Nannies, Migration and Early Childhood Education and Care

An International Comparison of In-Home Childcare Policy and Practice

Adamson, Elizabeth

• Editore: Policy Press
• Anno: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781447333807
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Sozialwissenschaften
• Categoria: Studien über Kinder in der Soziologie

Once considered the preserve of the wealthy, nanny care has grown in response to changes in the labour market, including the rising number of working mothers with young children and increases in non-standard work patterns. This book presents new empirical research about in-home childcare in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada, three countries where governments are pursuing new ways to support in-home childcare through funding, regulation and migration. The compelling policy story that emerges illustrates the implications of different mechanisms for facilitating in-home childcare - for families and for care workers.

Part One
Conceptual and historical analysis of in-home childcare

ONE

Restructuring care: concepts
and classifications

Welfare state restructuring since the 1970s has reshaped the role and responsibilities of government in delivering a range of social services and benefits. Early childhood education and care (ECEC), as well as the care domain more broadly, is no exception to debates about how best to fund, regulate and deliver services. Governments may assume a variety of roles in the provision of social care services, including direct provider, contractor, funder and regulator. In recent decades, there has been a shift away from government as direct provider of services, which means that governments are increasingly contracting services to private providers. This is often achieved through a shift from supply-side to demand-side funding by putting public money in the hands of consumers through the use of vouchers and tax credits (Salamon and Elliott, 2002; Bonoli, 2005; Clasen and Siegel, 2007). These changes reflect the process of marketisation, whereby services are purchased by service users, constituted as consumers, through a mixed market of public and private providers. That is, rather than provide services, governments increasingly subsidise services through tax rebates or cash benefits to assist with the costs of care services, including childcare. The action of putting public funds in the hands of consumers to purchase services is often called ‘cash for care’ (Sipilä et al, 2010). Cash-for-care schemes represent one of many ways that governments have shifted responsibility for care provision to private providers and users themselves.

Care services, including childcare, have been affected by broad shifts in welfare state design, but changes to childcare policy are also a result of demographic and labour market changes that contribute to increased demand for paid, non-familial care provided in the public sphere, opposed to familial care in the private home. Demographic changes in the past few decades include an increase in the number of women in the labour market – especially mothers with young children. This means that childcare is increasingly provided by other family members (particularly grandparents), and by non-relative carers in both formal settings (mostly regulated and centre-based) and informal settings, such as by neighbours and by professional care workers in the private home. At the same time that women and mothers’ workforce participation has increased, there have also been shifts in the composition of the labour market, as full-time permanent work is being replaced with a rise in part-time, casualised and non-standard positions.

In many countries, including Australia, the UK and Canada, parents are increasingly likely to have non-standard, short-term, insecure, or unpredictable work hours. Participation in such work arrangements requires families to seek flexible childcare that is not always available in ‘typical’ formal services, namely centre-based childcare or childcare provided in the caregiver’s home. Many families therefore rely on informal services. As introduced in the previous chapter, these informal arrangements can be paid or unpaid, provided by relatives or non-relatives, and provided in or outside the child’s home. Thus, while the number and proportion of children attending formal ECEC settings – such as preschool and other centre-based childcare – has increased, there are still pressures from families to secure affordable and flexible childcare to accommodate non-standard and unpredictable hours (Rutter and Evans, 2012b; Brady and Perales, 2014). These demands call for a restructuring of care that better addresses parents’ long and non-standard work hours. This is especially true in liberal market-orientated countries where there is an emphasis on women’s workforce participation and productivity, yet a lack of available and affordable childcare.

Changes in the labour market are shaped by demographic shifts such as the rise in women’s workforce participation, by increases in non-standard employment patterns, noted above, and also by global changes. Changes in the global labour market mean that workers increasingly move across national borders in search of employment opportunities. Migrant workers are part of the rise in non-standard and precarious work, including in the care sector. They fill the gaps in care needs for families working long hours and, in doing so, also work long and sometimes unpredictable hours themselves. The movement of migrant care workers, mostly from poor to rich countries, also contributes to the gap in care for their own children, who are often left behind to be cared for by other family members. This trend, termed the ‘global care chain’ (Parreñas, 2001; Yeates, 2005), represents an important global trend contributing to the restructuring of care responsibilities. This chapter discusses the interrelated shifts that have contributed to the restructuring of care responsibilities that affect the supply and demand of in-home childcare: the rise in non-standard work, the reconceptualisation of care, markets and migration, the rhetoric and rationales behind care restructuring, and shifting ideals of care.

Rise in non-standard employment

In addition to increases in female and maternal employment, there have been shifts away from standard employment, where employees generally work Monday to Friday, from between the hours of 8am and 6pm. Increases in non-standard work patterns can be linked to welfare state restructuring and the decline of the full-time permanent worker model. This trend is associated with the rise of the ‘24-hour economy’, particularly among female-dominated service industries (Presser et al, 2008). In Australia, in 2007, nearly 60 per cent of all couple families had one or both parents usually working between 7pm and 7am. In 41 per cent of families, one or both parents worked shift work, and in 15 per cent of families one or both parents worked weekends (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009). In the UK, a survey found that only 35 per cent of employees worked a standard week, defined as Monday to Friday between 8am and 6pm (Statham and Mooney, 2003). Another study found that 80 per cent of working fathers worked atypical times, and half of working mothers (lone and couple) worked atypical times (Barnes et al, 2006, p 34). In Canada, in the late 1990s, one third of workers were in non-standard jobs, an increase from 28 per cent less than a decade earlier (Strazdins et al, 2004; Rapoport and Le Bourdais, 2008).

Non-standard employment among families with young children may reflect a positive choice by parents to work more flexible hours in order to maximise parental care. The absence of affordable formal or stable informal childcare may also prevent families from taking up standard employment (Le Bihan and Martin, 2004; Rutter and Evans, 2012b). In these circumstances, non-standard work can contribute to demand for more flexible ECEC options, including in-home childcare (Rutter and Evans, 2012b). As discussed in the previous chapter, in-home childcare traverses the informal/formal and public/private domains, which is often complicated by shifts in welfare state policies and the reclassification of care types.

Conceptualising care, redistributing responsibilities

The way governments fund and provide ECEC, and other human services, contributes to the development of care classifications and care regimes, which have been compared and critiqued in relation to broader welfare regimes typologies (O’Connor et al, 1999; Jenson and Sineau, 2001; Michel and Mahon, 2002; Lewis, 2006; Brennan et al, 2012; Anderson and Shutes, 2014). Comparative welfare regime scholars, particularly those interested in gender and care, have mapped out the ways that welfare state changes contribute to changes in care provision in the paid/unpaid, familial/non-familial and public/private spheres (Lewis, 1992; Jenson, 1997; Leira and Saraceno, 2002; Pfau-Effinger, 2005c; Kremer, 2007).

Welfare state changes are explained through processes of marketisation, commodification, privatisation, re-familisation and commercialisation, among others. These processes shift the distribution of responsibilities for care across the different domains – particularly between unpaid and paid work, and between the private (family or market) domain and the public domain. The dynamic between the public and private domains is, however, very complex. As Jane Jenson argued, typologies must move beyond the division of unpaid and paid work. We must ask who cares, who pays, and how the care is provided (Jenson, 1997, p 182–87). By asking these questions, distinctions within the private sector are made and the complex dynamic between public funding of private delivery is revealed. In particular, ‘the mere absence of public provision of care does not tell us which private source – markets, voluntary organisation or families – will provide care’ (O’Connor et al, 1999, p 30).

The liberal type – where Australia, the UK and Canada are regulatory grouped together in welfare regime classifications – is characterised by its ‘distrust of public policies and the role of the state’ (O’Connor et al, 1999, p 45). In these countries, the provision of care usually falls to the private family or private market. Increasingly, public funding through cash-for-care schemes and tax measures supports private care, including in-home childcare. In-home childcare is not, however, unique to the liberal welfare states. Cash for care and other funding models to encourage in-home childcare are common across Europe (Sipilä et al, 2010; Fagnani, 2012; Morel, 2012).

Governments are continually reforming policy structures and mechanisms for delivering social and care services, and childcare is no exception. When governments introduce new policy structures for providing childcare and early education, for example, the responsibility for funding, regulating and delivering services usually shifts between the family, market and public sector. As mentioned earlier, countries across the developed and developing world have witnessed a shift toward market-led provision of ECEC and other care services. Market-led approaches to delivering care services tend to shift responsibility for paying for services to the user (family), and delivering services to private organisations or individuals. Private organisations can be non-profit or for-profit, and for-profit services are sometimes commercialised or, where shareholders are involved, corporatised (Press and Woodrow, 2005; Brennan, 2007). Market-led approaches also tend to put government funds (public money) in the hands of families, allowing service users to purchase care from organisations and, sometimes, individuals. Market-led childcare can be part of the formal and, sometimes, informal domains. Whether provided by private companies or private individuals, the marketisation of care services promotes the commodification of care work as it moves from the unpaid and familial setting to the paid and non-familial domain. When provided by private companies, marketisation tends to formalise services; when marketisation allows for care by private individuals, it may also lead to informalisation.

The complexities of defamilisation, marketisation and privatisation have been conceptualised by scholars in various ways. Defamilisation, for example, has been defined as a ‘process of unburdening the family’ from care responsibilities (Clasen and Siegel, 2007, p 11). Sweden is often cited for its childcare policies, which, to some extent, defamilised childcare provision in the 1970s through the expansion of publicly funded ECEC services that allowed mothers to give up (some of) their unpaid caring responsibilities to work in the paid labour market. Here, the process of defamilisation occurred side by side with the formalisation of care for children. Commodification, on the other hand, refers to the inclusion in the market without formalisation, and delineates the process of moving care from the unpaid to paid labour market, but it does not always require defamilisation (Pfau-Effinger, 2006; Lewis et al, 2008). Leira’s (2002) framework illustrates how commodification can reflect both familisation through cash benefits supporting parental childcare, or defamilisation through state-subsidised childcare services or benefits for non-parental childcare (presented in Lister et al, 2007).

The processes of defamilisation and commodification, noted above, are intertwined with the processes of formalisation and informalisation. In-home childcare sits at the nexus of informalisation and formalisation, where care shifts to the paid labour market (the process of commodification) and sometimes also shifts from the informal to the formal sector through the introduction of government funding and regulation. Birgit Pfau-Effinger highlights the blurred boundary between informal and formal care. She conceptualises how informal care can shift to paid care through processes of formalisation and commodification. In particular, care can be in the form of undeclared work in private households, that is commodification without formalisation; it can be a semi-formal, welfare state-supported form of ‘care’ in private households; and it can be formal paid work (Pfau-Effinger, 2006, p 139). In-home childcare may fall into any of these three categories: the ‘traditional’ nanny in the private home, paid for by private money resembles Pfau-Effinger’s first pathway; partially subsidised and registered or regulated nanny care is increasingly common in a market environment, which resembles semi-formal care in private households; and, lastly; in-home childcare may also exist as subsidised and regulated paid care in the child’s home, akin to formal services (regulated centre-based care or family day care). The introduction and removal of different policy elements, such as funding and regulation, can easily blur these lines for in-home childcare. In countries where migration policy and patterns also facilitate the recruitment of private in-home childcare, the processes of formalisation and informalisation are even more complex.

Migration, and migration policy, is another factor in welfare state change. Global migration trends and national immigration policy contribute to new care arrangements and classifications beyond the paid/unpaid, familial/non-familial, informal/formal and public/private dichotomies (Morel, 2007, 2012; Williams and Gavanas, 2008; Cox, 2012; Williams, 2012b). For example, in both Southern Europe (Bettio and Plantenga, 2004; Simonazzi, 2009) and Asia and North America (Michel and Peng, 2012), market mechanisms in combination with migration have led to a shift from familialist care regimes to ‘migrant-in-the-family’ care regimes.

Childcare and early education is increasingly ‘going public’ as care provision moves from the home to outside the home, from the unpaid to the paid sector, and from familial to non-familial care. The alleviation of childcare responsibilities can occur either through the provision of public services or, as presented above, through public financing of private services. Childcare is therefore also going public as new forms of, formerly private, childcare are attracting public subsidies. Overall, it is evident that care domains are at best a set of fuzzy categories to describe different forms of care provision, and different processes for redistributing care responsibilities. Despite the blurred categories for classifying care, the concepts themselves – that is, privatisation and formalisation – offer frameworks for understanding differences between care regimes and changes over time within specific countries and local contexts.

Markets, regulation and migration

As describe...

Indice dei contenuti

• Coverpage
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part One: Conceptual and historical analysis of in-home childcare
• Part Two: Policy intersections and inequalities
• Conclusion
• References