Parents' care and career: comparing parental leave policies
- 21 February 2008
- book chapter
- book charpter
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Abstract
Introduction The presence of young children in the household makes it necessary for working parents to find ways in which to combine professional responsibilities and care tasks. The externalisation of household chores to the market frees time for parents to spend on their caring duties. Furthermore, public childcare allows for a further externalisation of care tasks and as such is supportive of working parents, because it also secures time for both parents. As stated in chapter 2, a childcare system that meets several conditions (universal access, all-day coverage, high quality and affordability) facilitates an adequate division by parents of their time between childcare and work. However, given the high public cost of an affordable and universally accessible childcare system for children under 6 years of age, some countries have found an alternative in a parental leave system. The state's involvement in parental leave schemes may also be related to the way a country conceives children's early socialisation: through private external care, through public facilities or through parental care (Martin 2003). In many countries, parents are expected to be the primary caregivers when the child is very young (Math and Meilland 2004). Be that as it may, if home parental care is privileged in a given country, it does not necessarily mean that the state intervenes in the family sphere to secure parents' work resumption or substantial replacement of income.SCOPUS: ch.binfo:eu-repo/semantics/publisheKeywords
This publication has 14 references indexed in Scilit:
- Is There a Glass Ceiling in Sweden?Journal of Labor Economics, 2003
- Setting time aside for the father: Father's leave in ScandinaviaCommunity, Work & Family, 2002
- Une mesure de la discrimination dans l'écart de salaire entre hommes et femmesEconomie et Statistique, 2000
- Family leave policies and women's retention after childbirth: Evidence from the United States, Britain, and JapanJournal of Population Economics, 1999
- Parental Leave and Equal Opportunities: Experiences in Eight European CountriesJournal of European Social Policy, 1999
- Career Interruptions and Subsequent Earnings: A Reexamination Using Swedish DataThe Journal of Human Resources, 1999
- The Economic Consequences of Parental Leave Mandates: Lessons from EuropeThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1998
- Les trajectoires d'emploi des jeunes mères de familleRecherches et Prévisions, 1998
- Supporting the Employment of Mothers: Policy Variation Across Fourteen Welfare StatesJournal of European Social Policy, 1997
- Barefoot and in a German kitchen: Federal parental leave and benefit policy and the return to work after childbirth in GermanyJournal of Population Economics, 1996