Work and Care Strategies of European Families: Similarities or National Differences?

Abstract

This paper examines the work and care strategies chosen by full-time working families with children in Finland, Italy, Portugal and the UK. It asks whether European families in different countries, facing the same problems of balancing employment and childcare responsibilities, respond to their situations in similar ways. An increase in dual-earner families where both parents work full-time represents a general employment trend in today's Europe. Also, within families with children, such employment patterns are now more common than they were previously. National differences may therefore not any longer be as marked as often indicated by country-based surveys. The qualitative data from the SOCCARE Project offer a way to examine this issue. The focal point of the paper is to make a comparative analysis of couples in similar work and care situations. Using their working hours as the common denominator, this paper analyses their daily childcare arrangements and how these are impacted by gender roles, working schedules, flexibility of workplace, income levels, parents' educational background and availability of care facilities. The paper concludes that European families' work and care strategies have many similarities whereby national differences may not be as marked as often indicated by contemporary research.

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Speeding Up or Holding Back?: Institutional Factors in the Development of Childcare Provision in Spain

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