Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Center-based childcare is beneficial for young children, especially low-income children, because of the educational experience it can provide. Educational early childhood care can help poor children make up some of the cognitive and health disadvantages of living in poverty. The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) created mandatory work requirements for welfare recipients, which greatly increased the need for childcare for low-income families. It also eliminated childcare subsidy entitlements. Previously, recipients of welfare, those transitioning off welfare, and those in danger of entering welfare were guaranteed subsidies. Currently, there are not enough to cover all eligible children and the only way low-income families can realistically afford center care is by using one. The combination of work requirements with no guarantee of childcare assistance has put poor families in precarious positions. Subsidy receipt has been shown to be strongly associated with the use of center care for low-income families, and this is supported in data from a survey of low-income mothers in San Antonio, TX. The same data is used to examine what characteristics are associated with subsidy receipt. Because of state policies, it is hypothesized that welfare status is the characteristic most strongly associated with subsidy receipt. However, this data shows that, in addition to welfare status, personal characteristics of the mother such as race, education level and employment status are significantly associated with receiving childcare assistance. The paper concludes by discussing the important implications of these findings for equity and future of childcare policies.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Using new American time diary data from 3,535 married fathers with children under age 13, this study examines fathers’ childcare in relation to their spouses’ employment. Our extended measures of father involvement indicate that compared to sole-breadwinner fathers, dual-earner fathers take more sole responsibility for childcare and they also spend more time caring and minding their young children, even when they are not interacting with the children. Results from multivariate analyses suggest that today’s American fathers do take over more childcare responsibilities when their wives work outside home, yet this is not uniformly the case across all fathers with working wives. Fathers’ responses to maternal employment are conditioned by the types of childcare activities, children’s age and mother’s education, which may reflect the degree of childcare demands as well as the push from working wives. This study clarifies previous inconsistent findings of father involvement in response to wives’ employment and sheds light on the complex mechanisms of fathers’ childcare participation in general.

Supporting Publications:
Supporting Document

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Single mothers leaving welfare face a web of obstacles in accessing childcare subsidies. However, welfare leavers’ perceptions about their experiences and about work supports for which they are eligible, including childcare subsidies, are not well documented in the literature. This paper develops a model of childcare selection and subsidy use among welfare leavers. Findings suggest the level of trust between parents and childcare providers, related to bad experiences with center-based care, and the availability of information about child care facilities were important decision making criteria. Efforts to work with this population need to address lack of information about subsidies to increase the range of child care alternatives and quality and also promote trusting relationships between social workers and welfare leavers.

Supporting Publications:
Supporting Document
Supporting Document
Supporting Document
Supporting Document

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Findings from a qualitative study indicated that women continue to experience a persistent inequality in their relationships as it relates to housework and childcare, and they are dissatisfied. As women attempted to make sense of and change the inequality, they reflected on its contribution to the larger picture of their lives, socialization practices, and society’s role and influence on the issue.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: If deep changes in gender roles and a linked demographic shift are transforming social risks, can we expect existing ‘worlds’ of early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy to remain robust, even as they experience change? Changes in gender roles and feminism undoubtedly play an important part in the development of ECEC policies in this period. Yet in many cases feminist political activism seems to have changed the context for policy while playing only a limited direct role in the origins of early education and childcare policies. The facilitation of female employment was often a crucial proximate cause, but policy change probably owed as much to state concerns with managing labour market as to women’s liberation. Equally, growing medically and sociologically generated ‘expert’ evidence concerning child development is generating some pressure for ECEC and particularly improving the quality of early care and education. This evidence also has implications for social justice, as it indicates that early experiences have a huge impact on later life chances (in terms of education, health, employment and so on). This paper concentrates on the British and French cases, although they are placed in a broad comparative and theoretical context. The accent is placed on the intersection of territoriality and welfare.

In general, neither case fits neatly into established welfare regime clusters. Although often regarded as the leading ‘liberal’ regime in Europe, the UK’s historical record is much more mixed. It includes one of the most deeply entrenched and popular universal health-care systems. Into the 1960s UK social policy shared a mix of social democratic and liberal principles with Nordic welfare provision - in both places liberalism militated against state intervention in family life (outside exceptional war-time provision). In the 1960s, these paths diverged, with Britain nearly uniquely failing to develop any significant policy in this area. Since 1998, in apparently unfavourable circumstances, ‘early-years’ policies have developed rapidly. A ‘New Labour’ government often disparaged as the continuation of Thatcherism by other means, initiated a remarkable growth of EYCP, despite the ‘hard times’ of ‘permanent austerity’. Devolution and federalism are usually thought to retard welfare growth. But the (admittedly early) experience of ECEC policy in the UK is that devolution has allowed experimentation to increase the dynamism of policy development, with both Scotland and Wales seeming to move ahead of, and perhaps drag forward, the more fragmented English policy. Family policies famously distinguish French welfare from other ‘conservative’ regimes. ECEC policy developed in two broad waves – early education in the nineteenth century and ‘care’ during the 1960s. In the latter period the expansion of childcare intersected with some ‘new left’ currents pushing for greater local control and decentralisation. More recently the impact of ‘territorialisation’ of welfare policies has been widely debated, with some seeing it undercutting established social citizenship rights. Partly because of the continuing national co-ordination role of the CNAF, childcare seems to have been somewhat has been partly protected from these dynamics.