Uptake of Childcare Arrangements—Grandparental Availability and Availability of Formal Childcare

Abstract

Grandparents constitute an important source of childcare to many parents. Focusing on the Belgian context, this paper improves our understanding of childcare decision-making by investigating how formal childcare availability and availability of grandparents affect childcare arrangements. By means of multinomial regression models we simultaneously model uptake of formal and informal childcare by parents. Combining linked microdata from the Belgian censuses with contextual data on childcare at the level of municipalities, we consider formal childcare availability at a local level, while including a wide array of characteristics which may affect grandparental availability. Results indicate that increasing formal care crowds-out informal care as the sole care arrangement, whereas combined use of formal and informal care becomes more prevalent. Characteristics indicating a lack of grandmaternal availability increase uptake of formal care and inhibit to a lesser extent the uptake of combined formal and informal care. While increasing formal care substitutes informal care use, the lack of availability of informal care by grandparents may be problematic, particularly for those families most prone to use informal care.

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

“…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.…”