The educational gradient in formal childcare use – the role of employment opportunities and (in)formal childcare availability

Biegel, Naomi; Maes, Julie

doi:10.1080/13668803.2022.2149387

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…As the availability of grandparents as informal care providers depends on multiple factors (e.g., age, residential proximity, employment position, competing care demands from siblings, etc.) (Biegel et al, 2021a), we need to enhance our understanding of how these factors are related to the uptake of formal childcare among different population subgroups (Biegel & Maes, 2022). If local childcare availability increases, migrant origin mothers may substitute informal childcare by formal childcare accordingly, in turn resulting in reduced migrant-native gaps in the uptake of formal childcare.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uptake of formal childcare among second generation and native mothers in Belgium: can increasing local childcare availability narrow migrant-native gaps?

Maes

Neels

Biegel

et al. 2023

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Research indicates that the uptake of formal childcare for children under age 3 is lower among migrant origin parents than among native parents in most European countries, and that these differentials extend to the second generation. Despite considerable investments in formal childcare availability in many European countries, it remains unclear whether and to what extent expanding local childcare availability effectively diminishes migrant-native uptake differentials due to the lack of longitudinal research. Therefore, this study assesses for Belgium to what extent expansions in childcare availability within municipalities in the period 2010–2014 has increased the uptake of formal childcare for children under age 3 among households where the mother has a second generation Southern European, Maghreb or Turkish background, versus no migration background. We use longitudinal census and register data for Belgium that were linked to longitudinal tax return data on childcare expenses and municipality-level data on childcare availability for children aged 0–3. Our results show that Southern European and Turkish origin mothers become more likely to use formal childcare when childcare places become more widely available within their municipalities, but also that the uptake gap with native mothers persists, since there is no differential effect of increasing local childcare availability. Since local childcare expansions entail a slightly stronger increase in formal childcare uptake among Maghreb origin mothers compared to native mothers, this results in slightly decreasing migrant-native uptake gaps, although considerable uptake gaps remain. To our knowledge, this is the first longitudinal study addressing the relationship between local childcare availability and uptake differentials by migration background. This study can inspire avenues for follow-up research which could provide additional insight into the possible mechanisms behind the varying effects of increasing local childcare availability by migration background and the persisting migrant-native uptake gaps.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uptake of formal childcare among second generation and native mothers in Belgium: can increasing local childcare availability narrow migrant-native gaps?

Maes

Neels

Biegel

et al. 2023

Genus

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“…Different reasons have been suggested for disparities between mothers. For example, the lower use of childcare services by lower-educated mothers has been explained by their weaker labour market opportunities compared to higher-educated mothers (Biegel & Maes, 2022). Lowereducated mothers also work more often in jobs with irregular working hours and short, temporary contracts.…”

Section: Inequalities Related To Early Childhood Education and Carementioning

confidence: 99%

Growing inequality and diverging paths in early childhood education and care: Educational disparities in Europe

Välimäki,

Lammi-Taskula,

Mesiäislehto

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Early childhood education and care (ECEC) is one of the most important services for children and their parents. It promotes children’s development and learning and mitigates inequalities among families and children, as well as enables mothers’ employment. It has become an important family policy advocated by international organizations. Previous research has shown that there is an educational gradient in the use of ECEC as children of mothers with low education level participate less. However, earlier studies have mostly been carried out at one time point and focused on gaps between low and other levels of education. This study, using EU-SILC survey data, focuses on the development of inequality in ECEC use of under three-year-old children during 2004-2019 in Europe, and on disparities between three education levels among mothers. The results show that together with increasing ECEC participation rates, the overall inequality has also increased in Europe. In most countries, inequality has increased between low and other education levels while in the few cases where it has decreased, this has happened between medium and high educated mothers. In advocating higher use of ECEC it is important to pay attention to socio-economic disparities within the rising participation rates.

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“…It also has repercussions for parenting practices. For instance, lower-educated couples engage less in childcare activities because of their employment conditions, especially when they have three or more children (Biegel and Maes, 2022 ). This implies that how couples combine and divide work and family responsibilities may be different for those who have higher or lower education (Visser and Fasang, 2018 ) in combination with having a few or several children.…”

Section: Theoretical Notionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Work-family trajectories across Europe: differences between social groups and welfare regimes

Firat,

Visser,

Kraaykamp

2023

Front. Sociol.

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IntroductionWork and family trajectories develop and interact over the life course in complex ways. Previous studies drew a fragmented picture of these trajectories and had limited scope. We provide the most comprehensive study of early-to-midlife work-family trajectories to date.MethodsUsing retrospective data from waves 3 and 7 of the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we reconstructed work-family trajectories from age 15 to 49 among almost 80,000 individuals born between 1908 and 1967 across 28 countries. We applied multichannel sequence and cluster analysis to identify typical trajectories and multinomial logistic regression models to uncover their social composition.ResultsThe results revealed six common trajectories. The dominant and therefore standard trajectory represents continuous full-time employment with having a partner and children. Women, the lower educated and persons from conservative and liberal welfare regimes are underrepresented in this trajectory, whereas men, higher educated people and those from social-democratic, Eastern European and Baltic welfare regimes are overrepresented. The other trajectories denote a deviation from the standard one, integrating a non-standard form of work with standard family formation or vice versa. Mothers in a stable relationship generally work part-time or not at all. When mostly in full-time employment, women are more likely to be divorced. Lower educated persons are less likely to have work-family trajectories characterized by full-time work and a non-standard family, yet more likely to be non-employed for large parts of their life with standard family formation. Younger cohorts are underrepresented in non-employment trajectories, but overrepresented in part-time employment trajectories along with a partner and children as well as full-time employment trajectories with divorce. Individuals from Southern European and liberal regimes are more likely to be non-working and self-employed partnered parents and those from social-democratic regimes are more likely to be full-time employed divorced parents. We also found pronounced gender differences in how educational level, birth cohort and welfare regime are associated with work-family trajectories from early to midlife.DiscussionOur findings highlight the socially stratified nature of earlier-life work-family trajectories in Europe. Potential implications for inequalities in later life are discussed.

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The educational gradient in formal childcare use – the role of employment opportunities and (in)formal childcare availability

Cited by 5 publications

References 51 publications

Uptake of formal childcare among second generation and native mothers in Belgium: can increasing local childcare availability narrow migrant-native gaps?

Uptake of formal childcare among second generation and native mothers in Belgium: can increasing local childcare availability narrow migrant-native gaps?

Growing inequality and diverging paths in early childhood education and care: Educational disparities in Europe

Work-family trajectories across Europe: differences between social groups and welfare regimes

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