tribunal example, we show how legal uncertainty over possible use of anti-discrimination law (to challenge father's exclusion from occupational maternity leave schemes) abounds. We explore the concept of indirect discrimination in this context, and use concepts from the field of social policy to consider whether excluding fathers from occupational schemes can be objectively justified in the context of social norms moving towards greater equality in shared parenting

Cet article vise à montrer le phénomène de dépendance réciproque entre la production et la diffusion de certains "savoirs" en sciences humaines d’une part, et la culture non savante d’autre part. On prendra, pour étude de cas, les théories et prescriptions psychanalytiques relatives aux pratiques légitimes d’endormissement du nourrisson et du jeune enfant, en s’interrogeant sur les points suivants : 1/ Qu’est-ce que les théories psychanalytiques nous enseignent sur les modalités d’endormissement des jeunes enfants ? Ces derniers doivent-ils dormir dans la chambre des parents (situation de co-sleeping), ou dans une chambre séparée ? 2/ Dans quelle mesure ces théories, qui apparaissent comme conjecturales mais desquelles découlent des prescriptions pratiques, sont-elles elles-mêmes tributaires de processus culturels, tels que l’évolution des relations intrafamiliales au cours des cinq derniers siècles dans les pays occidentaux ? 3/ Dans quelle mesure ces mêmes théories et prescriptions psychanalytiques, certes conjecturales, mais disposant d’un crédit "scientifique" à l’extérieur du monde scientifique, se répercutent-elles dans la culture non savante et les pratiques occidentales contemporaines, à travers, notamment, la médiation "d’experts" en matière de parenting et la publication d’ouvrages spécialisés sur la petite enfance ? L’examen de ces trois points nous permettra d’envisager le phénomène par lequel un corps organisé de conjectures (les théories et prescriptions psychanalytiques relatives au coucher du jeune enfant), dénuées d’ancrage empirique mais disposant d’une légitimité épistémique dans le monde non savant, peut en même temps être le produit et un élément reproducteur d’une "culture de l’indépendance" et d’un système de normes sociales caractéristiques des pays occidentaux industrialisés.

IFC’s Tackling Childcare: The Business Case for Employer-Supported Childcare report discusses how companies can analyze their workforce to identify the type of childcare support they can offer to their employees—from on-site childcare to subsidies—that best suits their needs. The report draws on 10 case studies of companies around the world offering various childcare options, highlighting how investments in employer-supported childcare can strengthen the bottom line. A regulatory framework analysis for each country accompanies the 10 case studies.

En este documento partimos del supuesto que la oferta de servicios de desarrollo infantil al que acceden los niños y niñas de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires varía en materia de contenidos y acceso dependiendo del nivel de ingresos familiares y la comuna de residencia. La principal distinción entre los servicios a los que se accede es en base a si estos son educativos o asistenciales, donde los primeros pertenecen al sistema educativo formal y brindan contenidos curriculares educativos y pedagógicos. Mientras los segundos se focalizan en niños en situación de vulnerabilidad social y se orientan principalmente al apoyo nutricional y contención social, y los contenidos educativos y pedagógicos ocupan un segundo lugar en importancia.
En este documento se analiza la evidencia recogida de los organismos oficiales nacionales (DiNIECE, INDEC, Ministerio de Educación y Ministerio de Desarrollo Social) y locales (Ministerio de Educación y Dirección de Estadísticas del GCBA) para analizar si los servicios de cuidado y desarrollo infantil en primera infancia reproducen la estratificación social en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.