Cash-for-Childcare: The Consequences for Caring Mothers

Cash-for-Childcare The Consequences for Caring Mothers

Edited by

Jorma Sipilä Professor of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Tampere, Finland

Katja Repo Senior Lecturer in Social Policy, University of Tampere, Finland

Tapio Rissanen Research Fellow, University of Tampere, Finland

Edward Elgar Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

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© Jorma Sipilä, Katja Repo and Tapio Rissanen 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2010926009

ISBN 978 1 84980 423 3

04

Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire Printed and bound by MPG Books Group, UK

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Contents Lists of figures and tables List of contributors 1 2 3

4

5

6

7 8

vi vii

Introduction Jorma Sipilä, Katja Repo and Tapio Rissanen Cash vs. care: a child and family policy issue Sheila B. Kamerman and Shirley Gatenio Gabel Cash-for-childcare: unnecessary traditionalism or a contemporary necessity? Jorma Sipilä, Katja Repo, Tapio Rissanen and Niina Viitasalo Finnish child home care allowance – users’ perspectives and perceptions Katja Repo Cash-for-childcare schemes in Sweden: history, political contradictions and recent developments Anita Nyberg Cash-for-care in Norway: take-up, impacts and consequences for mothers Marit Rønsen and Ragni Hege Kitterød Rationalities of cash-for-childcare: the Nordic case Minna Rantalaiho The paradox of cash-for-childcare: are there ways to solve the dilemma? Katja Repo, Jorma Sipilä, Tapio Rissanen and Niina Viitasalo

Index

1 6

21

46

65

89 109

143

161

v

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Figures and tables FIGURES 2.1 2.2 4.1

Employment and parental leave rates (%) for mothers with children under age 3 years 2006 Percentage coverage for 0–3-year-olds (includes care and leave) in the European Union Use of the home care allowance since 1990 in Finland

10 11 50

TABLES 2.1 4.1 5.1

5.2 6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2 8.1

Maternal employment rates by age of youngest child 2007 (%) Children in daycare by age in 2007 in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden (%) Municipalities having introduced or intending to introduce cash-for-childcare in August 2009 by chairperson’s party affiliation Form of care for children 1–3 years of age, number of children and share of children, 2005 Employment activity among mothers with children aged 1–2 years Parameter estimates of labour supply among Norwegian mothers with children 1–2 years old Childcare policy entitlements in Nordic countries in 2009 CFC entitlement features in Finland, Norway and Sweden in 2009 Basic social advantages and disadvantages according to the form of childcare

8 52

73 77 99 102 112 119 152

vi

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Contributors Shirley Gatenio Gabel, PhD, Associate Professor, Fordham University’s Graduate School of Social Service, USA. She is a long-time advocate for children and her primary research area is comparative child and family policies in both industrialized and developing countries, especially for young children. She was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in Bulgaria where she researched the effectiveness of social policies to reduce social exclusion of very young Roma children. She is currently a consultant to UNICEF on its Global Child Poverty study. Sheila B. Kamerman, DSW, Compton Foundation Centennial Professor for the Prevention of Child and Youth Problems, Columbia University School of Social Work, USA. Her main research interests are US and comparative child and family policies, social protection and welfare state policies. Her most recent books are Kamerman and Moss (eds) (2009), The Politics of Parental Leave Policies: Children, Parenting, Gender and the Labour Market, Bristol: Policy Press and Kamerman, Phipps and Ben-Arieh (eds) (2009), From Child Welfare to Child Well-Being: An International Perspective on Knowledge in the Service of Policy Making, Dordrecht: Springer. Ragni Hege Kitterød, PhD, Senior Researcher, Research Department, Statistics Norway. Her main research interests focus on labour market participation, gender equality, family policies and non-resident parents. Recent publications include Kitterød and Pettersen (2006), ‘Making up for mothers’ employed working hours? Housework and childcare among Norwegian fathers’, Work, Employment and Society, 20(3) 473–92 and Dommermuth and Kitterød (2009), ‘Fathers’ employment in a fatherfriendly welfare state. Does fatherhood affect men’s working hours?’, Community, Work and Family, 12(4) 417–36. Anita Nyberg, PhD, Affiliated Professor (Em.), Center for Gender Studies, . Her main research interest lies in women’s and men’s work and incomes. Recent publications include Nyberg (2007), ‘Lessons from the Swedish experience’, in Hill, Pocock and Elliott (eds), Kids Count: Early Childhood Education and Care in Australia, Sydney: Sydney University Press and Haataja and Nyberg (2006), ‘Diverging vii

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paths? The dual earner/dual carer model in Finland and Sweden in the 1990s’, in Ellingsæter, Lise and Leira (eds) Politicising Parenthood: Gender Relations in Scandinavian Welfare State Redesign, Bristol: Policy Press. Minna Rantalaiho, MSocSc, Researcher, Nordic Gender Institute (NIKK), Norway. Her main research interests focus on Nordic family policies from different perspectives of gender, parenthood and childhood. Among other publications she is author of Rantalaiho (2009), ‘Kvoter, valgfrihet, flexibilitet’ [Quotas, freedom of choice, flexibility], NIKK Magasin No. 2:2009, Oslo: NIKK. Katja Repo, PhD, Senior Lecturer in Social Policy, Department of Social Research, University of Tampere, Finland. Her main research interests include reconciliation of work and family, family policy, social services, cash-for-care schemes, intra-household finances and poverty. Her work includes Repo (2004), ‘Combining work and family in two welfare state contexts: a discourse analytical perspective’, Social Policy & Administration, 38(6), 622–39. Tapio Rissanen, MSocSc, Research Fellow, Department of Social Research, University of Tampere, Finland. He is practiced in working life studies and his main research interests are transitional labour market, family policy and gender equality. Marit Rønsen, MSc, Senior Researcher, Research Department, Statistics Norway. Her main research interests are fertility, labour market participation, family policies, gender equality. Her publications in the present context include Rønsen (2009), ‘Long-term effects of cash for childcare on mothers’ labour supply’, LABOUR, 23(3), 507–33 and Rønsen and Sundström (2002), ‘Family policy and after-birth employment among new mothers – a comparison of Finland, Norway and Sweden’, European Journal of Population, 18(2), 121–52. Jorma Sipilä, PhD, Professor (Em.), Institute for Social Research, University of Tampere, Finland. He has been working with research on social policy and social care. Among his recent publications are Anttonen, Baldock and Sipilä (eds) (2003), The Young, the Old and the State. Social Care Systems in Five Industrial Countries, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar; Kröger and Sipilä (eds) (2005), ‘Overstretched. European families up against the demands of work and care’, Malden: Blackwell; and Anttonen and Sipilä (2007), ‘Care capital, stress and satisfaction’, in Crompton, Lewis and Lyonette (eds) Women, Men, Work and Family in Europe, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Contributors

ix

Niina Viitasalo, MSocSc, Research Fellow, Department of Social Research, University of Tampere, Finland. Her main research interests include labour market, family policy, ageism and equity.

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1.

Introduction Jorma Sipilä, Katja Repo and Tapio Rissanen

Do you think the state should pay mothers for taking care of their children at home? No doubt many of us disagree on this – we can hardly find a social benefit issue that raises more differences in opinions than paying cash-for-childcare. There is a long tradition of discussing possible means to support mothers of young children (e.g., the debates on mothers’ wages). This issue recently became much more topical when several developed welfare states introduced cash-for-care schemes as new means for subsidizing childcare. A new social benefit has emerged besides maternity and paternal allowances, but the arguments for its introduction have been and continue to be ambiguous. Cash-for-childcare (CFC) schemes are related to the necessities of life; they are inextricably linked to employment, care, subsistence and gender relations. As such, the schemes cannot avoid having a number of complex functions and implications. All this makes CFC an eminently suitable object for social research. It compels us to ask what the fundamental reasons are for the existence of social policy benefits, and how the formulation of social policies influences both the use of benefits and their effects on everyday life, provision of care, employment and other social policies. CFC benefits may be used for different purposes, but in this book we concentrate on those benefits intended to support maternal childcare at home. We ask what these benefits mean for the mothers and what their short- and long-term consequences are for the recipients. Our analysis focuses on the European context in which a mother uses CFC to support children’s care at home instead of putting them into subsidized daycare. Obviously, fathers also use CFC benefits, but this has remained marginal. The big issues around CFC as a principle are distinctly connected to women’s overwhelming use of the benefit. If men were rapidly increasing their use of the benefit we would certainly have changed the focus of our research. A particular feature attracting our attention in the subject is that the discussants seem to be talking at cross-purposes. What is it that they

1

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actually disagree about? Politicians take issue with CFC as a principle, the more so when they are considering whether or not to introduce a scheme. Some researchers, however, eschew such a lively debate, perhaps because they are quite unanimously opposed to the principle. But what does such a consensus mean? Does it indicate that there is a lack of rational arguments for CFC, or is it that the topic only interests a narrow section of researchers? Be that as it may, if there are rational arguments for CFC it is curious that we rarely see them in the media, but see instead a plethora of emotional arguments. Finnish mothers at home, at least, speak passionately in favour of the benefit. In this book our aim is to examine cash-for-childcare in all its diversity: we want to contemplate different schemes and from different angles. We try to present to the reader the kind of phenomenon cash-for-childcare actually is. To achieve this we will consider three options. The first option is that it is a reactionary phenomenon: ●

● ● ● ●

a compensatory benefit that people who neither need nor want to use daycare for their children, such as country people who live far away from daycare centres and affluent families, have achieved by exerting pressure on governments in rich countries; a poor social investment wasting public money without any particular social outcomes; a downright protest against women’s emancipation; a trap that repressed and reactionary women enter voluntarily; a device that women can use to stay out of employment.

But if the first option were the only one and CFC only a sign of less rational social policies, why have CFC schemes become more common, particularly in the Nordic countries with the highest female employment rate and easiest access to daycare? The second option is that there are also rational reasons for CFC: ●

●

●

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Social policy discourses may generally overestimate the value and underestimate the strain of wage work and the double working day in families with small children. The benefit may seem like a lifeline supporting the family against the insecurities of contemporary working life, particularly in a situation in which the husband has sold himself to one employer, and another employer is making hard and fast demands on women, without trying to reconcile work and family. Introducing CFC may also be seen as a sign of a cultural change reflecting the growing value of maternity, care and children.

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3

Our third option is to look at the whole issue in a less contentious context? Perhaps CFC is: ●

● ● ●

a decent way for women living on the shadow side of the female labour market to make ends meet: a respectable alternative to unemployment benefit; a poverty trap, the alternative being not sufficient subsistence but poverty anyway; parental allowance, making possible a care leave that is somewhat longer than usual; sometimes just money to purchase care in a society that does not subsidize children’s daycare.

We do not present all the arguments for and against CFC here, but the options in general may show the variety of ways used to describe the essence of cash-for-childcare. On the one hand, the schemes have been welcomed as offering families the right and alternatives to arrange care in their own way, to grant informal care the value it deserves and to give governments affordable, flexible and easily administrable ways to organize care. Conversely, these schemes have been criticized for reinforcing gendered division of labour, decreasing the female employment rate and leaving children without the education they need and deserve. When analysing reasons for the diffusion and popularity of CFC schemes and the consequences of these schemes, a particular challenge is posed by the fact that the systems are still young and variable. They are latecomers in the world of social policies. Thus, there are differences in the conditions and consequences of the schemes and it also seems that the most recent systems have avoided some of the problems inherent in older systems. We need international research to know more about the differences in the applications in order to understand the extent to which it is possible to reduce the obvious problems involved in these schemes. Are there realistic options for creating such a CFC scheme so that a majority of researchers would accept it, or will they always decry these schemes?

CONTENT OF THE BOOK In the second chapter Sheila B. Kamerman and Shirley Gatenio Gabel study the relationship between cash benefits (money) and care (services) and how they constitute alternative policy strategies for achieving the same or different goals. Sometimes different policies may be enacted to achieve the same goals and sometimes the same policy may be enacted to

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achieve different goals. Little data is available on the efficacy of either cash or care as a strategy for chosen policy goals. Ultimately, choices regarding cash or care tend to be based on political preferences more than sound empirical evidence; and ironically, choosing either cash or care can achieve the same policy goal. The third chapter is also theoretical. Jorma Sipilä, Katja Repo, Tapio Rissanen and Niina Viitasalo first discuss the conditions for introducing CFC as a principle of social policy, including the moral threshold that cash-for-care policies must exceed. They continue by examining the daily life perspective of parents, especially in relation to the issues of care, work and economy that preoccupy individual parents when they consider accepting cash-for-childcare. Finally, the authors analyse how the principle relates to existing social policy systems and the ideas behind them, for example, universalism, gender equality, public economy and the need to reduce poverty. Both individual and political choices are made in cultural contexts between which family values and normative attitudes vary enormously. Katja Repo considers the meaning of the schemes from the perspective of everyday life in the fourth chapter, examining in particular the users’ work-life choice. Her chapter describes how the recipients of the benefit perceive care at home and the choice it has provided. From the daily life perspective the allowance is commonly assessed in a positive tone. It contributes to solving problems associated with reconciling work and family. It works as a kind of extension to the parental leave, thereby ensuring that families have more time with their children. The benefits, ideologies and practices work together and affect each other. Cash-for-care schemes give a choice of home care and produce a space in which to talk about care in a more familistic tone and familistic behaviour gives more legitimacy for continuing or expanding the schemes. In the fifth chapter Anita Nyberg makes an interesting case for Swedish cash-for-childcare politics. Right-centre governments have introduced a CFC scheme twice, even though the schemes of 1994 and 2008 were quite different. The aim of the chapter is to present the historical background of the schemes in Sweden as well as the political arguments and consequences inherent in them. The emphasis of the chapter is on the latest scheme, political differences in its implementation, the numbers of users in the first phase and the public debate accompanying the reform. In the sixth chapter Marit Rønsen and Ragni Hege Kitterød review existing evidence of the impacts of the Norwegian cash-for-care scheme on mothers’ behaviour, focusing especially on changes in mothers’ labour market participation and working hours. They report that the employment probability of mothers of 1- to 2-year-olds has been significantly reduced,

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5

and if employed, the ‘at-work’ probability has declined even more substantially. The reform has achieved one of its goals: to enable parents to spend more time with their children. On the other hand, the extra parental time is mainly provided by mothers, as fathers’ labour supply has only been very modestly affected. The reform has thus had a negative effect on another stated political goal: greater gender equality. The fact that CFC policies go against the core ideas of a gender egalitarian childcare policy that has been strong in the Nordic countries raises interesting questions for policy analyses. In Chapter 7, Minna Rantalaiho compares CFC policies in Finland, Norway and Sweden, examining both the policy models and the political framing of CFC in the context of the policy-making process. In two empirical sections, she first examines the CFC entitlements asking ‘what is offered, to whom and on which premises’ and second, the political framing of the entitlements: ‘what is CFC needed for’. Rantalaiho finds that the CFC policies have slightly different aims, and the political framing varies from country to country – and also over time. It is no surprise that the outcomes are also very different. The last chapter examines cash-for-childcare as a new social policy mode. What should the policy-makers and the parents making childcare choices think about the contradictory character of CFC: strong positive and negative features at the same time? In this chapter Repo, Rissanen, Sipilä and Viitasalo discuss this paradox, taking into account the comments and ideas developed by the authors in this book. They begin with an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of cash-for-care schemes and then continue to consider how the schemes could be implemented so that their major negative features might be overcome.

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2.

Cash vs. care: a child and family policy issue Sheila B. Kamerman and Shirley Gatenio Gabel

INTRODUCTION This chapter is about the relationship between cash benefits (money) and care (services) and how they constitute alternative policy strategies for achieving the same or different goals. One thesis is that child-conditioned cash benefits, on the one hand, and childcare services, on the other, represent the various ways that individual countries solve the contradictory pressures of labor market and demographic objectives: increased female labor force participation and rising maternal employment; higher fertility rates; reconciling work and family life; gender equity; parental nurturing; and child development. Sometimes, different policies may be enacted to achieve the same goals, such as expanding the supply of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services by subsidizing providers or subsidizing consumers; and sometimes the same policy may be enacted to achieve different goals, such as providing a cash benefit to support a mother at home or providing a cash benefit to permit a mother to purchase out-ofhome childcare and enter the labor force. Most of the literature on cash and care focuses on the elderly and/or disabled and most focuses on cash for care. Here, our focus is on children, especially young children, and on cash as an alternative to care as well as a strategy for providing care. We begin with a discussion of the context in which the cash versus care debate has emerged.

THE CONTEXT Key features of social policy toward families and young children include what are by now widely employed income and service components. With demographic and social changes, in particular, increased female labor force participation, the rising proportion of children living in lone-mother families and the emergence of dual-earner families as the modal family, 6

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growing numbers of countries have been motivated to face the need for societal policies for young children. The initial focus was on providing care for pre-school-aged children from age 3 to compulsory school entry (5 to 6 to 7 years) but increasingly, the focus has broadened to include preparation for primary school as well as the social and emotional development of children of this age. As the debate regarding policy options for this age group was resolved and consensus largely achieved around the provision of both care and education, the focus of the debate changed. Since the 1970s, attention has focused increasingly on very young children, infants and toddlers, namely children under 3 years of age. It is the children of this age, their families and the care policies affecting them that are the focus of this chapter. Exploration of the major policy options targeted at the very young children, under age 3, reveals the centrality of income supplements for families with children (cash and/or tax benefits), paid time off from employment to spend with children and ECEC. Thus, money, time and services now frame the child and family policy agenda (Kamerman and Kahn, 1994). Our focus here, however, is largely on the money and service components. Female labor force participation has continued to increase in most industrialized countries and the demand for out-of-home childcare continues to rise. By 2006, more than half of the European Union (EU) 27 countries (14 plus Norway and Switzerland) have achieved the female labor force participation targets agreed on in Lisbon in 2000 as part of the European Employment Strategy. The target set then was 60 per cent of women in the labor force by 2010 in each Member State. By 2006 more than 57 percent of women in the EU were in the labor force but country rates vary significantly from 74.3 percent in Denmark to 46.3 percent in Italy (Commission of the European Communities, 2008). Table 2.1 shows maternal employment rates by age of youngest child for 2007. Confirming the goal of full employment, the European Council meeting in Barcelona in 2002 agreed that: Member States should remove disincentives to female labour force participation and strive, taking into account the demand for childcare facilities and in line with national patterns of provision, to provide childcare by 2010 to at least 90% of children between 3 years old and the mandatory school age and at least 33% of children under 3 years of age. (Plantenga and Siegel, 2004, p. 5)

These are the so-called Barcelona targets. The Barcelona targets for children from 3 to 6 years have largely been achieved, even if only part-time (less than 30 hours per week) in almost half of the countries. The Barcelona targets include both full- and parttime ECEC but do not specify separate goals for full-time coverage (EU

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Table 2.1

Maternal employment rates by age of youngest child 2007 (%) Age of Youngest Child

Iceland Finland Sweden Slovenia Denmark Netherlands Estonia Cyprus (2,3) France Portugal Latvia Canada Belgium Austria Luxembourg Lithuania Germany United States OECD average Switzerland New Zealand Spain Bulgaria United Kingdom Romania Poland Ireland Greece Czech Republic Slovak Republic Hungary Italy Australia Japan Malta Turkey Source:

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<2 years

3–5 years

– 51.9 71.9 74.1 71.4 72.9 31.3 69.4 57.4 67.4 45.7 58.7 64.4 55.3 64.3 64.7 54.3 54.2 45.1 58.3 45.1 54.5 41.6 53.8 55.1 49.3 – 50.6 18.9 22.0 14.8 50.4 – 29.8 37.9 19.3

83.6 81.4 81.3 79.0 77.8 73.3 73.3 73.1 72.6 71.6 69.4 68.1 67.9 67.1 65.7 64.4 63.5 62.8 62.5 61.7 60.6 59.7 59.4 58.9 56.4 56.4 55.0 53.6 53.4 53.4 53.0 52.6 48.3 47.9 37.6 23.1

OECD Family Database 2009.

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Cash vs. care: a child and family policy issue

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Press Release, 2008). The policy strategy is overwhelmingly the use of ECEC. In contrast, although most of the EU and OECD countries have some childcare services for infants and toddlers, since the reunification of Germany there is no longer a country with full coverage for the under 3s. Only Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and France have achieved the target for the under 3s, while seven other Member States have reached an intermediate level of coverage (between 16 and 26 percent). However, if the policy package were more inclusive, and included paid parental and childcare leaves following childbirth as well as services, the target might have been achieved for the under 3s as well (Plantenga and Siegel, 2004). It is this group and the different policy options targeted on them, that we focus on here. In effect, the cash vs. care debate has largely bypassed services for infants and toddlers and replaced it with a debate about paid leaves, either pay for care or pay instead of care, as a wage supplement or substitute for earnings forgone. With a leave covering one to two years following childbirth, the need for infant/toddler care services can be satisfied by a paid and job-protected leave for employed parents to provide that care themselves or to purchase market care. Figures 2.1 and 2.2 show the employment and parental leave rates for mothers with children under age 3 years for 2006 and the care and leave coverage for children up to 3 years of age in the European Union, respectively. The issue now is whether the cash benefit attached to the leave is adequate – as in the Nordic countries – to replace the wages forgone, or, if inadequate, is understood to only really help husband/wife families with husbands who can provide the primary source of financial support, as in Germany before its recent policy change. Earlier research targeted at these very young children highlights the major policy goals, policy options and the major issues in the policy debate. Both research and the policy literature have identified several major crosscutting policy issues, with individual country differences reflecting history, culture, ethnicity, religion, politics and resources (OECD, 2001, 2006; Kamerman, 2006). One major issue is the ongoing debate about whether the policy of choice in support of the socialization and education of young children and their parents, should emphasize provision by government, the market or the family (Kamerman and Waldfogel, 2005; Kamerman and Neuman, forthcoming). A second such issue is whether the policy focus should be on all families with young children regardless of income or only on the poor (the universal vs. selective issue) (Kamerman and Kahn, 1997; OECD, 2001). A third cross-cutting issue is whether gender – and gender equity – should be a determining factor in choosing the policy strategy (Plantenga and Siegel, 2004) and a fourth policy strategy

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Cash-for-childcare In-work On maternity leave On parental leave

Hungary Czech Republic Slovakia Japan Malta Bulgaria Estonia Latvia Poland Finland Italy Greece EU-27 Ireland Spain United Kingdom Romania Germany France Austria Lithuania Canada Luxembourg Belgium Cyprus (2,3) Portugal Netherlands Denmark Sweden Slovenia 0.0

20.0

40.0

60.0

80.0

Sources: OECD Family Database (2009) from European Labour Force Surveys 2006 and the OECD series of reports: Babies and Bosses, Reconciling Work and Family Life for Canada (2005), Denmark (2002), Ireland, Japan (2003).

Figure 2.1

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Employment and parental leave rates (%) for mothers with children under age 3 years 2006

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Cash vs. care: a child and family policy issue 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

11

Sw e Be den lg i Fi um nl H an un d D ga en ry m C ze F ark ch ra R nc ep e ub Lu Au lic xe str m ia b G ou er rg m a Ir ny Be ela lg iu Es nd m to ( n N Fre ia et nc he h rla ) nd Sp s Po ain r Li tug th al ua ni a It al G y U re ni te P ece d ol K an in d gd om

Barcelona Targets

Source:

Plantenga and Siegel (2004).

Figure 2.2

Percentage coverage for 0–3-year-olds (includes care and leave) in the European Union

is whether the focus should be on the use of cash benefits (to supplement income so as to support mothers at home, or increase access to the market to purchase services), or the use of services (early childhood education and care services or ECEC), and the relationship between the two – cash and care. It is this last policy issue that is the focus of this chapter.

DEFINING CASH BENEFITS AND CARE SERVICES A cash benefit for care is money given to a qualified individual user/consumer to purchase care directly or to purchase a service on behalf of the service user. A cash benefit provided in lieu of a care service is money given to supplement income, subsidize the cost of care, or to compensate for income forgone while on leave. A care service involves the direct provision of non-monetary (and nonmedical) help. It may be provided by government, a non-governmental organization (NGO), an independent provider, or a relative, friend or neighbor; and it may be free, require parental contribution or be fully paid. The boundaries between cash benefits and services are not clear. For example, government can operate a childcare center, subsidize a center, subsidize a provider of home-based care, subsidize an out-of-home caregiver (a childminder or family daycare caregiver), or give parents a tax benefit to offset childcare expenditures. Or government can provide a

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cash benefit (or voucher) to purchase care being provided by or purchased on behalf of the service user, by government or given to a service user to increase income or compensate for income forgone while on a care leave. Cash and services may constitute alternative policy strategies. Sometimes different policies are enacted to achieve the same goals, for example, increasing access to ECEC by expanding the supply of ECEC services, or increasing access by providing grants to parents to purchase care. Sometimes policies are designed to achieve different goals, such as increasing family income so that a parent can afford to remain at home or increasing family income to purchase a care service. One issue is which policy may be more appropriate to achieve different goals. Among the major goals and related cash or service policy strategies are: ● ● ● ●

● ●

● ●

allowing parents’ choice regarding ability to stay at home as a carer or entering the workforce as an earner; increasing family income; through a cash grant or allowance or through facilitating maternal employment and earnings; facilitating maternal or parental employment on a part- or full-time basis; enhancing child development by improving the quality of ECEC services or providing a cash benefit to support mothers’ care at home; supporting parental preference with regard to type of care children receive (in-home or out-of-home; formal or informal); encouraging – and incentivizing – low-skilled mothers to withdraw from the labor force in times of high unemployment, or to enter the labor force when their participation is needed; modifying the incidence of social and economic disparities among children at early ages; supporting mothers at home as a cheaper policy option than center care.

These goals can generally be achieved using cash or care strategies. For example, cash grants for mothers who stay at home will increase family income while supporting parents’ choice for mothers to be at home with very young children. Cash benefits can also be used to allow parents to purchase decent quality care to encourage parental employment. On the other hand, providing care services for young children may allow parents to participate in the labor force, thus increasing family income and supporting the role of mothers as earners. The provision of care can also enhance children’s development by ensuring that children spend a portion of their day

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in a stimulating environment with other children who may be from varied socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. It could also be a combination of cash and care strategies, such as subsidizing parents who use selected service providers or subsidizing certain providers to enhance quality and access to care for parents who work or to enhance children’s development. The issue, in effect, is not necessarily cash versus care but could be cash for care or cash instead of care services, or cash and care. An analysis of the debate needs to be placed in the context of different policy goals and strategies; in different countries the policy choices that have been made and the rationales for choice reveal alternative goals and value choices. The evidence supporting one policy choice over another is limited, as are the data. The discussion that follows offers a brief summary of the major issues and related debates, the evidence in support of different choices, and recommendations. There are arguments both for and against the use of cash benefits and/ or services (Kamerman and Kahn, 1989; Kamerman and Waldfogel, 2005). The standard arguments in favor of a cash benefit include: increasing access to the childcare market; producing a larger supply of services; increasing competition and therefore, greater efficiency among private providers; support for choice, and the so-called greater responsiveness of the market to consumer preferences (ibid.). The major arguments against a cash benefit to purchase care services is that the service purchased may not be the equivalent of the publicly provided service; parents’ access to care of equivalent quality may not be equal; and the services may not be affordable by parents. Other arguments against a cash benefit are that it may create a work disincentive (although it might also create a work incentive, if a benefit is linked to prior employment). In effect, one could argue that cash benefits may be provided as an alternative to care, or as a device for purchasing care, or as a supplement provided in addition to a care service. Several countries appear to have moved in the direction of providing both cash benefits as well as services, sometimes to achieve different goals and sometimes to achieve the same goals. Political parties have made different choices, and left and right parties have not necessarily made the same choices across countries, nor have always been consistent over time.

THE POLITICS OF CASH VS. CARE Choosing between a policy of child-conditioned cash benefits or childcare services, or achieving a balance between cash benefits and care

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services, clearly was and continues to be a significant political issue in many countries. Scholars (for example, Anttonen and Sipilä, 1996; Sipilä and Korpinen, 1998; Anttonen et al., 2003; Morgan and Zippel, 2003; Hantrais, 2004; Bennett, 2006; Kamerman and Moss, 2009) have contrasted the political positions of different political parties. For example, conservative parties (e.g., Christian Democrats) have tended to favor cash benefits and tax credits while Social Democrats have tended to favor services (on historical changes in positions, see Nyberg, Chapter 5 this volume). Morgan and Zippel (2003) argue that centrist and conservative forces have been the primary advocates of paid care (leaves, especially long leaves) and flat-rate, low-level cash benefits; while Social Democrats, trade unionists and feminists have been more likely to advocate ECEC services and earnings-related cash benefits while on leave. They stress this position even more than the importance of feminist support, arguing that cash benefits are likely to reinforce the existing gendered division of labor in the home. Interestingly, they claim that the most ‘defamialized’ European countries tend to provide both generous cash benefits and services (Hantrais, 2004; Bennett, 2006). From a different perspective, in several of the Central and Eastern European countries, the argument was not that the objective was facilitating maternal employment but rather a policy designed to compensate for unemployment, and the creation of incentives for women to leave the labor market, even if increasing the risk of poverty in the long term. Finland is repeatedly used as an example of a country where right-wing parties tended to stress cash benefits while left-wing parties preferred services (Mikkola, 1991; Sipilä and Korpinen, 1998). Political debate within the Finnish government led to the creation of its system of a home care cash allowance, first as a complement to the system of childcare services and later as an alternative. Chronholm (2009) argues that the significance of party political views is bound up with the history of political parties (e.g., the long-term role of the Social Democrats in Sweden and their strong support for ECEC services). For example, in discussing Sweden, he points out that during the 1960s, lobbying groups formed by young academics, mainly from Social Democratic parties, stimulated the gender equality debate. In 1972, Swedish politician Olof Palme introduced the concept of gender equality into the political debate and the Social Democrats saw this as a strategy for attracting women to the labor force. While politicians from the liberal (conservative) party were supporting more equal gender roles within families, the Social Democrats wanted more women in the labor force (see Nyberg, Chapter 5 this volume). In effect, feminists and the gender

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equality debate favored both increased services and paid parental leaves, recently also urging an increased role for fathers. In short, the current Swedish family policy is the result of both Social Democratic and bourgeois governments (in particular the Alliance, including the Moderate, Liberal, Centre and Christian Democratic parties). The Alliance argued for cash benefits and parental choice while the Social Democrats argued for women’s greater participation in the labor market to enhance their economic status. Among the Social Democrats, paid parental leave policies, with generous cash benefits, were seen as a complement to public childcare services while extensive low-paid long leaves (cash-for-childcare benefits) were viewed as reinforcing traditional gender roles.

CASH BENEFITS AND CARE SERVICES In effect, Sweden seems to have opted for a policy of both cash benefits and childcare services, albeit not necessarily for the same group of children or at the same time. A cash benefit and service policy package linked to prior employment and implemented sequentially is not necessarily an alternative to services, but rather a supplement or complement. Beginning in the late 1960s, Swedish labor market conditions have enabled more women to work outside their homes and Swedish family policy has made it possible for women to enter and remain in the labor force without sacrificing either childcare and rearing or a job, in effect creating a balance between work and family life. Sweden has developed an extensive and world-renowned childcare service system covering more than 90 percent of children aged 2 to 6 while a paid and job-protected leave with an earnings-related cash benefit replacing 80 percent of prior wages covers 18 months after birth (or adoption). In effect, there are few children under age 2 in out-of-home childcare although a place in a highquality center is guaranteed from age 1. An additional alternative policy providing a cash benefit was recently introduced, emulating Finnish policy and available to parents with a child under age 3, if they did not take up a public childcare place. Similarly, where France is concerned, it could be argued that French policy supports cash benefits as its major policy thrust for families with very young children (although it provides care services for almost onethird of the under 3s), subsidies for in-home care and free ECEC services for almost all the 3- to 6-year-olds. Conservatives favor the cash benefits for pronatalist reasons while left-wing parties favor services. Debates about leave policies have, in some countries (e.g., Austria, Germany), become embroiled in the wider issue of a mother’s wage and valorizing

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family work, and whether there should be financial support for a mother caring for her own child at home regardless of prior work history.

CASH BENEFITS OR CARE SERVICES Providing cash benefits for purchasing childcare services is not necessarily the same as supplying and guaranteeing the supply of services and access to them. As we have suggested, cash benefits and services are not necessarily alternative pathways to the same result; they may be used to achieve different goals. Thus, for example, a cash benefit may be provided to offset income forgone when a mother withdraws from the labor force to care for a young child at home while the provision of a free or partially subsidized childcare service may facilitate a mother’s entering the labor force, assuring her the right to out-of-home care for her child. Alternately, a cash benefit may be viewed as a choice between two alternative strategies for achieving the same goal of income support – either by providing a care allowance or a wage supplement. The conventional distinction between the functions of the two has usually focused on the question of which values are to be maximized in relation to an objective. For example, Hungary has a childcare services policy for children aged 3 to 6, covering most of the age group, but a childcare/rearing and parenting policy that provides cash benefits in lieu of services for families with a child under age 3 (Adamik, 1991; Korintus, 2008). This childcare/ rearing allowance focuses on providing a response to labor market needs and female labor force participation (and fertility concerns). In the late 1960s, when the policy was first developed (apparently as the first cash-forchildcare scheme in the world), sustaining full employment was a problem and affected women more than men. Low-paid, low-skilled women were at risk of unemployment in a country committed to full employment. A cash benefit to support an at-home mother could alleviate the problem, if only modestly. Moreover, even though at home, these women would be counted as being in the labor force, thus reducing the appearance of greater unemployment. In addition, the capacity of the existing childcare services for the very young child were inadequate and did not begin to meet the demand, and the quality was poor (and improving it was expensive). A flat-rate cash benefit and job-protected leave following the existing paid (earningsrelated) maternity leave was established to support working mothers who left the labor force until their child was 3 years old. The benefit was not a source of political debate; debate emerged rather among academics and particularly social scientists and the focus was on the level and type of the benefit and whether it should be flat rate or earnings-related. Over time,

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the policy included two parts, one earnings-related and a second, flat rate. When the economy improved, the definition of acceptable employment while on leave increased (e.g., becoming a family daycare provider).

A POLICY OF CHOICE In recent years the popular preference for care of the very young child has increasingly been to support parental care or to offer parents a ‘choice’ between at-home or out-of-home care. Where freedom of choice is most important, the policy has been to provide a cash benefit that parents can use to offset childcare service costs or to supplement income. The problem in trying to implement the choice option is that it assumes that the cash benefit is adequate to replace all or most of the wage forgone, or to cover all or most of the costs of childcare and that the supply of childcare services is sufficient to meet the demand. Full support for real choice does not exist in most countries. Finland has attempted to follow this path with varying success (Mikkola, 1991; Sipilä and Korpinen, 1998, Repo, Chapter 4 this volume). Its home care allowance is a cash benefit provided to families with at least one child under 3, when a parent stays at home to care for the child, uses in-home care, or uses private childcare. The benefit covers adopted children as well as biological children (true of most parental and child-rearing benefits), and is payable for each child with a supplement that is limited to only one child. Initially, the benefit was worth about 19 percent of the average female wage, but was reduced in the mid-1990s by about 20 percent and is now worth about 15 percent of the average wage. Parents can either choose to take the allowance as an income supplement or to purchase private care either in-home or out-of-home. Although many parents use it for some time, and it was initially very popular, take-up declined significantly when the benefit was cut. Moreover, coverage declined as eligibility for the benefit was curtailed. A cash benefit was introduced in Norway in 1999 to help parents spend more time caring for their own children and to give them freedom of choice as regards the type of childcare used for their children (Rønsen and Kitterød, Chapter 6 this volume). The benefit is provided to families with children between the age of 1 (when the paid parental leave ends) and 3 (when ECEC places are readily available) who are not enrolled in a public or publicly funded center. In 2006 the full benefit was equal to about US$400 a month, less than 10 percent of the average female wage. When a child-rearing leave policy was introduced in West Germany in 1986, the primary aim was to enable and actively encourage mothers to stay

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at home and care for their very young children (Schiersmann, 1991; Erler, 2009). Traditional German family policy was built on the assumption of a male breadwinner family model, including an at-home mother. Despite an increase in female labor force participation and under the guise of supporting freedom of choice between family responsibilities (family work) and labor market work, ‘choice’ was advocated but real choice was never a reality. The supply of childcare services was inadequate to meet demand, and the means-tested cash benefit was too low to make it a viable alternative to a job. The benefit was never sufficient to permit lone mothers to stay at home. In effect, without an adequate supply of affordable ECEC services and/or a wage-related benefit, only married women with husbands in the labor force could avail themselves of this benefit. As Schiersmann argues, ‘the purported freedom of choice between gainful employment and family responsibilities was an illusion’ (1991, p. 77). In contrast, the purpose of the recent policy changes shortened the long leave (which created a work disincentive that disadvantaged women), increased the supply of ECEC services, provided real job protection when returning to paid employment and provided a wage-related benefit, potentially creating adequate financial support for low-income women. In effect, Erler (2009) argues, family policy politics seem now to be turning towards a very different, Nordic model.

CONCLUSIONS Cash benefits are clearly not the equivalent of a guaranteed place in a childcare center, and a guaranteed place in out-of-home care is not necessarily parents’ preference. Subsidized demand is not the same as subsidized supply. Economists tell us that if consumers have greater purchasing power, the market will respond by expanding supply. In the United States, with its stress on market services, supply did increase in response to cash and tax benefits but not necessarily of adequate quality, nor at an affordable price. Subsidizing demand does create an incentive for parents/consumers to purchase care on the open market and encourages private sector providers to produce and deliver services, but again, not necessarily of adequate quality or at an affordable cost – nor even sufficient quantity. Choice is a central issue in this domain and one that has been stressed by many analysts (Kamerman and Kahn, 1989, 1991; Kamerman and Waldfogel, 2005). If the cash benefit is high enough, choice may exist but it is unlikely to exist for low- and moderate-income families. Little data are available on the efficacy of either cash or care as a strategy for chosen policy goals, in part because most countries use both

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strategies and in part because multiple policy goals related to how to care for young children are commonly cited and these goals may be in conflict with one another depending on the strategy chosen. In the end, choices regarding cash or care tend to be based on political preferences more than sound empirical evidence; and ironically, choosing either cash or care can achieve the same policy goal. Ensuring adequate income is a goal in itself, not only a device to buy services. The same is true for adequately paid job-protected leaves following childbirth or adoption. Coupling cash and care, albeit as a sequential policy package covering a fully paid and job-protected parental leave for infant care (one year) is a key recommendation. Bennett (2007) reminds us of the primacy of parents and families in rearing children and stresses that such a policy would permit parents to care for, nurture and rear their babies during infancy, reduce demand for infant care services, lower the rate of infant mortality, increase breastfeeding, reduce maternal depression, encourage more use of preventive health care and facilitate gender equality. Countries need a policy package that includes money, time (for parenting) and services (from the end of the leave), does not penalize women, nor children, encourages fathers in their parenting role and also responds to different societal value choices.

REFERENCES Adamik, M. (1991), ‘Hungary: supporting parenting and child rearing policy innovation in Eastern Europe’, in S.B. Kamerman and A. Kahn (eds), Child Care, Parental Leave, and the Under Threes: Policy Innovation in Europe, New York: Auburn House, pp. 115–44. Anttonen, A. and J. Sipilä (1996), ‘European social care services: is it possible to identify models?’, Journal of European Social Policy, 6(2), 87–100. Anttonen, A., J. Baldock and J. Sipilä (2003), The Young, the Old, and the State, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar. Bennett, F. (2006), ‘Paying for children: current issues and implications of policy debates’, in J. Lewis (ed.), Children, Changing Families, and Welfare States, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar, pp. 110–34. Bennett, J. (2007), ‘Results from the OECD Thematic Review of Early Childhood Education and Care Policy 1998–2006’, UNESCO Policy Brief on Early Childhood. No. 41, Paris: OECD. Chronholm, A. (2009), ‘Individualisation or free choice in parental leave?’, in S.B. Kamerman and P. Moss (eds) The Politics of Parental Leave Policies, Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 227–42. Commission of the European Communities (2008), Implementation of the Barcelona Objectives Concerning Childcare Facilities for Preschool Age Children, Report from the Commission to the European Parliament, The Council, The European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, Brussels.

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Erler, D. (2009), ‘Germany taking a Nordic turn’, in S.B. Kamerman and P. Moss (eds) The Politics of Parental Leave Policies, Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 119–35. European Union (2008), ‘Child care services in the EU’, Brussels EU Press Release, 10 March. Hantrais, L. (2004), Family Policy Matters: Responding to Family Change in Europe, Bristol: Policy Press. Kamerman, S.B. (2006), ‘A global history of ECEC’, Background Paper for UNESCO, Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Paris: UNESCO. Kamerman, S.B. and A.J. Kahn (1989), ‘Child care and privatization under Reagan’, in S.B. Kamerman and A.J. Kahn (eds), Privatization and the Welfare State, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 235–59. Kamerman, S.B. and A.J. Kahn (eds) (1991), Child Care, Parental Leave, and the Under Threes: Policy Innovation in Europe, New York: Auburn House. Kamerman, S.B. and A.J. Kahn (1994), ‘Family policy and the under threes: money, services, and time in a policy package’, International Social Security Review, 47(3–4), 31–43. Kamerman, S.B. and A.J. Kahn (eds) (1997), Family Change and Family Policies in Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, New York: Oxford University Press. Kamerman, S.B. and P. Moss (eds) (2009), The Politics of Parental Leave Policies, Bristol: Policy Press. Kamerman, S.B. and M. Neuman (forthcoming), ‘Early childhood care and education: the family, the market, and the state’. Kamerman, S.B. and J. Waldfogel (2005), ‘Market and non-market institutions in early childhood education and care’, in R. Nelson (ed.) Market and Non-Market Institutions, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 185–212. Korintus, M. (2008), ‘Hungary: views of the 22–35 years old population concerning parental leave and childcare’; ‘Hungary: mother’s role – employment vs. family’; ‘Hungary: possibilities of and barriers to the employment of women on childcare leave’, in P. Moss and M. Korintus (eds) International Review of Leave Policies and Related Research 2008, London: Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, pp. 13–34. Mikkola, M. (1991), ‘Finland: supporting parental choice’, in S.B. Kamerman and A.J. Kahn (eds) Child Care, Parental Leave, and the Under Threes: Policy Innovation in Europe, New York: Auburn House, pp. 145–70. Morgan, K. and K. Zippel (2003), ‘Paid to care: the origins and effects of care leaves policies in Western Europe’, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, 10(1), 49–85. OECD (2001), Starting Strong, Vol. I, Paris: OECD. OECD (2006), Starting Strong, Vol. II, Paris: OECD. Plantenga, J. and M. Siegel (2004), ‘European childcare strategies’, Position Paper for the European Conference on Childcare in a Changing World, Groningen, the Netherlands. Schiersmann, C. (1991), ‘Germany: recognizing the value of child rearing’, in S.B. Kamerman and A.J. Kahn (eds), Child Care, Parental Leave, and the Under Threes: Policy Innovation in Europe, New York: Auburn House. Sipilä, J. and J. Korpinen (1998), ‘Cash versus child care services in Finland’, Social Policy and Administration, 32(3), 262–77.

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3.

Cash-for-childcare: unnecessary traditionalism or a contemporary necessity? Jorma Sipilä, Katja Repo, Tapio Rissanen and Niina Viitasalo

Cash-for-childcare (CFC) is an exhaustively debated subject. The heated debate, however, concerns only one of the two basic forms of CFC presented by Kamerman and Gatenio Gabel (Chapter 2 in this volume). The first alternative is that the cash benefit is money given to a qualified individual user to purchase care. A typical context for such a policy is a country where the government does not subsidize children’s daycare. In such a case the CFC policy will hardly raise fervent emotions. The second option is that the government gives cash benefit instead of daycare, requiring that the child does not take part in subsidized daycare. This policy raises fierce international debate and therefore it will be the subject of this chapter. Formally, cash-for-childcare is a means to support the parents of young children in providing childcare. However, speaking of parents as receivers of the CFC is formally true but actually it confuses the basic understanding of the consequences of cash-for-care schemes. Almost all of benefit recipients tend to be mothers who receive a small financial benefit to support their subsistence while taking care of children at home. The prevailing intention behind cash-for-childcare schemes, at least in Europe, has been to encourage mothers to take care of their children at home. In this theoretical chapter we therefore concentrate on this function. As mentioned, the idea of paying for parental childcare1 has spawned controversial discussion. The idea was vehemently resisted first by conservatives and later by most feminists, employers and those on the left, but supported by religious parties in particular. The introduction of CFC schemes has been slow and far from easy. Although the oldest schemes granting cash-for-childcare originated in the 1960s, even today most countries do not have explicit solutions. We might say that the schemes are still newcomers in the history of social policy. As such it is worth arguing 21

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that cash-for-childcare schemes are still in the development phase. There are also major differences between the schemes and a variety of principles persist among present systems, partly as in some countries the central governments have left the decision-making to the local politicians. In this chapter we discuss issues preoccupying individual parents and policy-makers in the consideration and assessment of cash-for-childcare. We start by briefly presenting the social-political background in which the idea of paying cash for maternal childcare has flourished. We continue by examining the daily life perspectives of the parents and by analysing the political conditions for establishing cash-for-childcare schemes. In so doing we take into account that both the individual and political choices are made in cultural contexts among which family values and normative attitudes vary enormously. We then discuss the economic aspects of CFC. Finally, we consider the cash-for-childcare from the point of view of children.

SOCIAL POLICY BACKGROUND FOR CASH-FORCHILDCARE SCHEMES The argumentation concerning the public support for informal childcare is influenced by conceptions of parental responsibilities. Perhaps the main reason for the delay in the introduction of CFC is that the idea contradicts traditional family values. Even today, taking care for one’s own children is seen as a human obligation and also as a legal responsibility. We expect parents to care for their children out of love and duty, not for money. The Swedish Moderates were not the only ones who claimed that it is ‘in principle offensive that a natural function such as parenthood should be paid for by the state’ (Nyberg, Chapter 5 this volume). The parental obligation to care for one’s own children does not contradict the existence of monetary policies that, at least indirectly, support childcare. The main purpose of these systems, however, differs from that of the cash-for-care schemes. For instance, the aim of child allowances that have been common for more than half a century is to compensate for the costs of raising children2 (Wennemo, 1994). The allowances for single mothers, which were among the earliest benefits in the history of social policy, were designed to compensate for the lack of a male breadwinner (Skocpol, 1992; Gordon, 1994; Abramovitz, 1996). Finally, paid maternity and parental leaves were not introduced to subsidize childcare but to compensate for lost earnings when the provider cannot work for wages.3 If CFC is assessed as a means to encourage mothers to take care of their children at home it goes both practically and ideologically against

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the mainstream of political thinking. In mainstream politics the aims of gender equality, women’s gainful employment, subsidized daycare and shared parenthood have become more widely accepted than ever. Female employment has risen in almost all OECD countries4 and daycare provision has increased all over Europe. At the same time the traditional housewife politics favouring male employment and supporting maternal care have remained on the margin, except in a few East Central European countries. Thus, CFC as a principle for arranging care can be seen as a relic of traditional family values and of old-fashioned political thinking (Mahon, 2002; Morgan and Zippel, 2003). There are, however, problems related to such an interpretation. We suggest that CFC can also be interpreted, at least partly, as a new kind of social political thinking that responds to contemporary needs. Perhaps mainstream thinking is not as realistic as it appears; perhaps formalization does not move ahead as easily as until now. There are real trends that retard the growth of employment and social care services, in particular when such a growth requires public financing. Sipilä et al. (2009) suggest that increasing informalization has become a necessary aim for governments and can be seen as a solution to the global challenges in the welfare state. They take the view that CFC is an essential way of supporting informalization. Our other main argument emphasizing the topicality of CFC is that everyday life is also changing. The ever-growing demands of working life and the difficulties in finding informal helpers are ultimately contemporary, not traditional, phenomena that cause parents to long for time to care. Changing working life has meant tough expectations regarding the availability of workers: evenings, night shifts and travelling. In families the issue of the self-provision of childcare has been aggravated by several facts: grandmothers are less often available than before,5 there are fewer siblings to help with childcare and daily carers have become too expensive to help most young families. Reconciling work and care has become a burning issue; there is no longer an unlimited supply of human workforce in the informal sector that can be drawn into the formal sector. Himmelweit (2005) highlights two trends that accentuate the importance of encouraging informal care with financial rewards. First, wages are generally increasing, which means that people who do not participate in the labour market are losing more compared with those who do wage work. Second, the division of labour continues to the extent that people are less able to efficiently multitask at home.6 This is perceived in the form of the rising opportunity cost of staying at home to care for family members. People who provide care in the home feel increasingly that they cannot afford not to work (ibid.). It is easy to agree with the OECD (2006,

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p. 20) and to consider that private solutions for meeting childcare needs have become inadequate. Balancing the need for money and the need for time troubles contemporary parents. The need for time increasingly seems to become an issue. CFC opens up the option of receiving some money and a lot of time to be used at home in societies where increased value is attached to time. Maybe it is not a particular sign of backwardness that some ‘woman-friendly’ Nordic countries with very high female employment rates have been early introducers of CFC schemes. The cash-for-care systems can be thus assessed as a post-modern phenomenon. The reasons for introducing cash-for-care schemes are basically close to the reasons for extending daycare but also to the expansion of daycare itself. CFC can be seen as a consequence of the normalization of female employment but at the same time as a by-product of changes in working life and the expansion of daycare systems. The present level of female employment cannot be maintained without affordable daycare, which necessitates subsidies. While the provision of subsidized daycare has expanded, it has become easier to discuss alternative modes of providing the service or the cash benefit. It is obvious that in both central and local government, resistance to increased daycare production will occur due to financial or ideological reasons. In addition, it is most important to keep in mind that there are vast differences between CFC schemes. In many countries the parents do not receive actual cash benefits but tax relief instead. There may be a reduction favouring families with one earner only or an additional tax on the second earner in the family. Regarding a cash benefit there are also several alternatives. The benefits, for instance, may or may not be taxable and income-tested, and there may be important differences in the coverage of the entitlement: ●

●

●

only single parents who are not employed (the former Aid for Dependent Children in the United States; Gordon, 1994, pp. 253–85); only the persons who themselves take care of a dependent child at home and have reduced their employment (the French ‘Allocation Pour Jeune Enfant’; OECD, 2006); all parents who do not use subsidized childcare (the Norwegian system).

It is evident that different alternatives attract different users. With regard to the gender and income of recipients the third alternative is less selective (more universal) than the first two. Some of the schemes may increase

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the traditional gender division while they plainly endeavour to reduce mothers’ employment; some others do their best to keep mothers in the labour force and emphasize the temporary use of CFC. In this respect it is illuminating to compare the Swedish CFC schemes of 1994 and 2008 (Nyberg, Chapter 5 this volume). In the 2000s Sweden seems to be more interested in the outcomes of the scheme: the avoidance of deadweight expenditure and deactivation.7 Thus, CFC schemes are different and they should not be analysed as a stereotype. Cash-for-care schemes are peculiar in the sense that they concern the most basic principles of social policy. The benefits raise several problematic issues concerning care, employment and social welfare. When establishing cash-for-care schemes the politicians have to take a stance on ‘work–welfare arrangements’ (Pfau-Effinger, 2009) shaping the structures of informal work and its links to formal employment. The context of decision-making includes cultural values and models, welfare state policies, labour market development, family structures and the role of social actors. In more concrete forms the same issues occupy individual parents when they are choosing between CFC and daycare. They are not only making a choice between money and time but also between short- and long-term advantages, their division of labour and responsibilities in the family.

PARENTS MAKING CHOICES Families with small children make decisions concerning the care of their children but they do not make such choices in a vacuum. Instead, their daily life abounds in different kinds of cultural, institutional and structural premises (Kangas and Rostgaard, 2007). Accordingly families’ decisions concerning the daily practices and arrangements, such as childcare, are always made in the context of broader social frameworks and norms. Similarly, the ways in which different social benefits, such as cash-for-care schemes, are used are related to broader social constructions of gender, parenthood, childhood or work (see Deven and Moss, 2002, p. 247). To shed light on these connections between frameworks and the actual choices, we have to understand the daily practices of families. Minna Salmi (2006, p. 161) has argued that ‘consequences of different policy areas often become visible only if they are analysed by taking people’s everyday life as a starting point’. This is also why Ellingsæter and Leira (2006, p. 271) have emphasized that when we are interested in the use of cash-for-care schemes we should pay particular attention to ‘people’s real choices, the opportunities for choosing and the choices actually made’.

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There are also moral premises attached to childcare decisions. Choices about children’s care, as well as decisions on mothers’ employment and work career, should not be seen merely as actions whose purpose is to entail material gains, but also as actions that are seen morally justifiable by the families (Sjöberg, 2004). In relation to this, Duncan et al. (2004, p. 263) have argued that the childcare choices the families make are related to their value systems and are thus most often a complex result of ‘moral and emotional processes in assessing both children’s needs, and the mother’s own, and the balance between the two’. As such, people do not act only in individualistic and economically rational ways, but rather make their decisions with reference to what they view as the ‘right’ and ‘proper’ thing to do. The social construction of care plays an important role in this sense: some parents feel morally obligated to care and take care of their own children by themselves (ibid.). Decisions concerning childcare are thus contextual, and contexts and daily practices are always entwined. This implies that in order to understand the actual practices generated by the families, the context in which parents make their choices is of the utmost importance. Context, however, is a very complex and multidimensional issue. It can designate cultural norms, moral rationalities, social constructions of motherhood or childhood, labour market, or just the general makeup of social benefits. Opportunities to Make Choices Family policy systems form one such context. Family policy institutions including cash-for-care schemes can be thus considered as shaping ‘the opportunity structure of the individual’ (Sjöberg, 2004, pp. 110–11) that has an affect on the daily life choices generated. The existence of policies is important for the decisions made by families but it also implies that the effect of single policies also depends on the existence of other policies. As such, regarding the use of cash-for-care schemes we have to take into account the general socio-political structures that cash-for-care schemes are a part of (Ellingsæter, 2006, p. 137). Single policies are thus related to each other. This is also why Ellingsæter (ibid.) is suspicious of general expectations according to which many mothers would choose cash-for-care benefits if only such a scheme were introduced into their societal setting. The popularity of such, or any other, schemes is not to be taken for granted. Instead, it is always related to whatever alternatives exist and how these alternatives relate to the preferences and beliefs of the mothers. Although Duncan et al. (2004) have argued that the informal care of small children would be used more in Britain if it were supported institutionally, the preference to informal care varies

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socially and geographically and is thereby related to the existence of other childcare options. Family policy forms a kind of opportunity structure that is constrained by and interconnected with people’s values and preferences (Sjöberg, 2004; Kangas and Rostgaard, 2007). The structures and values have thus a dialectical relation to each other. One part of this dialectical relation between values and structures is the fact that social policy design also influences the normative structures that provide people with choices. In other words, welfare states also give certain messages to their citizens about what the most appropriate way to care for children is. That way welfare state functions as ‘a source of moral authority’ (Kremer, 2007, p. 237). For example, in Denmark, where state-subsidized childcare is widely available, people also use these services and think quite often that children are better off in professional care than in home care (Christensen, 2000; Kremer, 2007). In Finland, where Finnish cash-for-childcare was already launched in the mid-1980s and nowadays offers quite lengthy financial support to a parent who does not take her child to public daycare, the popularity of home care has also become evident (Repo, 2007). Free or Limited Choice? Decisions on the care of small children are increasingly framed by the ethos of free choice. Neoliberal ideas about choice and flexibility have continued to gain ground in the socio-political debate. The result has been that making ‘choices about services or benefits is often presented as a welfare aim in its own right’ (Ellingsæter and Leira, 2006, pp. 265–9). Free choice as a rhetoric also frames childcare policy (Rantalaiho, 2010) and cash-for-care schemes especially have an important role in this discussion. They are often introduced as a means to increase parents’ freedom of choice (Ellingsæter and Leira, 2006; Hiilamo and Kangas, 2006; Repo, 2007). Cash-for-care schemes can be described as a logical development of consumerism and modern services that enable people to make their own choices. Thus, terms such as consumerism, empowerment and autonomy of parents, which are also ideas on which the common rhetoric of neoliberalism is based, can be seen to constitute important ‘ideological underpinnings of the cash-for-care schemes’ (Ungerson and Yeandle, 2007, pp. 187–8). However, the idea of care at home can also be interpreted as presenting conservative values. Within this kind of political argumentation, liberty mainly means the option to choose home care. For conservatives and pro home care movements, home care is something one ought to choose in order to behave normatively (Jallinoja, 2006; Repo, 2009). Free choice is mainly assessed as a positive fashion in contemporary

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culture, but it also entails problems. First of all, the discourse on the freedom of choice does not take into account the inequalities that material and cultural conditions of daily life may produce. The choices available to parents are not independent of the family’s economic and material resources. Moreover, as is well known, material resources are not equally distributed (Ellingsæter and Leira, 2006, p. 270). In this respect the level and variation of cash-for-care benefits are important. If the purchasing power of the benefit is low it can easily cause families with lower incomes to live in poverty. In Finland, for example, childhood poverty is increasingly related to the use of child home care allowance. As such, families having a child under 3 years old face economic hardship more often than families with older children (Moisio, 2005; Salmi et al., 2009, pp. 83–5). There are also a growing number of single-parent families in Europe, whose material conditions often lag behind those of families with two parents. For them, relying on cash-for-care benefits can be an economically risky decision. Regarding the problem of poverty, it is important to note the role of income-testing in cash-for-childcare systems. Income-testing means that low-income families benefit from the allowance relatively more than families with higher income. On the one hand this means that those without income may also take care of their children at home. On the other hand it means that subsidized home care creates disincentives to low-income families to rely on daycare services. This latter idea may be seen as a consequence of the standpoint popular in the 1960s that public daycare should be targeted at mothers with high income because their tax revenue compensates for the costs of daycare (Ellala, 1974). With regard to this, it is also important to ask whether the families actually have opportunities to exercise the rights to which they are possibly entitled. The right itself does not yet guarantee economic possibilities for the family to rely on cash-for-care benefit as the main income of one parent (Anttonen and Sointu, 2006, p. 42). For example, the study by Hakovirta and Salin (2006) shows that the child home care is not always a potential option for Finnish parents. According to them, there are many full-time working mothers in Finland who would prefer to work less or to stay at home with children, but they cannot afford to do so. The choices in childcare made by the parents are also related to the social ties the parents live by as well as the moral and emotional responsibilities they accentuate most. As such, there are different kinds of rationales according to which choices are made (Duncan et al., 2004). Kangas and Rostgaard (2007) stress that in the framework of women’s work and family decisions background factors such as the educational attainments, employment history or the number of children have an important effect on choices made.

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Parenthood, Family Time and New Familism Pressures for good parenting and increasing demands for family time form a significant background for the daily life choices made by parents and mothers. Ellingsæter (2006, p. 138) has stated that quite often it is also the introduction of a cash-for-care benefit in itself that is the intensifier of a social obligation to make time for care. In the daily lives of families, the practices, benefits and ideologies work together and affect each other. Cash-for-care schemes produce a space to act in a more familistic way, and familistic behaviour can in turn give more legitimacy for continuing or enlarging the schemes. Cash-for-childcare systems are framed by the new familistic discourse. In modern societies, family, parenthood and care are increasingly attracting public interest and concern (ibid., p. 4). In these discussions parenthood and family are often connected to the notions of family togetherness and positive engagement with children (Daly, 2001; Jallinoja, 2006). As such, ‘family time’ is commonly seen as a valuable element of family life as well as a vehicle to solve problems related to parenting. This in turn has meant that the time spent with children has come to serve as a measure for good parenting (Takala, 2002; Ellingsæter, 2003, p. 433; Repo, 2007). Increasing demands on parenthood and family time as an important element of it provide an important impetus to rely on cash-for-care schemes. Family time is often used as a synonym for time spent with children. Similarly, family-centred thinking is commonly understood as a kind of child-centredness (Daly, 2001; Jallinoja, 2009). Research has shown (Duncan et al., 2004; Repo, 2007; Kilpeläinen, 2009) that stay-athome mothers often construct home care as being in the best interests of child. Duncan et al. (2004, p. 263) write that some mothers even think, ‘day nurseries simply could not provide “one to one” emotional care they wanted for their children’. Similarly Finnish mothers at home assessed parental home care to ensure good care for their children (Kilpeläinen, 2009, p. 87). The introduction of cash-for-care schemes has also been seen to represent a broader socio-political movement towards refamilization, that is, the movements to emphasize the value of parental care (Lister et al., 2007, p. 133). Accordingly, Mahon (2002, p. 346) has argued that cashfor-care scheme policies present a sort of turn towards neofamilism. In this respect, however, it is important to note that we are witnessing a new kind of familism that differs from traditional familistic thinking. Traditional familism supposes that the family is a self-sufficient and autonomous unit and that the parents are strictly responsible for caring for, upbringing and providing for their children. According to traditional family values still

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prevailing in most parts of the world, it would be thus absurd to expect the government to pay parents for taking care of their children. The new modern familism is different in this sense. It is more flexible and does not oppose public responsibilities in itself, but instead tries to label the public phase of life with a familistic sign. Modern familism calls for public support for familistic childcare choices (Jallinoja, 2006; Repo, 2009). As is well known, in the Nordic welfare states it has become the responsibility of the government to create positive and equal social conditions for family life and maternity in particular. The right to give care has become recognized as a social right and the introduction of CFC schemes is an important manifestation of this phenomenon. The right to give care and the idea of good parenting, however, are not gender neutral. Involvement in childcare and the cultural expectation to be present in a child’s life continue, despite the growing notion of shared parenthood, to be more related to good motherhood than to good fatherhood. This also became evident when Kilpeläinen (2009) studied mothers at home. The mothers assessed home care as a normative choice and some mothers even expressed a desire to follow the example of their own mothers in choosing home care. In Finland cash-for-care benefit has given rise to a birth of a new kind of maternity. The new maternity does not explicitly emphasize motherhood but instead the best interests of the child produced by maternal care (Repo, 2009). It seems that within this new frame of maternity, it is legitimate to speak of the best for children but not of the best for mothers. It is quite commonly thought that different kinds of cash-for-care schemes, which promote informal home care, also promote the traditional gendered division of labour (Ellingsæter, 2003). Hence, the home care schemes are often contrasted with gender equality, shared breadwinning and shared parenting. Despite the general tendency to promote gender equality in modern societies, cash-for-care schemes exemplify a move in the opposite direction. In practice they participate in ‘cementing’ the gender division of care (Rantalaiho, 2009). There is thus a need to be critical of the gendered use of cash-forchildcare but also of the overwhelmingly positive notion of family time and family care. Suvi Krok (2009) for example, has opened up what the cultural assumption of good motherhood, including the demand for constant presence in a child’s life, can mean to Finnish single mothers relying on child home care allowances. One of the most obvious outcomes is a life of poverty. These mothers do not, however, assess poverty as a social stigma but rather construct economic hardship as a moral struggle for virtue, dignity and good motherhood. The mothers did not perceive themselves primarily as marginalized and poor citizens, but instead as morally good mothers who are doing the best for their children.

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LABOUR MARKET CONSIDERATIONS The cash-for-care schemes do not concern only the arrangements of care, but always interact with the labour market and working life. The schemes cut down female labour supply and a worker’s absence from her job creates the need to compensate the loss of labour in the work organization and may have consequences for the absentee’s work career even though the return to work may be guaranteed by labour legislation. Quite often these cashfor-care schemes are created as a part of family policy without concrete considerations of the consequences of the schemes to the labour market, working life or the workers. On the other hand, labour policies do not take the schemes into account in their own domain of labour market. Only lately the OECD (2007) expressed its concern that the Finnish child home care allowance impedes the growth of the female labour needed to compensate the rapidly ageing labour force and suggested that the amount of the allowance should be reduced and the length of the allowance period shortened. The family and labour policies seem to operate in their own domains, aiming on the one hand at promoting the well-being of children and families, and on the other the smooth functioning of labour market. What they seem to miss is that they concern the same individuals, mothers and fathers of small children, and that the policy measures intersect and restructure their lives. One way to grasp the dual complexity of care arrangements and labour market is to conceptualize it as an employment system that includes both the regime of formal and informal work. These regimes have their own institutions, modes of regulation, development dynamics and ways of operating but they constantly interact with each other and co-affect the amount of labour, relations between market and non-market-related work, hierarchical divisions of work between men and women and power relations in the production sphere, the social production (reproduction) sphere and the state (Koistinen, 2002, pp. 5–6). Until now researchers and politicians have generally not been prepared to discuss how the changes in labour market interact with the necessity of informal work. In the context of the employment system, cash-for-care schemes can be depicted as an institution of the informal regime, which makes the necessary care work possible in the regime and offers an alternative to the work done in the labour market. These effects have lately become more apparent as ageing, lower fertility, destabilizing labour market and fragmenting social welfare have become social issues. Schmid (2008) analysed the instabilities and transitions of the present European labour markets and claims that full employment in the sense of lifelong, full-time employment for all is no longer a realistic goal. Any attempts to achieve such a goal would lead us back to the model of male

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earner and female unpaid domestic worker with only occasional own earnings (ibid. p. 195). Such a reversal, however, is not an option because of the changes in women’s orientation to working life and own career, the demand for female labour and the vulnerability of family livelihood depending on a sole earner on a risky labour market. A more realistic objective would be to pursue such full employment for all, which offers opportunities to find new forms of employment8 that suit their particular situations and aspirations during the life course (ibid.). It is possible that CFC will turn out to be something that the labour market needs, contrary to the OECD view. Can the present social policy and labour market create conditions for normal life for families and individuals? On the one hand there is a need to activate all population of working age to participate in the labour force and to increase employment, and on the other there is a need to arrange secured breaks from the labour force. The traditional social policies have proved to be too rigid to adapt to the changed circumstances of the labour market. The solution has been to launch a whole bundle of new policy strategies and schemes that aim to increase flexibility in the labour market and security in human life. The European Union countries have applied different schemes to promote work sharing, job rotation, adult education and career breaks. From the perspective of labour policy, cash-for-care can be seen to belong to these new methods. Leitner and Wroblewski (2006) state that cash-for-childcare is a good example of a scheme that can offer income and secured break from labour force participation in the transitional labour market. Effects of Cash-for-Care Schemes on the Labour Market The emergence of cash-for-care schemes has affected the regime of formal work in many ways. The effects have national variations not only according to the type of the cash-for-care programme but also according to how the labour market is structured (e.g., gender segregation, labour market segmentation, share of unemployment and atypical employment) and how it functions (e.g., labour mobility). The most studied subject is the schemes’ effect on female labour supply. Many studies show that CFC decreases the supply, especially the supply of less-educated mothers and mothers with numerous children. A much less explored area is the effects of the CFC schemes on unemployment, although reducing unemployment has originally been mentioned as one of the aims for the cash-for-care schemes (Ellingsæter, 2003; Kangas, 2006). Cash-for-care can be seen to decrease unemployment in two ways. As it cuts down the supply of female labour, especially those

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with poorer prospects on the labour market, it also reduces the number of the potentially unemployed. On the other hand, those who use the cashfor-care for a career break leave their jobs and create a need to substitute their labour. In this sense the cash-for-care can also function as a worksharing method. Nevertheless, this depends much on economic fluctuations and the labour market situation. At high-tide, substitute workers are hired more eagerly than at low-tide, but cash-for-care can in any case also reduce the need for extra lay-offs or redundancies at low-tide. What happens to the user after the cash-for-care period? The cash-forcare has been described as a trap for women (Hiilamo and Kangas, 2006) and research shows several labour market risks attached to the use of the schemes. First, the long absence from work has been seen to impair the working skills and at least to delay vertical career development (OECD, 2005). They also affect the subsequent development of earnings and total lifetime earnings, which reduces the amount of the future pension. For those who are less attached to the labour market, cash-for-care is seen to prolong the stay at home, thereby increasing the hidden unemployment (Hakovirta, 1998; Rissanen and Knudsen, 2001; Hämäläinen, 2005). The long stay at home undermines opportunities for subsequent employment. The interpretation has been put forward that the schemes channel the users into unemployment, prolong it and possibly push them towards marginalization and continuing poverty (Haataja, 2005; Hämäläinen, 2005). Risks increase if the recruitment of users is selective so that those in the weakest position in the labour market are most motivated to take CFC. The risks and their realization are not the same for all users of cashfor-care schemes. Those in the weakest positions are the ones who lack education and prior labour market performance. Also, in the absence of a constant work relationship the cash-for-care period creates a work career break, after which jobseeking needs to be started all over again. Those with continuous employment and especially those who work in female occupations, often in the public sector with slight prospects for vertical career development, are in the most secure position. Gender segregation of the labour market can be seen to protect against some of the risks in the sense that in female-dominated sectors a fairly large share of the female workers are constantly away from work and the use of cash-for-care schemes is habitual in the work organization. Labour market risks also vary according to the context of the welfare regime and the prevailing work–welfare arrangements. Leitner and Wroblewski (2006) compared the consequences of work and family life reconciliation schemes in the Nordic regime (Denmark and Finland) with the conservative regime (Austria and Germany). Their research shows that as social policy in the Nordic countries aims at promoting female

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labour market participation and employment, the risks inherent in cashfor-care remain smaller than in the conservative countries, in which the social policy has a much more ambivalent relationship to female activation. Leitner and Wroblewski (ibid.) in their investigation conclude that cash-for-care schemes cannot be transferred to all welfare regimes without serious hazard. Approaching the Limits of Formal Work? Jensen et al. (2009) studied the recent developments of the relationship of formal and informal work in European societies and especially the changes in the informal work sector, which they call the ‘hidden work regime’. The focus of their study was on family-based childcare, familybased eldercare, informal employment and voluntary work. Using care work as an example, they found that three major processes are taking place simultaneously. During the last three decades care work has been formalized, that is, reshaped and included in the sector of formal employment by the extension of public care provision. On the other hand, new social rights have created semi-formal forms of care work, for example, by introducing cash-for-care schemes. Third, a new type of informal work has been established in private households by the marketization of informal care. This means an increase in the number of domestic workers, which has partly been funded by cash-for-care schemes and tax reforms offering tax relief for domestic work. In introducing the cash-for-childcare scheme the state seems to be in favour of family care, as it supports staying away from gainful employment, instead of promoting the reconciliation of employment and care by providing affordable daycare. However, the situation is more complex than this. First, the state may at the same time also produce low-cost daycare as an alternative. Second, the CFC scheme may include a part-time option whereupon the use of the allowance means concrete reconciliation of work and family on a part-time basis. Third, the cash-for-childcare benefit is always a temporary allowance not intended to obstruct parents’ return to the labour market when the child grows up (ibid., p. 9). One of the most far-reaching interpretations of the role of cash-forcare schemes is to see them as an indication of the limits of work society. Although it may be too early to speak of the end of formalization, there are signs that its limits are close. Childcare in particular will never be a field of perfect formalization but will always remain partly informal; mixing informal and formal resources is typical for childcare. It may also be true that governments cannot increase informal care without sharing some of the costs borne by the families. Perhaps the governments can

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no longer plan for increasing employment without starting to ask: how would society be reproduced if informal work were to disappear? Are we approaching a situation in which a significant part of informal reproductive work can only be maintained with governmental support?

POLITICAL FRAME AND CHOICE In principle, all social cash benefits and services are responses to human needs. The introduction of any scheme presupposes that political institutions have accepted collective responsibility for a certain human need. As such, the introduction of social benefits requires that there is political demand for a benefit and that the politicians are ready to collect the necessary funding for the benefit although they tend to lose support by increasing public financing. The political demand for the benefit must count for more among the politicians than the resistance to extra financing. Regarding cash-for-childcare the need for the subsistence of parent and child and the child’s need for care are generally seen as acceptable reasons for collective responsibility.9 However, there are several ways to shoulder the responsibility for such needs (see Kamerman and Gatenio Gabel, Chapter 2 this volume) and the alternatives increase as the child grows up. The burning issue in all cash-for-care schemes in the framework of politics is that although they only provide a small income they do, however, create incentives for parents to abstain from employment. Every benefit that is granted for a person’s subsistence that may decrease her attitude to employment is regarded with suspicion in any society. Taking care of a child at home is certainly arduous, but it is difficult to present it as an efficient childcare arrangement. Another dubious dimension in the CFC schemes is that they are aimed to produce childcare but there is no guarantee of the quality of childcare to be provided. Such reasons raise misgivings and reduce political support for the schemes. From the normative point of view it is necessary to define a social need that justifies payment for parental childcare. In this respect the non-use of public childcare as the reason for receiving a benefit does not sound convincing although it is evinced as the main argument. Non-use of a service does not fulfil any social need and generally governments do not pay compensations for those who do not use public services. For example, the graduates who do not enter universities or the infirm who do not visit a doctor are not entitled to financial compensation. The actual argument is hardly the non-use of daycare but the expectation that the parent will provide the same service instead of the government: the allowance is paid

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for realizing a compensatory function. The government assumes that the parent can provide the same service as a professional daycare centre as well. Of course, this is a thought challenged by many professionals: children’s right to receive care is not guaranteed by paying cash to their parents. Decision-makers do have alternatives to consider. If they decide to support families, a cash-for-care scheme is only one of the possible alternatives. Therefore, it is necessary to ask: under what circumstances is a cashfor-care scheme acceptable? When is it seen as a reasonable policy option? Historically, the idea of paying a member of the family for taking care of another family member was first vehemently resisted by the conservatives and regarded as immoral. However, along with the development of public care, conservatives have gradually begun to support payments for informal care (Sipilä and Simon, 1993). Today the ideological debates have softened and at least in Europe, cash-for-care is an acceptable policy alternative for most parties, although its rationality may be seriously questioned. The existence of alternatives means that the need can been defined in different ways and the choices greatly depend on normative opinions on maternity and family life. If a mother’s employment is regarded as an advisable phenomenon the government is inclined to offer subsidized childcare and parental leaves; if her employment is seen to be exceptional the government may support mothers to stay at home with the child. Child allowances tend not to be a major alternative; at least until now they have been too small for subsistence. Weighing the alternatives is always a part of political considerations. Actual policy choices reflect family values and economic considerations and there may be many contradictions involved. Attitudes favouring cash-for-childcare have obviously been connected to traditional family values and religious resistance against secular professional childcare10 but more recently they have become more and more compatible with post-modern individualism and contemporary working life. The Perspective of Public Economy If cash-for-care is accepted as a principle in political circles the second great issue concerns economy. The first point here is that the governments resist the idea of ‘deadweight’ expenditure: public expenditure should not be used to pay for care work that would and should be undertaken anyway11 (Ungerson and Yeandle, 2007, pp. 196–7). Another limitation is that although governments are willing to guarantee livelihood for the mother in one way or another, they have definitely rejected the request to pay ordinary wages for all mothers. Cash-for-care schemes for families with children make financial sense only if they are equated with subsidized childcare and other alternatives. It is reasonable to think that if there were

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no childcare costs to be borne by governments none of them would pay cash for informal care. If providing care in good quality daycare centres were cheaper than acceptable cash-for-care benefits it would be difficult to imagine a government that granted payments to families instead of arranging childcare in daycare centres. It is reasonable to expect that in individual cases the compensatory benefits should always be less expensive than the service. However, it is not at all evident that ‘the basic intent of these policies remains reducing government costs’ as Osterbusch et al. (1987, p. 228) have assumed. CFC schemes create cash recipients who would not be daycare users and thereby new social policy needs are introduced. A compensation for social service almost automatically leads to some deadweight expenditure created by the government. Such expenditure may reduce total public costs only if a significant number of potential service users opt for the cash allowance and if the allowance is so low that it goes below the corresponding costs of daycare, when the tax revenue from employed parents is taken into account. The Swedish scheme seems to be a good example of the aim to avoid deadweight (see Nyberg, Chapter 5 this volume). Can we say which way of supporting the care of small children is optimal for the public economy? Unfortunately it is impossible to give a universally applicable answer to this question. For instance, the short- and long-term advantages of employing mothers can only crudely be estimated. The cost of parental leaves varies because of differences in their length and compensation rate. When parents receive cash-for-care the outcome for the public economy does not only depend on the size of the allowance but also on what else they are doing in those days and what the alternatives are that they might have chosen instead. And finally, all accounts only concern a particular society at one point in time. In politics, cash-for-childcare schemes are often rationalized by simple economic arguments but it is uncertain if they are advantageous for the public economy. Economists are not the main advocates for cash-forchildcare and the programmes by the EU and OECD that aim at economic growth recommend higher female employment in spite of the demand for necessary subsidies for childcare. Basically, the major arguments for cash-for-care are not economic but ideological and personal. Because of religious or other ideological standpoints people do not want to leave their children in childcare as they cannot control its content. Public childcare is not normative in the way they want it. The libertarians, for their part, oppose any public services and emphasize free choice in the market. And in the end, there are millions of mothers who for different reasons simply prefer to stay at home taking care of their children rather than to go onto the labour market.

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Consequence of Economic Considerations: The Low Level of Individual Benefits As mentioned, the schemes tend to end with a rather low ceiling for individual cash-for-childcare benefits.12 Long-term payments to a parent should be set on a lower level than the real cost of alternative daycare.13 This standpoint gets more weight from the fact that a comparable parent who brings her child to daycare is not fully compensated; on the contrary, she must pay a childcare fee. A third reason to keep the compensation rate of cash-for-care schemes down is the fact that monetary social benefits are always set under the lowest wage level to guarantee the incentive for employment. Public childcare releases the parent for employment and to pay taxes whereas home care does not usually add to tax revenues. Thus, although we often hear the political plea that ‘every parent should receive the same amount of cash to arrange childcare in a daycare centre or at home’, it is unlikely that this would happen and that cash-for-care benefits would equal the real costs of public childcare. A consequence of such considerations is that the cash-for-care benefit must be quite low compared with the wage of a full-time employed worker. Assuming that there is a rather low ceiling of benefits we also understand that the cash-for-care allowances are usually not earnings-related whereas the parental leave benefits often are. If childcare benefits were earningsrelated they should exist only for the short term, just as care leaves tend to be. The result of all these considerations is that an average cash-for-care benefit is low, which again leads to the result that the users of cash benefits are almost exclusively women. Most of the recipients have been low paid when employed or not gainfully employed at all, and some of them so well off that they do not mind. It is unlikely that the governments would develop truly earnings-related cash benefits to encourage men with high earnings to take care of their children except for rather short care leaves. We dare to end this analysis by insisting that the political acceptance of CFC means quiet acquiescence of female poverty.

CASH-FOR-CHILDCARE AND CHILDREN’S POINT OF VIEW There is a great deal of literature on the implications of cash-for-care schemes for women’s lives and their labour force participation. It is likewise important to examine the schemes in the context of the well-being of children. In daily life it is precisely the children whose lives are affected in

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the discussion of support for home care. It is thus significant to consider how CFC policies relate to children’s rights, for example, to the right to early childhood education. How does extended home care influence children’s well-being? What are the benefits and are there also social risks involved when homecare is publicly encouraged? The topic of the child as a social investment has been raised to the political agenda. One important example of this is that early childhood education is considered increasingly important in the European Union as well as in the OECD countries. There are tendencies throughout the OECD toward universal educational systems that would also include education at an early age for children (Anttonen and Sointu, 2006; UNICEF, 2008). There is thus growing recognition that access to early childhood education provides young children, especially those from low-income families and second-language groups, with ‘a good start in life’ (OECD, 2006, p. 12). The extension of public childcare could improve the educational chances of children from disadvantaged families. This, however, will only occur if the quality of childcare is good (Klammer, 2006, p. 238). At the political level early childhood education is often argued to be an investment in knowledge-based economy and a vehicle to ensure lifelong learning. As such there is a mounting conviction that early childhood education should be seen as ‘a public good’ (OECD, 2001, 2006, p. 12.) Similarly, researchers of social policy have stressed the importance of early childhood education, although their perspective stems from different grounds. They highlight the children’s rights. Mahon (2002, p. 349), for example, has written that if we are willing to realize equality in the future, children should have a right to early childhood education and care ‘whether or not their parents are working or involved in some form of training’. In this frame it is children who have a right to care regardless of their parents’ position in society. In the same way the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child provides children with the right to participate actively in society. Such economic and educational reasoning does not take account of any of the arguments for cash-for-childcare policies. The issue appears to be different from the daily life perspective. Esping-Andersen (2002), for instance, has argued that we need a child-centred social investment strategy. Such a strategy would include policies that prevent poverty and poor health among children. The strategy would also include measures for better work and family balance. According to Esping-Andersen (2002, pp. 49–50) it would ensure that ‘parents of small children are given the possibility of low-stress employment and adequate time with children’. Although research shows that mothers’ employment as such does not have a negative effect on children’s welfare, there is evidence that stressful working conditions of parents may do so.

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Children’s welfare is thus closely related to the well-being of parents. In this respect the parents’ option to extend their absence from the labour market and their opportunities to give time for care can in some family situations enhance the well-being of children. If the work of the parents is very stressful and their working hours are very unsocial, the option to stay at home to care for children may prevent cumulative negative effects of work on children (Rönkä et al., 2005, pp. 171–83). It has been shown that the general family functioning is closely connected with children’s well-being (Tähtinen et al., 2004). Ute Klammer (2006, p. 238) has argued that there is a real need for time together in families as well as a need for stability and regular rhythms that are often, however, in opposition to the labour market ideal of the flexible worker. Children can cope with a lot of different work and care arrangements as long as some basic rules are followed. If this is not the case, labour market flexibility and parents’ labour market participation pose problems for family life. Children need some regularity in schedules and it is also essential that they can experience certain times as ‘family times’. Such considerations to some extent counterweigh the mainstream policy of advancing female employment.

CONCLUSION Our main point in this chapter is that we do not only consider cash-forcare as a conservative or religious reaction against modernity although it certainly reflects traditional values. We suggest that cash-for-care should also be understood as a phenomenon that is connected to neofamilist and neoliberal values, the over-exploitation of both female and male labour force, power struggles between interest groups and perhaps also to shortsighted efforts to retrench public expenditure. These are contemporary issues and as such the principle of cash-for-care fits the post-modern social context. We propose that cash benefits for home care can partly be seen in the light of a social trend constructing distinguished male and female life spheres and justifying this by economy, family values and individual choices, as was the case in the 1950s. The difference distinguishing the CFC model from the traditional breadwinner model, however, is that now women are offered public, not only private, compensation for choosing home care. The introduction of CFC schemes in the Nordic countries can be seen as a response to contemporary pressures in the labour market and as an expression of a new Nordic familism. Women’s choice is not coerced, it may be convenient to take a break from employment and pleasant

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to follow children growing up; it is also respectable to choose a social responsibility and the CFC benefit instead of unemployment benefit or even a wage. The cash-for-childcare benefits provide parents with choice to avoid the rat race of working life and to devote more time to the family. One popular explanation for the new orientation toward home care is the advantage of children. So far the topic is poorly researched, but wellknown Swedish research (Andersson, 1989) rather emphasizes the benefits of daycare and early education. In spite of the advantages mentioned and the fairly widespread use of CFC there are still serious problems connected to receiving the benefit. Women’s choices downplaying economic considerations in the short run may change to be adverse in the long run. Many recipients already before the birth of a baby are less attached to the labour market and a long stay away from work impairs working skills and delays career development. The importance of disadvantages for women increases if conditions change, for example, because of divorce. A basic problem with the CFC schemes is that they do not offer benefits high enough to keep the recipients out of poverty. This will hardly change as the policy-makers are reluctant to raise the compensation level because of the deadweight expenditure, lower employment rate and decrease in taxable income. Hence, introducing CFC schemes more or less also means acquiescing to female poverty.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Mothers’ wage was an early utopia presented in some parts of the labour movement but buried when women’s employment became more common and the welfare state started to develop. The child allowances paid in almost all rich countries do not serve as subsistence-level benefits for parents to take care of their children. We may note that in the long run some of the most generous schemes have come closer to the idea of CFC. In the OECD the only exceptions in the period 1980–2004 were Finland and Sweden (Sipilä, 2010). Grandmothers are in paid employment more often than before, geographical distances have increased and their lifestyles have changed together with rising incomes. For instance, taking care of children or the frail elderly besides working for one’s living at home. Similar phenomena can be found in the Finnish municipal CFC schemes (Miettunen, 2008). They are less universal as they involve many different limitations not existing in the old-fashioned national scheme. Actually a combination of work, time for reproduction and income. If the care of children is not supported by any policies it is likely that the country will end up with a very low level of fertility, as seen in countries where the social expenditure on families is insignificant (Sipilä, 2010). In Finland, for instance, the use of child home care allowance is exceptionally high in

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11. 12. 13.

Cash-for-childcare Central Ostrobothnia, a region well-known for the strength of the Old Laestadians, an anti-modern religious sect. This also is the main argument against the idea of citizen’s wage, that is, a basic income to all citizens provided by the state. Evidently, the cash-for-care benefits in elderly care can be essentially higher because they may often be compared with the costs of full-time institutional care. Or at least their face value has to be lower. If we take into account the tax revenues from the staff and the working mother indirectly occasioned by the childcare, the difference between the costs of the childcare and the cash benefit may become small or even vanish.

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Geissler (eds) Care and Social Integration in European Societies, Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 255–78. Hakovirta, Mia (1998), ‘Perhepolitiikan muutokset ja työnteon kannattavuus’, Talous & Yhteiskunta, 3(26), 51–63. Hakovirta, Mia and Milla Salin (2006),‘Valinta vai pakko? Kansainvälinen vertailu äitien preferoiman ja toteutuneen työmarkkina-aseman yhteydestä’, Janus, 14(3), 255–71. Hämäläinen, Ulla (2005), ‘Perhevapaiden aikaiset tulot ja toimeentulo’, in Pentti Takala (ed.) Onko meillä malttia sijoittaa lapsiin?, Helsinki: Kela, pp. 126–47. Hiilamo, Heikki and Olli E. Kangas (2006), Trap for Women or Freedom to Choose? Political Frames in the Making of Child Home Care Allowance in Finland and Sweden, Turku: Publications of the Department of Social Policy, University of Turku. Himmelweit, Susan (2005), ‘Caring: the need for an economic strategy’, Public policy research, 12(3), 168–73. Jallinoja, Riitta (2006), Perheen vastaisku. Familistista käännettä jäljittämässä, Helsinki: Gaudeamus. Jallinoja, Riitta (2009), ‘Perhe yhdessä vapaa-aikana’, in Mirja Liikanen (ed.), Suomalainen vapaa-aika. Arjen ilot ja valinnat, Helsinki: Gaudeamus, pp. 49–77. Jensen, Per H., Birgit Pfau-Effinger and Lluís Flaquer (2009), ‘The development of informal work in the work–welfare arrangements in Europe’, in Birgit PfauEffinger, Lluís Flaquer and Per H. Jensen (eds) Formal and Informal Work. The Hidden Work Regime in Europe, New York and Oxford: Routledge, pp. 3–20. Kangas, Olli (2006), ‘Politiikka ja sosiaaliturva Suomessa’, in Tapani Paavonen and Olli Kangas (eds), Eduskunta hyvinvointivaltion rakentajana, Suomen eduskunta 100 vuotta No. 8, Helsinki: Edita, pp. 190–366. Kangas, Olli and Tine Rostgaard (2007), ‘Preferences or institutions? Work– family life opportunities in seven European countries’, Journal of European Social Policy, 17(3), 240–56. Kilpeläinen, Riitta (2009), ‘Pienen lapsen hoiva valinta- ja neuvotteluprosessina’, in Pertti Koistinen (ed.), Työn hiipuvat rajat. Tutkielmia palkkatyön, hoivan ja vapaaehtoistyön muuttuvista suhteista, Helsinki: Tilastokeskus, pp. 84–97. Klammer, Ute (2006), ‘Work life balance from the children’s perspective’, in Jane Lewis (ed.), Children, Changing Families and Welfare States, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar, pp. 220–42. Koistinen, Pertti (2002), ‘Introduction’, in Pertti Koistinen and Werner Sengenberger (eds) Labour Flexibility. A Factor of Economic and Social Performance of Finland in the 1990s, Tampere: University Press, pp. 1–13. Kremer, Monique (2007), How Welfare States Care. Culture, Gender and Parenting in Europe, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Krok, Suvi (2009), Hyviä äitejä ja arjen pärjääjiä – yksinhuoltajia marginaalissa, Acta Universitatis Tamperensis series No. 1437, Tampere: Tampere University Press. Leitner, Andrea and Angela Wroblewski (2006), ‘Welfare state and work–life balance’, European Societies, 2(8), 295–317. Lister, Ruth, Fiona Williams, Anneli Anttonen, Jet Bessemaker, Ute Gerhard, Jacqueline Heinen, Stina Johansson, Arnlaug Leira, Birte Siim and Constanza Topio with Anna Cavanas (2007), Gendering Citizenship in Western Europe. New Challenges for Citizenship Research in a Cross-National Context, Bristol: Policy Press.

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Mahon, Rianne (2002), ‘Child care: towards what kind of “Social Europe”’, Social Politics, 9(3), 343–79. Miettunen, Laura (2008), Lasten kotihoidon tuen kuntalisät osana suomalaista päivähoitojärjestelmää, Helsinki: Kela. Moisio, Pasi (ed.) (2005), Lapsiperheiden taloudellisen tilanteen kehitys Suomessa 1990–2002, Report No. 4/2005, Helsinki: Stakes. Morgan, Kimberly J. and Kathrin Zippel (2003), ‘Paid to care: the origins and effects of care leave policies in Western Europe’, Social Politics, 10(1), 49–85. OECD (2001), Starting Strong. Early Childhood Education and Care, Paris: OECD. OECD (2005), Babies and Bosses – Reconciling Work and Family Life, Vol. 4: Canada, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom, Paris: OECD. OECD (2006), Starting Strong II. Early Childhood Education and Care, Paris: OECD. OECD (2007), ‘Matching work and family commitments. Issues, outcomes, policy objectives and recommendations’, in the series Babies and Bosses, Reconciling Work and Family Life – A Synthesis of Findings for OECD Countries, Paris: OECD, available at: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/18/27/39689983.pdf; accessed 19 April 2010. Osterbusch, Suzanne E., Sharon M. Keigher, Baila Miller and Nathan L. Linsk (1987), ‘Community care policies and gender justice’, International Journal of Health Services, 17(2), 217–32. Pfau-Effinger, Birgit (2009), ‘The approach of the “arrangement of work and welfare” to the cross-national analysis of formal and informal work’, in Birgit Pfau-Effinger, Lluís Flaquer and Per H. Jensen (eds), Formal and Informal Work. The Hidden Work Regime in Europe, New York and Oxford: Routledge, pp. 21–35. Rantalaiho, Minna (2009), Kvoter, valgfrihet, fleksibilitet. Indre spenninger i den nordiske familiepolitikken, NIKK Publikationer No. 2/2009, Oslo: NIKK. Rantalaiho, Minna (2010), ‘Flexible flexibility? Norwegian politics of day care?’, in Jens Qvortrup and Anne-Trine Kjørholt (eds), The Modern Child and the Flexible Labour Market: Child Care Policies and Practices at a Crossroads?, Basingstoke: Palgrave (forthcoming). Repo, Katja (2007), ‘Pienten lasten kotihoito lastenhoidon vaihtoehtona’, Janus, 15(3), 229–44. Repo, Katja (2009), Lapsiperheiden arki. Näkökulmina raha, työ ja lastenhoito, Acta Universitatis Tamperensis series No. 1479, Tampere: Tampere University Press. Rissanen, Tapio and Christin Knudsen (2001), The Child Home Care Allowance and Women’s Labour Force Participation in Finland, 1985–1998. A Comparison with Norway, Oslo: NOVA Skriftserie No. 6/01. Rönkä, Anna, Ulla Kinnunen and Marjukka Sallinen (2005), ‘Vanhempien työ ja lasten hyvinvointi’, in Pentti Takala (ed.), Onko meillä malttia sijoittaa lapsiin?, Helsinki: Kela, pp. 170–86. Salmi, Minna (2006), ‘Parental choice and the passion for equality in Finland’, in Anne Lise Ellingsæter and Arnlaug Leira (eds), Politicising Parenthood in Scandinavia. Gender Relations in Welfare States, Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 145–68. Salmi, Minna, Hannele Sauli and Johanna Lammi-Taskula (2009), ‘Lapsiperheiden toimeentulo’, in Johanna Lammi-Taskula, Sakari Karvonen and Salme

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Ahlström (eds), Lapsiperheiden hyvinvointi 2009, Helsinki: Terveyden ja hyvinvoinnin laitos, pp. 78–92. Schmid, Günther (2008), Full Employment in Europe. Managing Labour Market Transitions and Risks, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar. Sipilä, Jorma (2010), ‘The social investment state: a new trend in social expenditure or merely a popular political discourse?’ (to be published) in G.B. Cohen, Ben Ansell, Robert Cox and Jane Gingrich (eds), Social Policy in the Smaller EU States, New York: Berghahn. Sipilä, Jorma and Barbara L. Simon (1993), ‘Home care allowances for the frail elderly: for and against’, Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, 20(3), 119–34. Sipilä, Jorma, Anneli Anttonen and Teppo Kröger (2009), ‘A Nordic welfare state meets globalization: from universalism toward privatization and informalization’, in Jason Powell and Joe Hendricks (eds), The Welfare State in PostIndustrial Society: A Global Perspective, New York: Springer, pp. 181–99. Sjöberg, Ola (2004), ‘The role of family policy institutions in explaining gender-role attitudes: a comparative multilevel analysis of thirteen industrialized countries’, Journal of European Social Policy, 14(2), 107–23. Skocpol, Theda (1992), Protecting Soldiers and Mothers. The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Tähtinen, Juhani, Mari Broberg, Katja Forssén and Mia Hakovirta (2004), ‘Family resources as positive factors and risk factors for children’s well-being’, in Vesa Puuronen, Antti Häkkinen, Anu Pylkkänen, Tom Sandlund and Reetta Toivanen (eds), New Challenges for the Welfare Society, University of Joensuu, Publications of Karelian Institute No. 142, pp. 257–74. Takala, Pentti (2002), ‘Aikapula ja kiire lapsiperheissä’, Hyvinvointikatsaus No. 4, 10–15. Ungerson, Clare and Sue Yeandle (2007), ‘Conclusion: dilemmas, contradictions and change’, in Clare Ungerson and Sue Yeandle (eds), Cash for Care in Developed Welfare States, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 187–206. UNICEF (2008), The Child Care Transition. A League Table of Early Childhood Education and Care in Economically Advanced Countries, Innocenti Report Card No. 8. Florence: UNICEF, Innocenti Research Centre. Wennemo, Irene (1994), Sharing the Costs of Children: Studies on the Development of Family Support in the OECD, Stockholm: Swedish Institute for Social Research.

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Finnish child home care allowance – users’ perspectives and perceptions Katja Repo

INTRODUCTION The Finnish public and political debate on childcare emphasizes parents’ right to choose between different childcare arrangements. The option to apply for the child home care allowance plays an important role in this respect. The home care allowance is not, however, the only childcare choice the parents can make after parental leave. Finnish parents also have a right to public childcare services and to monetary compensations for choosing private childcare solutions. In spite of a variety of different childcare alternatives, the option to apply for home care allowance has gained considerable popularity in Finnish society. This has resulted in its turn in a situation in which over 50 percent of small children are cared for at home. Concurrently it has meant that the enrolment in publicly funded child daycare is relatively low compared with other Nordic countries and that a growing number of Finnish mothers have in recent years stayed outside the labour market. This chapter considers the Finnish child home care allowance. It describes the main features of the allowance and positions it in the broader picture of Finnish childcare policies. The chapter also approaches the home care allowance from the daily life perspective. Although popular, we know little about the users’ experiences of child home care allowance. This is why the chapter tackles this question and will describe how the recipients of the benefit perceive home care and the choice it has provided. The discussion of the issue is based on interviews with 20 parents who have received the benefit. The interviews were conducted as a part of the research project ‘Contradictory Reality of the Child Home Care Allowance’. The data reveal that the child home care allowance is related to several dimensions of the daily life of families such as well-being and reconciling work and family. The chapter presents two main discourses through which the parents interviewed scrutinized their decision to rely on home care: that of pro home care and that of protest against working life. 46

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CHILD HOME CARE ALLOWANCE IN FINLAND Child home care allowance has quite a long history in Finland. The allowance was paid in some municipalities as early as in the 1960s as a sort of state experiment. The actual law concerning the home care allowance was introduced in 1984 as one part of a larger reform of childcare legislation. This reform, which was a noteworthy political compromise, resolved the conflicting political argumentations and aims concerning public support for childcare. The Social Democratic Party had campaigned for childcare services and had stressed its role of providing incentives for women’s participation in the labour market. By contrast, the Centre Party and the National Coalition Party had emphasized the value of the cash-for-care benefit as an alternative to using services. The Centre Party perceived that rural families had difficulties in benefiting from public subsidies devoted to the childcare services and the National Coalition Party favoured the cash-for-care benefits as a means to support private solutions. The political compromise of the childcare legislation generated two different kinds of care rights for the parents of small children: that of municipal daycare for children under 3 years old and that of cash-for-care benefits (Anttonen, 1999, 2003). With the introduction of the above-mentioned law, Finland became the first country in Europe to support children’s home care as an alternative to public daycare. The Finnish childcare legislation underwent changes again in 1996, with the result that the right to public childcare was extended and public support for market-based care were introduced. Since 1996 all children under 7 years old have had a right to municipal daycare and the parents have been eligible for the private day care allowance, which enables them to purchase services from the market. The private day care allowance can be paid to a private childcare provider chosen by the parents. Due to these political resolutions, childcare policies in Finland are nowadays a mix of different kinds of public support. This is to say that almost all kinds of childcare arrangements are supported by the state: informal home care as well as public care and market-based care (Kröger et al., 2003; Anttonen, 2009; Repo and Kröger, 2009). The child home care allowance has an important role in the structure of Finnish childcare policies. It is the allowance that is available after the parental leave when the child in question is approximately 9 months old. Taking into account the age of the child when the eligibility for the benefit begins, it can also be perceived as a kind of measure to extend parental leave. In practice, the child home care allowance can be paid to families with a child under 3 years old, but who is not cared for in municipal daycare. As a monetary benefit, the child home care allowance is divided to two different parts. There is a basic allowance (314 euros in 2009), which is paid separately for

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each of the eligible children and a supplement, the amount of which varies according to the family’s monthly income and family size (maximum 168 euros in 2009). The allowance also consists of a sibling supplement (between 60 and 90 euros in 2009) that is paid if any other child in the family under school age is cared for in the same way (Repo, 2009a, 2010). Hence, as a whole, the design of Finnish child home care allowance includes different kinds of monetary compensation with both universal and means-tested features. From the social political point of view, the most important feature of the benefit is its universalism: the basic allowance is available to all parents. Eligibility for it is not related to how rich or poor parents are, which sex they are or what their employment status is. The only condition for receiving the basic amount of the benefit is that the child under 3 does not attend municipal childcare. On the basis of this specific feature of the benefit, the benefit can be interpreted as a monetary compensation for not using municipal services, which in itself is quite an extraordinary justification for receiving a social benefit (ibid.). If the benefit is available to all parents not taking advantage of municipal services, the use of the allowance is not controlled. The prevailing assumption behind granting the allowance is that the parents are able to use the money responsibly and are able to arrange safe, good-quality care for their child (Repo, 2009a). Although the state quite widely supports the informal home care, there is no authority to assess or to evaluate the outcomes of the benefit. This raises the question about how we can know that children always receive good-quality care when they are cared for by the child home care allowance. Kirsti Karila (2009) has argued in this respect that in Finland the quality standards of care and the principles of early childhood education mainly concern children attending regulated public services, but seldom children cared for informally at home. This is also why she claims that the childcare policies in Finland are actually creating different childhoods and educational polarization among children. In spite of its universalistic features, the system of home care allowance also includes means-tested elements and some specific characteristics that promote inequality. As mentioned above, the supplement of the benefit takes into account both the size and the income of the family. Because of this, it works as a kind of income distribution mechanism. In other words, low-income families get more and wealthier families less, which can, of course, be regarded as justified from the perspective of social solidarity (Anttonen, 1999, p. 102). It is also worth arguing that having this meanstesting element, the Finnish child home care allowance creates economic incentives for low-income families to rely on the allowance as an alternative to daycare services (Sipilä, Repo, Rissanen and Viitasalo, Chapter 3 this volume).

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Nevertheless, it is the so-called special municipal supplements that some municipalities grant and others do not that create inequalities and unpredictability among Finnish families with small children. Some municipalities try to decrease the demand for childcare services by paying their own supplements to the residents of the municipality. As Clare Ungerson and Sue Yeandle (2007, pp. 187–9) have concluded, one reason to support the cash-for-care schemes is often that of cost containment. There is a widely shared belief that care delivered in the home whether it concerns small children or the frail elderly is cheaper than care in an institutional setting. Although the argument is seldom fully elaborated, it is often used to legitimate the municipal supplements for home care. Every sixth Finnish municipality pays its own supplements. The municipalities offering supplements, however, are heavily populated, such that more than half of all Finnish children under school age live in them. The amount of the supplements for one child varies between 70 and 250 euros. The basic municipal benefit may also be accompanied by the sibling supplement that is, on average, 65 euros per child (Miettunen, 2008; Kunnat, 2009). In this respect, there are substantial differences in public support for child home care depending on the municipality in which the family lives. In other words, Finnish families that have chosen home care may be economically in very different positions depending on the municipality they live in. The municipal supplements also create inequalities in the way that some municipalities expect the recipients of the supplement to have a workplace to which to return.

THE USE OF THE CHILD HOME CARE ALLOWANCE As mentioned above, today almost all kinds of childcare arrangements are subsidized by the state in Finnish society, be they informal, public or market-based. It can thus be maintained that the so-called ‘universalism’ of childcare provision also includes and applies to those who do not wish or cannot participate in municipally organized daycare. The term ‘new universalism’ has also been used to describe the Finnish case, where the childcare policies are a mix of different kinds of public support (Repo and Kröger, 2009). As such, Finland constitutes an interesting case when it concerns public support for childcare, but Finland is also a compelling case in relation to how those different childcare rights are actually employed in practice. Anita Haataja (2005, p. 98) has even stressed that in terms of the use of care rights, the childcare situation in Finnish society has become somewhat paradoxical. The paradox becomes evident especially in the Nordic

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Benefit expenditure in € million (at 2008 prices)

Number of families

750

180 000 Municipal supplements 160 000

Statutory allowance

600

Number of families annually

140 000 120 000

450 100 000

80 000 300 60 000 40 000

150

20 000 0

0 1990

Source:

1992

1994

1996

1998

2000

2002

2004

2006

2008

Obtained directly from Kela in 2009.

Figure 4.1

Use of the home care allowance since 1990 in Finland

context: Finland has introduced the strongest rights for public childcare within the Nordic welfare regime, but on a practical level small children are cared for for the longest time and on a full-time basis at home in Finland. At the practical level the so-called ‘new universalism’ of Finnish childcare policies and the opportunity structure (Sjöberg, 2004) involved in it has actually led to the popularity of children’s home care. The popularity of the child home care allowance has been quite stable since the benefit was introduced in 1984. Since 1990, the majority of small children have been cared for at home, mostly by their mothers. There was, however, a slight drop in the use of the benefit in the middle of the 1990s when the amount of benefit was cut down by more than 20 percent (Figure 4.1). This retrenchment has been called one of the most significant weakening events in Finnish family policies (see Kontula, 2004). Despite this lowering of the purchasing power of the benefit, the use of the benefit was still over 50 percent of the children of the eligible age. In 1998, 57 per cent of children aged between 9 months and 2 years were cared for on the

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allowance and in 2007 the corresponding figure was 52 per cent (Kela, 2008). Today in Finland less than half of children under the age of 3 are cared for in municipal daycare. To put this picture the other way around, almost 90 percent of children are cared for by the child care allowance at least for some time after the parental leave. At the same time a growing number of families, in other words 40 percent of users, take advantage of the benefit until a child turns 3 years old (Hämäläinen, 2005, pp. 138–9). There are, however, regional variations in the popularity of the benefit that can be interpreted as stemming from the regional differences in cultural values and in labour market structures (Kela, 2008). Children under 3 years old are often cared for at home, but the structure of the child home care allowance encourages families also to care for their older children at home. This is because their care is likewise supported, if cared for in the same way as their younger siblings. In 2007, 27 per cent of children aged from 9 months to 6 years were cared for on the home care allowance (ibid.). It is worth acknowledging that some municipalities also require that all the children under school age in the family are cared for at home in order to qualify for their municipal supplement. The public support for home care has an influence on the coverage of publicly organized early childhood education. According to OECD statistics only 40 percent of Finnish children between 3 and 6 years participate in this kind of education. This is also why Finland in 2004 was 24th among the 25 OECD countries in coverage of early childhood education (UNICEF, 2008). The statistics of the Nordic Council give us a more positive view of the Finnish situation and show that around 70 percent of Finnish children between 3 and 5 years old take part in publicly funded daycare (Agerskov and Hjulgaard, 2008; Table 4.1), yet many of these children are cared for by municipal child-minders who are not legally perceived as pedagogues. Although since 2000, 6-year-old children have had a right to free half-day pre-school, large numbers of children under school age1 are marginalized from early childhood education and the social capital provided by it. Enrolment in early childhood education in Finland can be considered low especially in a Nordic context. But who are the users of the child home care allowance? Although the child home care allowance as such is gender neutral, the use of the benefit is decidedly gendered. In other words, the child home care allowance is mainly a mother’s benefit. Over 90 percent of the recipients of the benefits are mothers (Kela, 2004, p. 343). In addition, the child home care allowance is more popular among mothers with less education and with low income level as well as mothers with many children (Takala, 2000; Salmi et al., 2009).

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Table 4.1

0 years 1 years 2 years 3 years 4 years 5 years Source:

Children in daycare by age in 2007 in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden (%) Denmark

Finland

Iceland

Norway

Sweden

16.6 88.1 92.4 95.3 98.2 95.6

1.3 31.0 50.4 67.3 73.3 76.1

7.4 69.0 92.2 97.9 95.0 91.3

4.4 60.3 79.3 92.6 96.5 94.9

0.0 50.3 91.0 95.4 98.9 100.0

Agerskov and Hjulgaard (2008).

In Finland the care of small children is still largely a woman’s task, since the involvement of fathers in childcare lags behind the involvement of mothers (Haataja, 2005, p. 105). It is often women who take the majority of the parental leave, even in spite of the father’s readiness to share childcare responsibilities (Lammi-Taskula, 2007, p. 147). The same could also be said in relation to the home care allowance. On a practical level, it has become almost exclusively the mother’s benefit. Johanna Lammi-Taskula (ibid.) argues that Finnish mothers seem to take very seriously the ideas of parental involvement and the importance of early parent–child attachment that has been emphasized in the media and in educational literature. Due to the gendered nature of the use of cash-for-care benefit, many researchers (Mahon, 2002; Morgan and Zippel, 2003) have evaluated home care as a kind of a trap for mothers. ‘Trap’ is used here to refer to the tendency of the schemes to reinforce gendered patterns of care and their tendency to weaken women’s position in society at large. Anneli Anttonen and Liina Sointu (2006, p. 76) have stressed in this respect that freedom of choice cannot mean that the users of the allowance are almost solely women and often women with low income and poor education, who are also the ones most at risk of exclusion from the labour market. The rhetoric of freedom of choice attached to the use of cash-for-care benefits does not automatically generate gender equality (see also Sipilä, Repo, Rissanen and Viitasalo, Chapter 3 this volume). This is because families make their decisions in the context of broader social frameworks and norms. The ways in which different benefits such as home care allowance are used are related to broader social constructions of parenthood (see Deven and Moss, 2002, p. 247). The prevailing ideas of motherhood and the preferences of individual mothers do play an important role when explaining mothers’ work and family choices (Hakim, 2000; Kangas and

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Rostgaard, 2007). Although in Finland the idea of shared parenthood has since the 1960s gained more ground as a daily practice of the parents, in the case of home care the idea of mother-centred care is still quite strong (see Vuori, 2001; Repo, 2004, 2009a; Eräranta, 2007). The discourse of parental choice, which is very powerful in Finland when it comes to childcare, does not note the gendered family and parental obligations as well as the different moral worlds in which motherhood and fatherhood are embedded (Ellingsæter and Leira, 2006, p. 271). With regard to this, Ellingsæter and Leira (ibid.) stress that in daily life ‘choice usually means women making the choices between paid employment and childcare’. Men’s choices do not become an issue in relation to cash-for-care schemes. Men are not, however, without influence when mothers make their decisions concerning home care. Olli Kangas and Tine Rostgaard (2007) have shown that the opinion of male partners influences women’s decisions about childcare and work. Choosing home care is often supported by normative ideas about parenthood, but labour market developments and macroeconomic conditions are also important premises for parents’ opportunities of choice (Haataja and Nyberg, 2006, p. 218). The structure of the benefit may also predispose families to certain kinds of decisions. It is not just preferences of the parents but also the institutional factors on which families’ choices depend (Sjöberg, 2004; Kangas and Rostgaard, 2007).

DAILY LIFE PERCEPTIONS How do the users of the child home allowance themselves construct home care? In order to answer this question I interviewed 20 parents who received the child home care allowance (CHCA). When the interviews took place, in 2006 and 2007, ten interviewees were receiving the CHCA. The other ten parents were in the labour market or studying but had recently been receiving the allowance. In most of the families the CHCA had been paid to the mother of the family.2 The interview data reveal that the use of child home care allowance is related to several dimensions of the daily lives of families. There were, however, two main ways in which home care was perceived by its users: a discourse that strongly supports home care and a discourse that criticizes working life and especially the practices of combining work and family. Although there were individual differences in how the parents interviewed emphasized the importance of interpreted discourse, on a more general level the parents constructed home care in the framework of the general discourses. Some parents, however, put more emphasis on the question of

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family time and on the best interests of the children and others underscore the problems in reconciling work and family. These two sets of reasoning were often also intertwined and thereby legitimated each other. In the following I will present the two above-mentioned discourses, that of pro home care and that of protest against working life, but I will also discuss their broader connections to culture and social contexts. Pro Home Care Maarit Alasuutari (2003) and Pentti Takala (2000) have shown that in Finland the parents of small children often think that the care they have chosen and the care they rely on in their daily lives is also the best arrangement for their children. Thus, parents who have chosen home care often see home care as in the best interests of their child and conversely the parents who rely on public services emphasize the positive and socialization sides of the institutions of early childhood education. Sharon Hays (1996) reports similar findings on the work-life decisions of mothers. In her study, both stay-at-home mothers and working mothers saw their decision as in the best interests of their child and as matching the ideology of motherhood. Working mothers were likely to argue that there are numerous good reasons for mothers to work in the labour market and stay-at-home mothers were likely to argue that there are numerous reasons to stay at home with their children. Hays (ibid., p. 133) concludes that ‘these arguments are best understood not as absolute truths but rather as socially necessary ideological work’. The parents interviewed for this study took part in that kind of ideological work and assessed the mode of care they had chosen – in this case home care – often in a very positive tone. They constructed a way of talking about home care as something I have called a pro home care discourse. The pro home care discourse highlights the positive sides and value of home care and stresses that what is best for the children can be achieved by supporting and valuing home-based care. Some interviewees even took home care as self-evident and natural, as the two following examples from the interview data show: I have just regarded it as self-evident that this [home care] is a good decision and this is what I do! There is no need to think about other options at all. (Mother of three) Researcher: You just said that ‘we want our children to be cared for at home’ Father: I don’t know any reason for this but it has always been self-evident for us that we care for them ourselves . . . we did not have any other option on this issue. (Father of three)

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If home care were perceived as something natural, the ways the parents interviewed commented on home care were also closely related to the broader discourses of care such as ideas about child development and child–parent interaction. As Nikolas Rose (1999, pp. xx, 260) has pointed out, in the modern world it has become quite common to assess daily practices from the point of view of different psychological arguments. Thus, everyday thought has become increasingly infiltrated by theoretical and psychological knowledge. Jaana Vuori (2001, p. 19) has also stated that a kind of an ‘education for parenthood’ has nowadays become the responsibility of many experts. ‘Parenthood education’ is also a favourite topic in media, journals and self-help books. This discussion has also increasingly become focused on interaction, including theories of parent–child attachment. Carolyn Taylor (2004) has shown that child development theory has become essential knowledge for social work practice. Such knowledge is, of course, important for social work practice with children, but it can also be seen as problematic if the theory is approached as ‘self-evident’ and used uncritically. Parents also rely on psychological knowledge when they make sense of their daily decisions. According to Alasuutari (2003, p. 161), today the constructions of parenthood are actually closely related to psychoanalytic theories of child development. Margareta Bäck-Wiklund and Birgitta Bergsten (1997, p. 28) have stated that the self-reflection of parenthood forms an important part of being a parent. This self-reflection is in turn closely related to the psychological theories of child development. That was also the case with the data analysed. The positive aspects of home care, for example, were often related to theories of the parent–child attachment as assessed by a mother in the following citation: I have read and listened to the experts in education and on the basis of their views and of course also on the basis of my own common sense have reached the conclusion that the first three years are the most important for self-development and that, thus, for that time it is also best that one of the parents is the primary carer in order to create attachment. (Mother of three)

The assessments of the home could also be infiltrated by the notion of parents’ opportunity to get to know their children better and to bring children up successfully, as indicated in the following quotation: Interviewer: You said that ‘this staying at home is best for a child as well as best for parents’, why do you think it is also best for parents? Mother: Maybe because this gives you the opportunity to get to know your child better than if he or she is cared for in the child care centre. You know what

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Cash-for-childcare she or he needs and you also know how to bring them up as individuals and how to bring them up in the right direction. (Mother of two)

Despite there being this pro home care culture in Finnish society, in recent decades the Finnish welfare state has been seen as having a strong commitment to gender equality on the basis of the reforms supporting women’s labour market participation. For example, childcare services that enable women to combine family and careers are universally available in Finnish society. With regard to this, Pfau-Effinger (1999, p. 90) has written that Finnish mothers should not be torn between self and care, which constitutes an important problem for mothers in Germany. Finnish women should not experience a moral dilemma in having to choose between work and family in the same way as mothers do in Germany. She continues by arguing that this is because ‘“childhood” is mostly constructed as “public childhood”, that is, people think it is best for a child to be cared for by public institutions’. Pfau-Effinger is in many ways right in analysing Finnish childcare policies in a comparative framework. Finland does have extensive public childcare provision. However, the public constructions of childhood are often more complex than mentioned above and they undergo constant changes. An atmosphere that stresses the positive aspects of care at home has, for example, become more popular in Finnish society, especially when it concerns a child under 3 years old (Hiilamo and Kangas, 2006; Jallinoja, 2006; Repo, 2007). This also becomes apparent in statistical surveys on family values. Four out of five informants in one survey thought that parents delegate too much childrearing responsibility to society. The most common age respondents considered to be the best age for a child to start attending a childcare centre was the age of 3 (Paajanen, 2007, pp. 59, 65). The current debate about childcare and the child as a citizen in Finland is a contested issue that incorporates elements of ideological contradictions and moral struggles (Repo, 2009b). Sometimes public care and home care are even perceived as opposites. This is how a mother of three commented on the use of public care: If my parental leave would have ended and I would have gone straight back to work and any one of our children would have gone to the child care centre, I think that putting so small a child into someone else’s care would have raised more astonishment. (Mother of three)

Home care was often seen as an ideological choice as the following quote shows: It is a choice [to stay at home]. You get less money during that time, but it’s a question of what you are ready to give up in order to get a chance to be at home

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with a child. For everyone that choice is not possible, but in most cases it is a matter of making a decision. (Mother of one)

Pressures for good parenting thus also form a background for the daily life choices made by parents and mothers. Riitta Jallinoja (2006, 2009) has shown how family-centred thinking has gained increasing popularity among Finnish adults. What is interesting here is that among adults who do not have children, the importance of family time has also increased. This indicates that the general cultural emphasis on familistic values has increased. As expected, parents of children are nevertheless most family-centred in their argumentation. Jallinoja (2009, p. 69) writes that ‘it is extremely exceptional that parents do not think that time spent with family is most important, and there are actually very few of them’. Time with the family and with children was also an important reason for choosing home care, as the following interview citation indicates: The reason why I stayed at home and took the child home care allowance was that I think children are small for so short a time and I wanted them to able to enjoy not having to hurry in their first years. . . . But also because of our common time, because I know that when I work I am always terribly tired. The work takes so much energy that I am not able to give much to my children in the evenings and I do think that you should put the children first. (Mother of three)

Home care is often argued to be a vehicle to increase time allocated to the family and to children. At the same time it is commonly assessed as a common interest of parents and children. According to such a view, parents, mainly mothers, get a chance to ‘enjoy’ children and parenthood. As a mother of one stated, ‘I want to be together with my star and my treasure at home as long as possible. I want to enjoy my child’. Children for their part get ‘a good start in life’, as a mother of two thought, as well as a lot more relaxed family time. This was often legitimated, in turn, by the psychological theories of child development. The politicization of childhood and the psychological knowledge produced by professionals all frame the talk about daily life assessments of home care. Due to cash-for-childcare schemes the cultural nature of the informal childcare provided in the homes has started to change. Liz Forbat (2005) has stated that the cash-for-care systems influence the self-esteem of the caregiver and understanding of informal care given in private homes such that home care is increasingly assessed in professional terms. Subsidized informal care differs in its cultural nature from the traditional care

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provided in homes. Home care has become increasingly perceived as work done for society (Repo, 2007). In addition, the arguments for home care often involve elements of individual pleasure that home care is seen to generate for the carer (Repo, 2010). Protest Against Working Life Home care should also be placed in the context of working life. Minna Salmi (2006, p. 164), for example, maintains that the home care choice can sometimes be just the answer to the problems of reconciling work and family. Such argumentation was also present in the analysed data. I have named it as a discourse of the protest against working life. The mother of two interpreted her protest as follows: For many the care leave is a means to jump out of the rat race of working life. This is a fact. Of course you want to spend time with your children and to be at home, to live without hurrying . . . but you also want to avoid going back to work, because working life is very harsh nowadays. (Mother of two)

Salmi (ibid.) has asked: ‘to what extent are the actions of those women who choose long family leaves . . . actually a familistic or defamilistic way of thinking, and how much of a role do the current demands of the labour market and the often absent support for work–family balance in the workplace play?’ The answer to this is that they are both important when parents do their reasoning concerning childcare. Problems in combining work and family have an important role, but the ideological consideration also has quite a strong influence. It can be argued that the practical and ideological elements are closely intertwined and that it depends on particular circumstances on which of them the emphasis falls. Work-life practices have an important role in the daily lives of families with small children. The reconciliation of work and family needs negotiation and flexibility, and is often companied by hassle and unexpected situations (Repo, 2001, 2004). It has also been demonstrated that parents often find working stressful and mentally demanding (Lehto and Sutela, 2004; Rönkä et al., 2005). Almost half of Finnish wage earners assessed their current work as mentally hard. Concurrently the experiences of feeling haste have increased (Lehto and Sutela, 2004, pp. 40–41). The growing pressures of work-life are also seen as one of the most important factors complicating parenthood (Rönkä et al., 2005, p. 287). This is why breaks from work enabled by different kinds of care leave are often perceived as mental relief from a work-centred life (Lammi-Taskula, 2007). This is also how the following mother of three saw her decision to stay at home:

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Interviewer: How do you see working life from the point of view of families with children? Mother: It is a kind of a ‘rumba’. The tempo has increased and all the time you are expected to do things more and more quickly. I was really relieved that I got this chance to get away from work for a while. I was almost burned out. I had difficulties carrying on there. (Mother of three)

The labour market has also changed to include new kinds of risks and insecurities. Parents with small children increasingly combine work and family in the midst of new flexibilities of working life and in a situation where traditional working hours have become less and less common. In fact, an increasing number of parents of small children in Finland work in the evenings and at night (Salmi, 2001, p. 57). At the same time, knowledge work has obscured the boundary between work and home since knowledge work is not strictly related to a certain workplace or to regular working hours (Julkunen et al., 2004). In this respect, the reconciliation of work and family responsibilities can be demanding and it can produce stressful overlapping between work and family. But there are also studies that indicate the opposite and argue instead that family life can actually benefit from the fact that parents are involved in work-life. However, these positive influences are conditional. The important matter in this respect is the quality of work-life and the length of the working day. If the working day is very long and filled with the experience of haste, the time at home after the working day is accompanied by stress and weariness (Rönkä et al., 2009). Some interviewees anticipated this and had decided not even to try to combine work and family: Just when you have got to know your baby . . . then the idea that both of us would spend long days at work feels kind of a madhouse and very demanding. So we thought that if it is not absolutely necessary, we [a mother and a child] will stay at home. (Mother of two)

In Finland, where part-time work is rare and where mothers work fulltime and where the child home care allowance is an alternative to using services, the choices parents can make are also quite inflexible. This is also why Finnish mothers of small children mostly either work on a full-time basis or are full-time mothers (see Repo, 2007). In 2003, 6 per cent of men and 13 per cent of women worked on a part-time basis. And, importantly, only 1 per cent of men and 13 per cent of women who worked part-time had chosen part-time work for family and care-related reasons (Lehto and Sutela, 2004, p. 25). Salmi (2006, p. 158) has stressed that the question of combining work

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and family cannot be just an issue between mothers, fathers and the state. Instead, working life practices play an increasingly important role in how the statutory entitlements are processed in everyday life. This indicates that while being interested in home care, we have also to be interested in the working life the parents of small children are taking part in.

CONCLUSION The Finnish child home care allowance is an important but also controversial benefit. In terms of civil rights, the child home care allowance can be seen as valuable, because it has furthered parents’ right to give care (see Knijn and Kremer, 1997). By introducing the home care allowance, Finnish society has acknowledged the informal care work done in the home. This public acknowledgement of informal care has been the target of maternal feminists for decades and in this respect the child home care allowance can even be seen as a kind of mother’s or parent’s wage. The idea of parental wage is also supported by the nature of the allowance that receiving the benefit is not related to parents’ employment status and as such it can not be seen as compensation for lost salary (Anttonen, 1999, 2003). From the daily life perspective, too, the allowance is commonly assessed in a positive tone. It plays a part in solving problems associated with reconciling work and family. In the everyday life domain it serves as a kind of extension to the parental leave and that way enables families to spend more time with children. Home care is often claimed to be in the best interests of children in a society where the lives of parents have become characterized by flexibilities and haste. There is thus a strong discourse emphasizing that what is best for children can be achieved by supporting and valuing home-based care. At the same time, home care has its problems. First of all it plays an important part in legitimating the gendered division of labour. The popularity of home care has led to a situation in which a substantial number of mothers are outside the labour market. From children’s point of view it also means that a substantial number of children do not take part in publicly organized early childhood education. Home care is also one factor that is generating childhood poverty. Although we can attach undisputed values to family time and the care the parents give their children, in practice family time together on the home care allowance can also mean overload on and isolation of mothers, gendered division of labour, children’s marginalization from early childhood education, mothers’ marginalization from the labour market and living in poverty. Family policy, of which child care policies are an important part, can

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be seen as an opportunity structure for parents. It shapes the choices families make and also reflects normative views and gender roles (Sjöberg, 2004). In this respect, it can be argued that the introduction of a cash-forcare benefit in itself intensifies the social obligation to give time for care (Ellingsæter, 2006). The benefits, ideologies and practices work together and affect each other. Cash-for-care schemes give a choice for home care and produce a space in which to talk about care in a more familistic tone. Familistic behaviour gives more legitimacy to continuing or enlarging the schemes. This is precisely what has happened in Finland.

NOTES 1. Finnish children start school at the age of 7. 2. The data consists of 20 interviews with parents who have received the child home care allowance. When the interviews took place in 2006 and in 2007, ten interviewees were receiving the CHCA, another ten parents were in the labour market or studying but had recently received CHCA. Most of the interviewees were mothers and in the case of most families the CHCA was also paid to the mother of the family. The socioeconomic background of the families was heterogeneous. There were low-income families, but also families whose annual income rose to over 100 000 euros. Similarly, the educational background of the parents interviewed varied. There were both academically educated mothers as well as mothers with vocational training. The size of the family also varied between one and four children. One family was receiving the municipal supplement.

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stronger and weaker forms of universalism’, in Anneli Anttonen, John Baldock and Jorma Sipilä (eds), The Young, the Old and the State: Social Care Systems in Five Industrial Nations, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar, pp. 25–54. Kunnat (2009), ‘Lasten kotihoidon tuen kuntalisät yleistyvät’, available at: http:// www.kunnat.net/k_perussivu.asp?path=1;29;60;498;114858;122873;123543; accessed 19 April 2010. Lammi-Taskula, Johanna (2007), Parental Leave for Fathers? Gendered Conceptions and Practices in Families with Young Children in Finland, Helsinki: Stakes. Lehto, Anna-Maija and Hanna Sutela (2004), Uhkia ja mahdollisuuksia. Työolotutkimusten tuloksia 1977–2003, Helsinki: Tilastokeskus. Mahon, Rianne (2002), ‘Child care: towards what kind of “Social Europe”’, Social Politics, 9(3), 343–79. Miettunen, Laura (2008), Lasten kotihoidon tuen kuntalisät osana suomalaista päivähoitojärjestelmää, Helsinki: Kela. Morgan, Kimberly J. and Kathrin Zippel (2003), ‘Paid to care: the origins and effects of care leave policies in Western Europe’, Social Politics, 10(1), 49–85. Paajanen, Pirjo (2007), ‘Mikä on minun perheeni? Suomalaisten käsityksiä perheestä vuonna 2007 ja 1997’, Perhebarometri 2007, Väestöntutkimuslaitos Katsauksia E No. 30/2007, Helsinki: Väestöliitto. Pfau-Effinger, Birgit (1999), ‘Welfare regimes and the gender division of labour’, in Jens Cristiansen, Pertti Koistinen and Anne Kovalainen (eds), Working Europe. Reshaping European Employment System, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 69–96. Repo, Katja (2001), Care Arrangements in Multi-Career Families, SOCCARE Project Report 3.1, Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto. Repo, Katja (2004), ‘Combining work and family in two welfare state contexts: a discourse analytical perspective’, Social Policy & Administration, 38(6), 622–39. Repo, Katja (2007), ‘Pienten lasten kotihoito lastenhoidon vaihtoehtona’, Janus, 15(3), 229–44. Repo, Katja (2009a), ‘Pienten lasten kotihoito: puolesta ja vastaan’, in Anneli Anttonen, Heli Valokivi and Minna Zechner (eds), Hoiva – tutkimus, politiikka ja arki, Tampere: Vastapaino, pp. 219–37. Repo, Katja (2009b), Lapsiperheiden arki. Näkökulmina raha, työ ja lastenhoito, Acta Universitatis Tamperensis No. 1479, Tampere: Tampere University Press. Repo, Katja (2010), ‘Families, work and home care. Assessing the Finnish Child Home Care Allowance’, Barn, pp. 43–61. Repo, Katja and Teppo Kröger (2009), ‘Kunnallinen päivähoito: oikeus hoivaan ja varhaiskasvatukseen’, in Anneli Anttonen, Heli Valokivi and Minna Zechner (eds), Hoiva – tutkimus, politiikka ja arki, Tampere: Vastapaino, pp. 200–218. Rose, Nikolas (1999), Powers of Freedom. Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Rönkä, Anna, Ulla Kinnunen and Marjukka Sallinen (2005), ‘Lapset, vanhempien työ ja perheen arki’, in Ulla Kinnunen, Taru Feldt and Saija Mauno (eds), Työ leipälajina. Työhyvinvoinnin psykologiset perusteet, Jyväskylä: PS-kustannus, pp. 287–309. Rönkä, Anna, Kaisa Malinen and Tiina Lämsä (eds) (2009), Perhe-elämän paletti. Vanhempina ja puolisoina vaihtelevassa arjessa, Jyväskylä: PS-Kustannus. Salmi, Minna (2001), ‘Työelämän vastuu vanhemmuudesta ja lapsuudesta’, in Marjatta Bardy, Minna Salmi and Tarja Heino (2001), Mikä lapsiamme uhkaa?

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Suuntaviivoja 2000-luvun lapsipoliittiseen keskusteluun, Raportteja No. 263, Helsinki: Stakes, pp. 54–7. Salmi, Minna (2006), ‘Parental choice and the passion for equality in Finland’, in Anne Lise Ellingsæter and Arnlaug Leira (eds), Politicising Parenthood in Scandinavia. Gender Relations in Welfare States, Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 145–68. Salmi, Minna, Johanna Lammi-Taskula and Johanna Närvi (2009), ‘Perhevapaat ja työelämän tasa-arvo’, Työ ja yrittäjyys No. 24/2009, Työ- ja elinkeinoministeriön julkaisuja: Työsuojelurahasto. Sjöberg, Ola (2004), ‘The role of family policy institutions in explaining genderrole attitudes: a comparative multilevel analysis of thirteen industrialized countries’, Journal of European Social Policy, 14(2), 107–23. Takala, Pentti (2000), Lastenhoito ja sen julkinen tuki, Helsinki: Stakes/Kela. Taylor, Carolyn (2004), ‘Underpinning knowledge for child care practice: reconsidering child development theory’, Child and Family Social Work, 9(3), 225–35. Ungerson, Clare and Sue Yeandle (2007), ‘Conclusion: dilemmas, contradictions and change’, in Clare Ungerson and Sue Yeandle (eds), Cash for Care in Developed Welfare States, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 187–206. UNICEF (2008), The Child Care Transition, A League Table of Early Childhood Education and Care in Economically Advanced Countries, Innocenti Report Card No. 8, Florence: UNICEF, Innocenti Research Centre. Vuori, Jaana (2001), Äidit, isät ja ammattilaiset. Sukupuoli, toisto ja muunnelma asiantuntijoiden kirjoituksissa, Tampere: Tampere University Press.

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Cash-for-childcare schemes in Sweden: history, political contradictions and recent developments Anita Nyberg

INTRODUCTION Sweden is known as a country that supports a dual-earner–dual-carer model. This is supported by publicly financed childcare, parental leave, separate taxation and individual rights in the social security system. There is also another rather long, but much less prominent and well-known history of cash-for-childcare (CFC)1 in Sweden. CFC encourages a traditional gender division of labour, with the woman at home and the man as a breadwinner. Two different CFC schemes have been introduced in Sweden: one in 1994 and more recently on 1 July 2008. The aim of this chapter is to present the historical background of these schemes as well as the political argumentation and consequences related to them. The emphasis of the chapter, however, is on the most recent scheme, its implementation, use and the public debate related to it.

CASH-FOR-CHILDCARE OR SERVICES The question whether the government should support women’s care work through CFC benefits or women’s employment by expanding publicly financed childcare centres was discussed in Sweden after World War II (Abukhanfusa, 1987; Hatje, 1999; Lundqvist, 2007). At that time, differences in the argumentation of CFC between the different political parties were not yet very clear, not even within the parties. For example, within the Social Democratic Party, which was the dominating party, there were different opinions. In 1964, a decision-in-principle was taken at the Social Democratic Party Congress to support CFC and

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Lisa Mattsson, who was a member of parliament and the chairperson of the Social Democratic Women’s Section, proposed a parliamentary bill in favour of CFC (Hinnfors, 1992). Two important arguments in favour of CFC were choice and equality between women. With cash benefits even working class women could choose caregiving work in the family and to be at-home mothers. It could also be seen as furthering equality between women, since not only women using subsidized childcare received benefits from the government, but also women who did not use these services. However, cash-for-care of children at home also means maintaining a traditional male-earner–female-carer family and women’s economic dependence on men. Other Social Democrats and also Liberals argued in favour of mothers’ employment and a dual-earner model. They spoke from an old feminist viewpoint. They claimed that women need money of their own and a wage big enough to be able to support themselves in order to have some power in the family and in society. The government should support women’s employment by providing publicly financed childcare centres of high quality. In this case, too, choice and equality were important arguments. Women could choose to be employed instead of being at-home mothers, which was difficult without publicly financed childcare. It would also further equality between women and men, since women as well as men could choose to be earners. However, towards the end of the 1960s and at the beginning of the 1970s, a third alternative was being recommended by Social Democrats and Liberals, namely the dual-earner–dual-carer family. This alternative not only concerned women but also men (Lundqvist, 2007, p. 212). This represented new thinking; gender equality was no longer only a women’s question but also a men’s question. Not only should the government support mothers’ employment, but also fathers’ care for their children. For this to become a reality, publicly financed childcare was needed, but additionally, maternity leave should be abolished and parental leave introduced. Again, choice and equality were important arguments. Publicly financed childcare and parental leave would strengthen gender equality as far as both employment and care work were concerned and would increase parents’ choices since both father and mother could be on leave when a child was born (Klinth, 2002). In 1961, the Moderate Party,2 which today is the second biggest party in Sweden after the Social Democratic Party, was entirely against it when the idea of a cash-for-childcare was first proposed (Hinnfors, 1992, p. 99). In its party manifesto of 1963 it was stated that it was in principle offensive that a natural function such as parenthood should be paid for by the state (ibid.). However, in the 1970s, the Moderates changed their minds

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and aligned themselves with the Centre Party, which advocated wages for taking care of children. It was considered unfair that only those who had their children in publicly financed childcare received resources while families where the women stayed at home did not; they should therefore be compensated with a special allowance. Increased possibilities of choice were also an important argument. Hence, between 1960 and the beginning of the 1970s all the political parties chose new policy instruments for their family policy (ibid., pp. 115ff). The background was the fast-rising employment rate among women and among mothers with pre-school children. The Moderate Party3 changed from being ardent opponents to accepting some form of cash-for-care schemes, the Liberal Party from prioritizing such benefits to prioritizing publicly financed childcare and parental leave, while the Centre Party supported CFC throughout the period. The Social Democrats were in favour of publicly financed childcare, but went from advocating CFC to opposing it and to prioritizing parental leave. The Leftist Party4 initially had a vague position in favour of CFC, but changed to favour publicly financed childcare. During the second half of the 1970s the parties’ different standpoints were consolidated, but towards the end of the 1980s the Liberal Party again changed and placed cash-for-care benefits ahead of parental leave (ibid., pp. 171ff), which meant that the Moderate, the Centre and the Liberal Parties were all in favour of CFC at that time.

TWO DIFFERENT CASH-FOR-CHILDCARE SCHEMES Two different CFC schemes have been introduced in Sweden; one in 1994, which was scrapped the same year, and the current system in 2008. CFC entered the political agenda when the non-socialist parties won the elections in 1991. The main proponent for cash-for-childcare schemes was a new party, the Christian Democratic Party, which promotes more traditional family values than the other parties. In 1994, a compromise was reached between the parties in the coalition, that is, between the Moderates, the Liberals, the Centre and the Christian Democrats. The compromise meant that CFC was introduced but also that the first socalled ‘father month’, that is, one month of parental leave, was no longer transferable but an individual right for the father to take a leave.5 This last measure was more in line with the ideology of many in the Liberal Party. After the elections of autumn 1994, when the Social Democrats returned to office, they maintained the father month (and introduced one more in

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2002) but abolished the CFC allowance, which was at that time therefore only in force for about six months. CFC was again on the political agenda when the Alliance, consisting of the Moderate, the Liberal, the Centre and the Christian Democratic Parties, came to power in 2006. On 1 July 2008 CFC was reinstated, again as a result of a compromise. On the same day as the CFC scheme was initiated a so-called gender equality bonus was launched. The aim of this last-mentioned measure was to stimulate men to use a greater share of the parental leave and promote women’s return to employment. This is thought to lead to a smaller gender wage gap, to reduce differences in total earnings over the life cycle between women and men and to promote gender equality in general. The women in the different parties seem to be more hesitant regarding benefits such as cash-for-childcare. The spokesperson on gender equality issues for the Moderate Party – a woman – perceived CFC as a potential trap for women and therefore claimed that fathers who stay at home with the child should be rewarded (Svenska Dagbladet, 2009c). The chairperson of the Liberal Women’s Section also declared that CFC was a trap for women partly because it was commonly used by women with a weak position in the labour market (Svenska Dagbladet, 2009a). Even the chairperson in the Christian Democratic Women’s Section claimed that there were better solutions to achieve gender equality than flat-rate benefits supporting childcare at home. She instead proposed so-called ‘children’s days’, namely that each parent should be allowed 100 days off work while the child is between 1 and 3 years of age with the same compensation as when on parental leave. Such days should not be transferable between the parents. It is clear that not everyone in the Alliance today is wholeheartedly behind the introduction of CFC.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE 1994 AND THE 2008 CASH-FOR-CHILDCARE SYSTEMS There are differences between the new allowance introduced in 2008 and that introduced in 1994. These differences are manifest in how the schemes are administrated and designed. The old allowance was introduced throughout Sweden, administrated by the Swedish Social Insurance Agency and was taxable (Ds 2007:52, p. 47). It amounted to 2000 SEK (about 200 euros) for those with children aged between 1 and 3 years who did not use publicly financed childcare. But it was also possible to receive CFC allowance and at the same time have a place in publicly financed childcare. For children who did not use childcare for more than 15 hours

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per week, a cash-for-care allowance of 1350 SEK (about 135 euros) was available; for children using publicly financed childcare more than 15 hours but not more than 30 hours an allowance of 700 SEK (about 70 euros) was payable and for parents using childcare for more than 30 hours there was no allowance at all. Parents could also use the allowance to pay for childcare that was not publicly financed and they could receive it at the same time as they received parental allowance for another child. According to a study, 67 per cent of married/cohabiting women used the CFC in 1994, but only 0.56 per cent of married/cohabiting men (Widman, 2006, p. 23).6 Among single mothers 60 per cent used it, but only 5 per cent of single fathers. The high proportion that received CFC allowance at this time is likely to be related to the fact that it was possible to combine CFC allowance and have the children for up to 30 hours per week in publicly financed childcare and that it was possible to combine parental allowances and these allowances. Many mothers worked part-time and many parents took turns at picking up the children from childcare, which meant shorter hours for the children and the option to receive CFC allowance. The main results of the investigation were that the recipient of such allowance in general was a married/cohabiting woman who earned less than her husband/partner and worked in the municipal sector. The probability of receiving CFC allowance decreased with increasing incomes and if one of the parents had a university education, while education within care or pedagogy increased the probability of receiving a CFC allowance. Today it is the municipalities that have been delegated the option to introduce, finance and administer such cash-for-childcare schemes although within certain limits. Nowadays, in order to receive a full CFC allowance, the child should not attend publicly financed pre-school. The parent may, however, be employed and at the same time receive CFC if childcare is arranged in some other way. The allowance can be given to children between the ages of 1 and 3 years. It may not exceed 3000 SEK (around 300 euros) per month per child and it is not taxable. CFC may not be combined with a number of other benefits such as parental and unemployment benefits (Prop. 2007/08:149, p. 18). The main argument for today’s cash-for-childcare systems is that it enables parents to choose to spend more time with their children. In the bill proposing the reform the effects on gender equality were discussed. The conclusion was that it is hard to judge whether CFC would further or undermine gender equality. The reason given for this conclusion is that it is possible to combine CFC with both full-time employment, with one parent at home full-time and by shortening normal working hours by half for one or both parents (ibid., p. 15). How CFC benefits will affect gender equality therefore depends on if it is the father or the mother who chooses

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to stay at home or shorten the working hours. The government thereby completely disregarded all evidence showing that mothers would indeed use it but hardly any fathers and that CFC would then reinforce the gendered division of care and undermine women’s attachment to the labour market. In the bill and in other texts where the CFC is mentioned, the gender equality bonus is also often mentioned. As already noted the gender equality bonus was introduced on the same day as CFC and the aim is to promote gender equality by increasing women’s labour force participation and by stimulating men to use a greater share of the parental leave.

CASH-FOR-CHILDCARE ALLOWANCE AND THE MUNICIPALITIES Today it is the municipalities that introduce, finance and administer CFC schemes. It is the municipalities that decide whether to provide such programmes, and, within specified limits, the eligibility conditions to be imposed. The municipalities are thus very important when we assess the new Swedish cash-for-childcare system. Next we discuss how many and which municipalities have introduced such schemes and the main reasons for doing so. By August 2009 about one-third of the municipalities had introduced a CFC scheme. Almost all these municipalities have a chairperson belonging to one of the parties of the Alliance, mainly the Moderate Party. Most municipalities have designed the programmes according to the directions of the government with one important exception. Few have allowed the use of cash-for-childcare allowance part-time.7 Many municipalities are uncertain whether the costs to the municipality are likely to increase or decrease with the introduction of a CFC scheme. They want to avoid investments in a measure that will mean a deadweight loss, that is, pay parents for care that would be undertaken anyway and that only means increased costs for the municipalities. The ideal situation is if parents withdraw their children from publicly financed childcare and instead take the CFC allowance. This will save the municipalities money since a place in publicly financed childcare costs them much more than the CFC allowance. Ideology At the municipal level, ideology is decisive in whether or not a CFC scheme is introduced. At the national level, the Alliance – the Moderate, the Liberal, the Centre and the Christian Democratic Parties – are in

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favour of and have given the municipalities the option to introduce CFC schemes, while the Opposition – the Social Democratic, the Leftist and the Green Parties – are against such benefits and oppose the introduction. However, there are many different forms of coalitions in the municipalities and even though the parties forming the Alliance at the national level have agreed on introducing CFC, there are differences in how important this is for the parties. The main proponents of CFC are the Christian Democrats. It is a very central and important question for them, but the Christian Democratic Party is a small party both nationally and at the municipality level. The Centre Party has a long tradition as an advocate for cash-for-childcare systems. The Liberal Party, on the other hand, has formerly been a vehement proponent of publicly financed childcare and parental leave. Many members of the party have adopted a reserved attitude towards the CFC allowance. The Moderate Party has since the beginning of the 1970s argued for CFC (Hinnfors, 1992). This may, however, be a problem today, at least at central government level for the Moderates, since their party is the biggest in the Alliance and the government’s overall goal is to strengthen incentives to work and reduce labour market exclusion (Statsrådsberedningen, 2008), which is constantly pointed out. With such an overall objective and the emphasis placed upon it, it is a contradiction to introduce an allowance that encourages women to leave the labour market. The differing views of the parties on CFC are probably behind the limitations and contradictions of the prevailing systems. The party line on the national level may not always be followed on the municipal level. One example of this is the municipality of Umeå, where a bill from the local Christian Democrats proposing the introduction of a CFC scheme was supported by the other parties in the Alliance, but not by the members of the Liberal Party. They voted against the proposal together with members from the Social Democratic, the Leftist and the Green Parties and a local party and it was not taken forward (Umeå kommun, 2008). Another example is the liberal municipal commissioner in a municipality outside Stockholm – which is run by Social Democrats and Liberals – who says that she believes that CFC is a trap for women (Dagens Nyheter, 2008). On the other hand there is an impression that many Moderates in the municipalities are more in favour of CFC schemes than the Moderates in the government. The Social Democrats, the Leftist and the Green Parties are against cash-for-childcare benefits (Newsdesk, 2008), and have evinced many arguments against it: women are the big losers, CFC is old-fashioned, it does not support gender equality in parenthood, it risks making women’s situation in the labour market worse because they may be locked into

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unemployment, be found in increasing numbers in temporary employment and in part-time work, receive smaller pensions and have less economic security when unemployed or sick. Women’s career prospects and chances of wage increases will decline. Single parents do not in practice have any economic opportunity to use the allowance and big groups are excluded from the allowance, for example the unemployed, the long-term sick and those on early retirement or disability pension. The allowance counteracts the integration of migrants. Reference is made to evaluations from Norway, which, according to the Social Democrats, show that families of non-Norwegian ethnic background have greater difficulties in entering the labour market and the children do not participate in pre-school, which means delay in the acquisition of the Norwegian language. Additionally, the allowance will demand great resources from the municipalities where it is introduced, threatening the resources for pre-schools and create differences between municipalities. The allowance can be used to engage relatives or au pairs in the home, which is against the stated aim of the reform – that parents should be able to spend more time with their children.8 Even if there are differences between the parties in the Alliance, we would expect that the differences between parties in the Alliance and the Opposition parties affect the decisions in the municipalities. In municipalities where the parties of the Alliance are in power it can be assumed that CFC schemes will be initiated, but not in the municipalities where the Opposition parties are in power. Let us investigate if this is the case and in how many municipalities CFC schemes have been introduced. As Table 5.1. shows, the initiation of a CFC scheme depends very much on ideology. About one-third of the municipalities in August 2009 had either introduced CFC or planned to do so and almost all of them – 93 municipalities or 97 per cent – are found in municipalities run by parties belonging to the Alliance and in only two municipalities or 2 per cent of the municipalities governed by parties belonging to the Opposition. These two municipalities (Mark and Södertälje) have a chairperson who belongs to the Social Democratic Party. However, the Opposition parties are in the minority and have had to compromise with other parties on this question.9 Fifty-eight per cent of the municipalities where the chairperson belongs to one of the Alliance parties have introduced or will introduce CFC, while this is the case in only 2 per cent of the municipalities with a chairperson belonging to one of the Opposition parties. Interestingly enough, it seems as if municipalities where the chairperson is from the Moderate Party are the most ardent introducers of CFC schemes – out of 89 such municipalities, 61 have introduced such a scheme, while 28 have not – which is a higher share than any of the other parties in the Alliance, including

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Table 5.1 Municipalities having introduced or intending to introduce cashfor-childcare in August 2009 by chairperson’s party affiliation The Alliance

The Opposition

Total

Men Women Sum Men Women Sum Men Women Sum Introduced CFC in 2008 Introduced CFC in January 2009 To introduce CFC later in 2009 or 2010* Sum

33

5

38

2

0

2

35

5

40

25

14

39

0

0

0

25

14

39

10

6

16

0

0

0

10

6

16

68

25

93

2

0

2

70

25

95

52 Municipalities that have not introduced CFC by August 2009 Total 120

14

66

84

40

124

136

54

190

39

159

86

40

126

206

79

285**

57% Share of municipalities that have or will introduce CFC 43% Share of municipalities that have not introduced CFC

64%

58%

0%

2%

34%

32%

33%

36%

42% 98% 100%

98%

66%

68%

67%

2%

Notes: * Includes seven municipalities, which on the Internet stated that they had introduced CFC, but which were not included in the Dagens Samhälle (2009). ** In five municipalities the chairperson belongs to a local party or it is not known which party the chairperson belongs to. Sources: Dagens Samhälle (2009); homepages of municipalities; Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting (2009).

the Christian Democrats. However, it should be pointed out that there are very few municipalities chaired by members of the Liberal and the Christian Democratic Parties. It is worth pointing out that women’s position among the most

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important politicians in the municipalities is not as strong as in the government and parliament. As the table shows, out of 285 chairpersons only 79, or 28 per cent, are women, while the number of male chairpersons is 206, or 72 per cent. But the table also shows that it is not gender but party affiliation to an Alliance or Opposition party that is decisive in whether CFC is introduced in a municipality. Municipalities with a female chairperson from an Alliance party are as likely, or even slightly more likely, to have introduced such schemes as municipalities with a male chairperson belonging to an Alliance party. Table 5.1 shows the situation at the end of August 2009. It may be that in some municipalities the discussions are still going on and that more municipalities will introduce CFC in the future. But some municipalities may also close down such schemes. In one municipality that has introduced CFC this measure was on the list for areas in which cost reductions could be made (Västerbottennytt, 2009). There is also the interesting question as to what will happen if there is a change in the parties in power in the different municipalities after the next election. The Social Democratic spokesperson for social security questions says that they will abolish CFC when they get back to power (Svenska Dagbladet, 2009d). Costs Financial aspects also play a role, especially today with the current economic and financial crises. Many municipalities are wary of initiating new schemes that might mean new costs. They want to wait and see whether the allowance saves money or creates costs – and whether such additional costs are small or large (Sydsvenskan, 2008). The economy can also be used as an argument for not introducing CFC. In one municipality (Järfälla) the Moderates and the Christian Democrats believe that the economic situation is stable enough to introduce CFC, but the Liberals reject this, referring to the economic turbulence (Svenska Dagbladet, 2008c). Many municipalities have tried with the help of surveys and demographic data to calculate the exact costs. The calculations are so far extremely imprecise. For example, the political majority in Stockholm consisting of political parties belonging to the Alliance found that the allowance would cost just less than 6 million SEK per month (about 600 000 euros). When the inquiry service of the Riksdag (Swedish Parliament) made the same calculation the cost almost doubled to 11.9 million SEK (about 1.19 million euros). The last calculation was based on the assumption that only parents who do not have their children in publicly financed childcare use the allowance, that is, there would be no saving in publicly financed childcare. In the same kind of calculation for the town of Malmö, where

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the population is much smaller than in Stockholm, it was estimated that the cost would be 48 million SEK (about 4.8 million euros) per year, which corresponds to 149 employees in publicly financed childcare in Malmö. In such cases it is understandable if the politicians hesitate. What assumptions are made in the calculations is obviously extremely important. If it is assumed that only parents who do not have their children in publicly financed childcare will use CFC, then it will only mean additional costs for the municipalities, it will be a deadweight loss, that is, public money would be used to pay for care that would be undertaken anyway. If instead it is assumed that children for whom CFC allowance is paid are not using publicly financed childcare, then there may be savings both directly and in the short run. The cost of a place in publicly financed pre-school is 105 000 SEK (about 10 500 euros) per year, while the cost for a cash-for-care allowance for one year is 36 000 SEK (about 3600 euros) (Ds 2007:52, p. 34). However, the fact that the recipients of CFC allowance do not pay taxes, which they do when employed, is not taken into consideration, likewise the additional costs possibly accruing if later the mother has problems finding a job and supporting herself and the children. One article claims that the costs for the CFC scheme in one municipality has been compensated to 70 per cent by lower costs in publicly financed childcare (Svenska Dagbladet, 2009f). But even if this is the case, it still means higher costs for childcare for the municipality. Most of those who received CFC stayed home a couple of months longer. Design The municipalities are free within limits to design the CFC programme as they wish. However, the homepages of the municipalities that have introduced or are planning to introduce a scheme demonstrate that the design is very similar in all municipalities. For example, all municipalities offer the maximum allowance, that is, 3000 SEK (about 300 euros) and the vast majority offer it for children between 1 and 3 years of age. Six out of 95 municipalities offer a CFC allowance for children between 1 and 2 years of age.10 Interestingly, one of those is Jönköping, a stronghold of the Christian Democrats in Sweden. One municipality offers CFC for children between 1 and 2.5 years of age, another between 1.5 and 3 years of age and a third between 15 months and 3 years of age.11 Some municipalities demand that the period for which to apply for CFC allowance should not be below a certain number of months, mostly two months, but limits of three or four months are also mentioned. The motive given is that the municipality needs some time to find a place for the child in publicly financed childcare when the CFC period expires.

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In the majority of municipalities it is possible for the parents to share the CFC allowance, at least if they live in the same municipality, but in most cases also if they live in different municipalities. Even though central government encouraged the municipalities to allow parents to use CFC allowance half-time, few municipalities mention this option on their home pages. According to information from the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions most municipalities do only offer CFC allowances full-time. The reasons for this are probably that the costs will not be much lower if children reduce their time in publicly financed childcare from full- or longer part-time to half-time and it is also more cumbersome to administer. One interesting question not specifically addressed on most municipalities’ home pages, is what happens to the childcare of older siblings. If the parents receive CFC allowance and still work or study, then older siblings should have a right to publicly financed childcare. Children whose parents are on parental leave with a smaller child have a right to publicly financed childcare for 15 hours a week. The question is if children whose parents receive CFC allowance also have a right to be in publicly financed childcare 15 hours a week. Few municipalities comment on this, which likely means that children of parents receiving CFC allowance for another child should be treated in the same way as children to parents on parental leave with another child, that is, the older sibling has a right to 15 hours of childcare with pay for 1–2-year-olds, but without pay for 3–5-year-olds, while children in after-school care do not have such rights. The few municipalities that do comment on this state that older siblings are allowed to be in publicly financed childcare 15 hours a week. In some of the municipalities this seems to be the case for all pre-school children, in others only for those who have a right to free universal pre-school 15 hours a week, that is, the 3–5-year-olds. This means that the situation is different from Finland, where parents also receive allowances for older children and some municipalities require that in order to be eligible for municipal supplement in the CFC allowance that all the children under school age in the family are cared for at home (see Chapter 4 this volume). A few municipalities point out that schoolchildren do not have a right to after-school care if a parent receives CFC allowance. Some also point out that a parent can be denied CFC allowance if the family has an outstanding childcare debt to the municipality.

POTENTIAL RECIPIENTS OF CFC It is important to assess who the potential users of CFC are. It is not a benefit for every family with small children. At the most general level it can

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Table 5.2

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Form of care for children 1–3 years of age, number of children and share of children, 2005

Form of Care

Number

Share (%)

Municipality pre-school Private pre-schoola Family daycare Private solutions At home Of which with parent on parental leave parents take turns unemployed parent parent long-term sick parent at home Other Sum

169 258 32 547 18 609 4 593

63 12 7 2 16 11 3 1 1 0.3 0.3 100

29 935 7 465 1 551 3 871 860 799 269 487

Note: a. Private pre-schools are run privately but funded by tax money. Source:

Ds 2007:52 Table 2, p. 38.

only be used by the inhabitants in the municipalities that have introduced such schemes. There are also other kinds of eligibility conditions involved, which will be discussed later. But let us start by investigating where the children aged 1–3 years were before the CFC schemes were initiated in 2008. Table 5.2 shows that 75 per cent of the children were in pre-school and 9 per cent in family day care, that is, 84 per cent of the children were in publicly financed childcare.12 It should be pointed out that there is a big difference between 1-year-olds and 2-year-olds. In 2005, 46 per cent of 1-year-olds were in publicly financed childcare, while the corresponding figure for 2-year-olds was 88.5 per cent (Skolverket, 2006, Tables 1:4 and 1:11 B). The table also shows that 16 per cent of the children were cared for at home; of these 11 per cent were with parents on parental leave. In this category too there is a big difference between the 1-year-olds, where probably more than half were still at home with a parent on parental leave, while the great majority of the 2-year-olds were in publicly financed childcare. For 3 per cent of the children the parents took turns taking care of them, 1 per cent had an unemployed parent and another 1 per cent had a parent who was long-term sick and less than 0.5 per cent had a parent at home. In the municipalities where a CFC scheme has been introduced, the potential recipients of CFC allowance can be divided into four categories, which will be discussed below:

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parents who may not receive CFC allowance because of the limitations in the regulations; parents who may receive CFC allowance without changing their childcare arrangement; parents who choose both CFC allowance and employment; parents who choose CFC instead of publicly financed childcare and also stay home with the child and are not employed.

The only studies found concerning today’s CFC in Sweden are two papers (Andersson, 2007; Moberg, 2008). Both were written before the CFC allowance was in place. The papers have economic theory about time allocation as their point of departure. The only restrictions mentioned in these models are a time restriction and a budget restriction. However, as far as CFC is concerned there are also other restrictions, especially in relation to other allowances. CFC allowance cannot be given to a parent if she/he or her/his spouse/partner, for the same month or part of that month receives: parental allowance, unemployment benefit, activity or development allowance (for persons participating in labour market programmes), sickness or rehabilitation allowance after more than 365 days, sickness allowance directly after a period of receiving unemployment benefit, retirement pension, elderly support or introductory allowance for refugees and some other migrants (Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting, 2008). The reason given for these restrictions is that a combination of CFC allowance and these benefits could lead to inactivity and poverty traps, that is, the Swedish cash-for-childcare scheme tries to take into consideration the consequences of the schemes for the labour market situation among the women who use them. But this also means that quite a large number of people may not apply for and receive the allowance in question. We do not know how common this is among mothers with children aged 1–3 years and their partners, but as shown in Table 5.2, in 2005 11 per cent of the children were taken care of by parents on parental leave and 1 per cent by parents who were unemployed; the parents of these children could not have received CFC allowance if there had been such a programme. There are also children with unemployed parents or parents on parental leave among the children in publicly financed childcare, since they have a right to a place for 15 hours a week for a fee. Whether the 1 per cent of children taken care of by a parent who was long-term sick could receive CFC depends on how long the parent had been sick. If she/he had been sick less than a year it would be possible, but not if it was more than one year. Today, when unemployment is rising fast, it might be risky to use a CFC allowance. For example, a woman in receipt of CFC allowance lost it when her husband became unemployed (Västnytt, 2009).

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Some parents are not able to receive cash-for-childcare allowance because they themselves or their partners receive the benefits mentioned above. On the other hand, there are also parents who will have a so-called windfall gain. They can receive CFC allowance even if they do not change their childcare arrangement (which seen from the point of view of the municipalities is a deadweight loss) (Smålandsnytt, 2008; Sydnytt, 2008; Tvärnytt, 2008). The benefit can then be interpreted as a monetary compensation for not using publicly financed childcare. In 2005 this category consisted of the parents who had private childcare solutions (2 per cent), children whose parents took turns in taking care of the children (3 per cent), at-home parents (0.3 per cent) and possibly others (0.3 per cent) and additionally those parents who received sickness pay for less than one year.13 This means that about 6–7 per cent of the children had parents whose incomes would have increased if there had been a CFC allowance at that time without any change in their childcare arrangements or more time being spent with the children. An example of parents taking turns is when the father works evenings and weekends, while the mother works daytime (Värmlandsnytt, 2009), or the father works daytime and the mother works by-the-hour evenings and nights in the care sector (Sydnytt, 2008; Västnytt, 2008) or the mother studies and the father is employed (Östnytt, 2008). In an inquiry in a municipality people were asked what the parents would have done if they had not been able to apply for CFC. Around half replied that they would have stayed at home anyway, the other half that the child would have started pre-school earlier (Svenska Dagbladet, 2009f). Another kind of windfall gain is related to parental allowance. The Swedish parental leave and allowance are very flexible. It is therefore quite common that especially mothers do not use parental allowance all days in a week but do stay home all days, which means that they can be on parental leave for a longer period of time, but that their income will be lower. However, after the introduction of CFC it is no longer necessary to ‘save’ days in that way. Instead the mother can use the parental allowance every day in the week and then at the end use the CFC allowance. This may mean that mothers are not at home longer than earlier, but receive a higher income (ABC-nytt, 2008b), especially since in order to be able to receive CFC the caretaker has first to use 250 parental allowance days. Some parents can apply for CFC allowance but will not receive it since it is not possible to combine it with certain other payments. Other parents can apply for the benefit in question and receive it without changing their childcare arrangement in any way, and a third category is parents who receive CFC, but continue to be employed as usual. This may be the category that has arranged private solutions (2 per cent of the children) by

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hiring a daily carer. This can also be considered a windfall gain and as a compensation for not using publicly financed childcare. Most parents have to choose between CFC and publicly financed childcare and thereby also between staying at home with the child and employment. This is the fourth and largest category. In economic theory such decisions are often seen as a choice within the household. It is usually assumed that the woman is more productive and has a comparative benefit in domestic work and care work and men in work in the labour market, which leads to a specialization by the women in home production and men in market production (Becker, 1993). Feminist economists have pointed out that specialization means a risk, especially for women (Borschini et al., 2005, p. 13). If there is a divorce, the woman who has specialized in domestic and care work will be at a disadvantage in the labour market. She may also lose in negotiation and decision-making power concerning economic decisions in the family (Blau et al., 1998, pp. 43–4).

CONSEQUENCES There is so far no official data about how many will use CFC allowance. But in the governmental bill it was predicted that about one-third of the municipalities would introduce such schemes, which is the share that actually today have introduced cash-for-care (Prop. 2007/08:149, p. 13). It was also predicted that 15 per cent of the households with children in pre-school would exchange this for a CFC allowance. If this does indeed happen it will mean a big drop in the employment rate of mothers with preschool children. In 2008, 81.2 per cent of married/cohabiting mothers with children aged 1–2 years were employed, but only 58.3 per cent of single mothers (Statistics Sweden, 2009). The National Institute of Economic Research (Konjunkturinstitutet) (2008, p. 102) forecasts that it is likely that the CFC allowance will lead to a reduction mainly in women’s labour supply. They believe that it may in the long run lead to considerably lower employment and working time for women. The first impression, however, according to newspaper articles and television programmes, is that the interest among parents in CFC is low. A survey of the situation in autumn 2008 conducted by Swedish Television showed that every 60th family that could apply for cash-for-care had done so. This was much lower than the estimation of the government, which was every seventh family (Dagens Samhälle, 2008). Some examples taken from television news programmes and newspapers also illustrate this. In Linköping in autumn 2008, 71 children had a CFC allowance, which was 1.5 per cent of the potentially eligible children (Östnytt, 2008). In the

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municipality of Falkenberg it was estimated before the CFC scheme was introduced on 1 January 2009 that it would be paid out for around 100 children, but in August 2009 the number was 53 children and the level remained steady over the following months. There are around 830 children in the relevant age group, which means that about 6 per cent of the children are at home with CFC (Hallands Nyheter, 2009). In Uppsala, the politicians hoped that 1000 children would use the allowance, but only 150 did so (ABC-nytt, 2008c). In Sollentuna it was estimated that 300–350 families would apply, but only 17 did so (Dagens Nyheter, 2008). At the beginning of 2009 only 2 per cent of eligible families applied for the allowance in Stockholm (Svenska Dagbladet, 2009b). However, in September 2009 about 7 per cent of the children had received CFC, in many cases only for a couple of months (Svenska Dagbladet, 2009e). In Östermalm, a high-income area in Stockholm, 6–7 per cent of eligible children had received CFC (Östermalmsnytt, 2009). Interestingly enough, in this high-income area, almost 25 per cent of the recipients of CFC allowance are men. Telephone consultations with 20 municipalities in September 2009 revealed that around 5 per cent of the parents had received CFC and 90 per cent of the recipients were women (Svenska Dagbladet, 2009g).14 Even if cash-for-childcare as such is gender neutral, the use of the benefit is strongly gendered. All evidence shows that the recipients of CFC consist of at least 90 per cent women and the number of days men will take will be minimal. This can be compared with the use of parental allowance. Of all the recipients of parental allowance 56 per cent were women and 44 per cent men. Of all the parental allowance days mothers used 79 per cent and men 21 per cent in 2007 (Statistics Sweden, 2008, p. 44). The use of parental allowance, however, is unequally distributed between different groups. When both the mother and the father have a university education, then the use by fathers is highest. Situation in the labour market is also important. Foreign-born fathers use fewer parental allowance days than Swedish-born fathers. The two papers (Andersson, 2007; Moberg, 2008) mentioned above, use economic theory and their conclusion is that not only will women be the main users of CFC, but also that it is likely that especially women with low wages will use it, since their opportunity cost is lower than for women with high wages (see also Chapters 3, 4 and 6 this volume). Their economic situation will deteriorate in the short and in the long run and they risk a weaker position in relation to their spouses since they will become economically dependent on them. In Finland fewer than 10 per cent of men have used the CFC allowance, while more than half of the mothers stay at home until the child is 2 years old. A majority have a low educational level, have had temporary employment and difficulties returning to the labour market after

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the leave (Svenska Dagbladet, 2008b). In Norway, as shown in Chapter 6, of those who use the allowance, 90 per cent are mothers and 10 per cent fathers. Immigrants use it more than non-immigrants, mothers with low education and low employment rates use it more than other mothers, mothers who work evenings or night-shifts more than mothers who work in daytime and mothers in households with a sole breadwinner husband and single mothers more than mothers in dual breadwinning families. It has also been shown that the parental allowance contributes to maintaining and reinforcing the inequalities associated with gender segregation in the labour market and gender wage gaps (Jansson et al., 2003, Diagram 4.2; OECD, 2005; see also Chapter 3 this volume). CFC means that some women will be away from the labour market even longer. Additionally, the use of CFC may actually mean that fathers spend less time with their children, because if the mother stops working and instead receives cashfor-childcare allowance, the father may have to work more in order to compensate for the loss of income. Specialization means accentuating the gender division of labour and long absences from the labour market reduce human capital and leads to negative consequences for employment, career and earnings. It might also mean growing risks of unemployment and insecure working conditions, which in turn might mean higher risks of child poverty, especially after a divorce. Immigrant women, who have more difficulties in entering the labour market and have lower earnings than Swedish-born women, can possibly also be expected to apply for CFC (see Chapter 6 on the situation in Norway). We do not know if this is the case, but there are some signs to suggest this. For example, in the Stockholm area few parents were interested when CFC became available (Dagens Nyheter, 2008), but there were exceptions: Södertälje, Haninge and Rinkeby-Kista. All three municipalities have a high proportion of immigrants. A later investigation by a newspaper showed that the interest in CFC is greater in the poorer suburbs with many immigrants than the wealthier parts of Stockholm (Svenska Dagbladet, 2009e). But if we look at the inner city then the use of CFC is greater in the wealthiest part than in other parts, whether it is used for hiring au pairs or if the parents stay home with their child is not known. In Linköping, out of 235 applicants 28 per cent came from families with a non-Swedish background, which is above their share of the population, and 72 per cent were of Swedish origin (Linköpings Tidning, 2009). However, others are surprised at the small number of immigrant women applying for CFC allowance and have suggested lack of information as a possible reason (Västnytt, 2009). Another cause could be that they are less often entitled to CFC since they frequently receive unemployment benefit, sickness allowance and so on.

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There might also be other reasons for parents ‘choosing’ cash-forchildcare benefits. In Uppsala, where not all children applying for a place in publicly financed childcare could have one, the parents were told that they could apply for CFC, that is, in this case cash benefit was offered instead of a place in publicly financed childcare, at least until a place became available (ABC-nytt, 2008c). Mothers also say that a lack of a place in publicly financed childcare or in a chosen pre-school is the reason why they have used CFC for a while until the child got a place in the chosen pre-school (Sydnytt, 2009). The municipalities are obliged to supply a place in publicly financed childcare within three to four months. But according to the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket, 2009) the number of municipalities that do not manage to supply a place in childcare within this time limit has increased. Of 290 municipalities, 42 were unable to guarantee a place within the time limit in March 2009, which was three times as many as in September 2008. Whether this has any relation to the launching of CFC schemes is not known. It seems that the municipalities in general concentrate admissions in autumn rather than spring. However, the number of applications may also be a result of the parents seeing CFC as a possibility to prolong the summer. A large proportion of the mothers, who used the allowance for a short period of time, used it only during the summer months and in the autumn the child starts pre-school (ABC-nytt, 2008a; Svenska Dagbladet, 2008a). Some childcare centres close down during the summer and the children have to attend another childcare centre or then the regular staff is on vacation and is replaced by temporary staff and parents may therefore prefer to wait until the childcare centre is ‘back to normal’. The introduction of CFC schemes may mean that the pre-school year will be more similar to the school year. There are differences in how much mothers in the different parts of Stockholm use the childcare allowance. It seems as if mothers in the parts of the city with many immigrants use the childcare allowance for a long time, a year or more, while mothers in other parts of the city use it for much shorter periods of time, maybe a couple of months to prolong the summer holiday and until the pre-schools really start in autumn.15 To summarize, there is one fairly large group that cannot receive CFC because they receive other benefits related to unemployment and sickness. Other parents can receive an allowance without changing their arrangements, which means that for the municipalities there are increasing costs, but no savings. A third category consists of parents who choose both CFC allowance and employment using the allowance to arrange private childcare solutions. This is probably the smallest category. In these three categories the objective of the CFC that parents should spend more time with

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their children is not fulfilled. However, in the fourth category this may be the case. In this group parents have to make an active choice between employment and using publicly financed childcare or cash benefit and staying at home taking care of the child. How many parents will receive CFC is not known today, but initially the interest was low. However, this may change when more parents have found out how to use it in their own interests, for example by making the summer holiday longer.

CONCLUSIONS CFC schemes have been on the political agenda in Sweden ever since World War II. Until the 1970s the Moderate Party took a firm stand against CFC, while the Social Democratic Party was in favour of it. In the 1970s their positions were reversed, the Social Democratic Party against it and the Moderate Party supporting it. At first CFC was introduced in 1994 by a coalition government consisting of the Moderate, the Liberal, the Centre and Christian Democratic Parties. However, when the Social Democratic Party returned to power the same year they discontinued CFC. In 2006 the so-called Alliance, consisting of the Moderate, the Liberal, the Centre and the Christian Democratic Parties, came back to power and on the 1 July 2008 the municipalities were given the option to introduce CFC schemes, but with several limitations. By August 2009 about one-third of the municipalities had introduced such schemes; almost all of these were municipalities where the parties belonging to the Alliance are in power, while municipalities governed by Opposition parties have not initiated such programmes. The main argument against CFC is that women will use it, but not men; it will therefore be a trap for women, which strengthens a traditional gender division of labour with women doing unpaid domestic and caring work and men paid work. Women’s situation in the labour market weakens and negative effects on career prospects and wages increase. Because of statistical discrimination this may not only have consequences for the women who do use an allowance, but for all women, since the employers know that women use CFC allowances, but few men do so. The CFC therefore has a negative effect on another stated political goal, gender equality. The main argument for the introduction of CFC is that parents should be able to spend more time with their children. Some parents are not eligible to receive the benefit, because of the limitations in the schemes. They will not as a result of the introduction of CFC schemes spend more time with their children. On average the people making up this category

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probably have lower incomes, lower education and the share of foreignborn is higher than their share in general population. Other parents can use the CFC without changing their childcare arrangements. The CFC will then rather be a compensation for not using publicly financed childcare. This is the case for parents with private solutions, maybe with the help of an au pair, or parents who take turns caring for the children, mothers who are already at home with their children, those who receive sickness payment for less than a year combined with CFC, those who no longer need to ‘save’ the parental allowance days can therefore be on leave as long as before, but now with a higher income, those who do not have a place in publicly financed childcare or in the pre-school they have chosen but have to wait a while and instead are offered a CFC allowance. Neither will this category spend more time with their children as a result of the introduction of cash-for-childcare schemes. This is also true of those parents who combine CFC allowance with employment. The category where we will find parents who will spend more time with their children includes those parents who choose CFC and staying home with the child instead of employment and publicly financed childcare. At this time we do not know how many mothers will make this choice and for how long. But it may prove fairly common that the summer is prolonged by a month or two until pre-school really starts, around the same time when school starts. It can be assumed that these mothers will spend more time with their children than they otherwise would have. A weakness with these conclusions is that they are based on information collected very soon after the option to implement CFC schemes. Hence, this chapter only captures impressions from the media and very short-run effects. Subsequent analyses, which will have better and more data and information, might therefore reach other conclusions. However, one conclusion that will not change is that the overwhelming majority of the recipients of CFC will be women, very few will be men, and most of all, women with a weak position in the labour markets since they are most motivated to use the benefit since the use is predetermined by existing gender and class divisions. Yet not only economic conditions are important when mothers decide whether to use the CFC; different cultural identities and practices around what is regarded as the proper way to care for children also matter. If CFC supports women’s commitments, there are risks of growing inequalities between women and men and between socioeconomic groups. Women will spend less time in the labour market and more time with the children, while for fathers the introduction of CFC may actually mean that they will spend more time at work and less time with their children. One reason for this is that if the mother stops working and instead receives

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an allowance then the father may have to work more hours in order to compensate for the loss of income. Another reason is that it may be more difficult for the father to take parental leave if the mother is first using parental leave and then CFC. When will the father then take parental leave and what will the mother do then? Care responsibilities and rights that have, albeit slowly, moved from mothers to fathers and encouraged men to develop their caring potential, will revert to mothers and make inroads on children’s right to be cared for by both parents. The specialization between mothers and fathers in families where CFC is used for a long time may not only mean a trap for women but also a trap for men and children.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

In Swedish ‘vårdnadsbidrag’. At that time the Moderate Party was called the Right Party. At that time named the Conservative Party. At that time named the Communist Party. A gender-neutral language is used, which means that there is also a ‘mother month’, however in reality it is a question of a ‘father month’. This is the only study I have been able to find concerning this CFC. In Norway one effect of the introduction of CFC is a shift from full- to part-time employment; this will probably not be the case to any greater extent in Sweden since in most muncipalities this option is not available. There is also criticism against the gender equality bonus: the rules are too difficult to understand, which undermines the social security system, the money is not paid out when the money is needed, that is, when the parent uses the parental leave, but long afterwards and there is a big risk that the measure will be ineffective. There are no official data published by Statistics Sweden on how many municipalities have introduced CFC schemes. However, in a journal published by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions – Dagens Samhälle (Today’s Society) on 30 March 2009 – the municipalities that had introduced CFC schemes and those who had not were presented. We have followed up this list by searching for information about CFC schemes in the municipalities on the Internet. This information has been combined with information about which party holds the power in a municipality. In this last mentioned aspect we have used the party affiliation of the chairperson in the municipality executive board to decide which political bloc the municipality belongs to, the Alliance (Moderate, Liberal, Centre and Christian Democratic Parties) or the Opposition (the Social Democratic, the Leftist and the Green Parties). It should be pointed out that the parties that here are called the Opposition are in power in many municipalities. The number and share of municipalities that have introduced cashfor-care schemes at different times and up until the end of August 2009 are presented in Table 5.1 together with the party affiliation of the chairperson in the municipality executive board. Eksjö, Halmstad, Jönköping, Markaryd, Vimmerby and Habo. Västervik, Mölndal and Örebro respectively. In 1996 the responsibility for public childcare was transferred from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health to the Ministry of Education and Research and a special curriculum has been developed for children 1–5 years of age. At the same time the terminology changed from nursery/daycare to pre-school. In Norway, the use of CFC allowance is strongly associated with mothers’ working time

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14. 15.

87

arrangements. The take-up rate among mothers who worked evening or nightshifts was 96 per cent and among mothers working ordinary daytime 57 per cent in 2002. Mothers in households with a sole breadwinning husband are also more likely to use the benefit (86 per cent) (see Chapter 6 this volume). See Chapter 6 for a discussion about the short- and long-term consequences in Norway. In Linköping the shortest period to be applied for is two months; 16 per cent of those applied for two months and 8 per cent for 23 months, which is the maximum time; on average the time period is 8.3 months per child (Linköpings Tidning, 2009). There is no information if there are differences between foreign- and Swedish-born applicants.

REFERENCES ABC-nytt (2008a), ‘Vårdnadsbidrag förlänger sommarledighet’, SVT, 1 September. ABC-nytt (2008b), ‘Få lockas av vårdnadsbidrag’, SVT, 16 September. ABC-nytt (2008c), ‘Brist på förskoleplatser i Uppsala’, SVT, 1 December. Abukhanfusa, Kerstin (1987), Piskan och moroten: om könens tilldelning av skyldigheter och rättigheter i det svenska socialförsäkringssystemet 1913–1980, Stockholm: Carlsson. Andersson, Elvira (2007), Reformer av familjepolitiken – förväntade effekter på tidsallokering och jämställdhet, Nationalekonomiska institutionen, Ekonomihögskolan, Lunds universitet. Becker, Gary (1993), A Treatise on the Family, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Blau, Francine D., Marianne A. Ferber and Anne N. Winkler (1998), The Economics of Women, Men and Work, 3rd edition, Upper Saddle, River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Borschini, Anne D., Christina Jonung and Inga Persson (2005), Genusperspektiv på nationalekonomi, Stockholm: Högskoleverket. Dagens Nyheter (2008), ‘Vårdnadsbidrag lockar få familjer’, 3 November. Dagens Samhälle (2008), ‘Få ansöker om vårdnadsbidrag’, Kommunernas och Landstingens tidning, 26 November. Dagens Samhälle (2009), ‘LISTA: Kommunerna som infört vårdnadsbidrag’, Kommunernas och Landstingens tidning, 30 March. Ds 2007:52 (departemental series), Vårdnadsbidrag. Familjepolitisk reform, Stockholm: Socialdepartementet. Hallands Nyheter (2009), ‘53 barn får vårdnadsbidrag i Folkenberg’, 20 August. Hatje, Ann-Katrin (1999), Från treklang till triangeldrama. Barnträdgården som ett kvinnligt samhällsprojekt under 1980–1940-talen, Lund: Historiska Media. Hinnfors, Jonas (1992), Familjepolitik: samhällsförändringar och partistrategier 1960–1990, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. Jansson F., E. Pylkkänen and L. Valck (2003), En jämställd försäkring?, SOU 2003:36, Stockholm: Fritzes. Klinth, Roger (2002), Göra pappa med barn: den svenska pappapolitiken 1960–95, Umeå: Boréa. Konjunkturinstitutet (2008), Konjunkturläget, Stockholm. Linköpings Tidning (2009), ‘Vårdnadsbidraget en flopp’, 20 August. Lundqvist, Åsa (2007), Familjen i den svenska modellen, Umeå: Boréa. Moberg, Ylva (2008), Vårdnadsbidraget – kvinnofälla eller valfrihetsre-

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form? Ett jämställdhetsperspektiv, Kandidatuppsats, Ekonomihögskolan, Nationalekonomiska institutionen, Lunds universitet. Newsdesk (2008), ‘Riksdagen debatterar vårdnadsbidraget och jämställdhetsbonusen’, 19 May. OECD (2005), Babies and Bosses – Reconciling Work and Family Life, Vol. 4: Canada, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom, Paris: OECD. Östermalmsnytt (2009), ‘Vårdnadsbidrag ingen succé på Östermalm’, 22–28 August. Östnytt (2008), ‘Bara tre kommuner har infört vårdnadsbidrag’, SVT, 25 November. Prop. 2007/08:149, Ledighet med vårdnadsbidrag, Stockholm: Arbetsmarknadsdepartementet. Skolverket (2006), Barn, elever och personal – Riksnivå, Part 2. 2006, Stockholm. Skolverket (2009), ’42 kommuner klarar inte förskolans platsgaranti’, press release, Stockholm, 31 March. Smålandsnytt (2008), ‘Vårdnadsbidrag går bra i Vaggeryd’, SVT, 25 November. Statistics Sweden (2008), På tal om kvinnor och män 2008, Stockholm. Statistics Sweden (2009), AKU Arbetskraftsundersökningen 2008, Stockholm. Statsrådsberedningen (2008), The Swedish Reform Programme for Growth and Jobs 2008–2010, Stockholm. Svenska Dagbladet (2008a), ‘Säsongsbetonat vårdnadsbidrag’, 31 August. Svenska Dagbladet (2008b), ‘Finland ser över ojämlikt bidrag’, 20 September. Svenska Dagbladet (2008c), ‘Järfälla backar om vårdbidrag’, 9 October. Svenska Dagbladet (2009a), ‘KD-kvinnor tror mer på barndagar’, 30 January. Svenska Dagbladet (2009b), ‘Få pappor vill ha vårdnadsbidrag’, 30 January. Svenska Dagbladet (2009c), ‘M-politiker vill ge pappalediga bonus’, 16 March. Svenska Dagbladet (2009d), ‘Kd redo bygga ut vårdnadsbidrag’, 5 September. Svenska Dagbladet (2009e), ‘Stor spridning av vårdnadsbidraget’, 5 September. Svenska Dagbladet (2009f), ‘Vårdnadsbidrag gav liten extra kostnad’, 7 September. Svenska Dagbladet (2009g), ‘Få familjer vill ha vårdnadsbidrag’, 20 September. Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting (2008), Kommunalt vårdnadsbidrag, Stockholm. Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting (2009), Kommunstyren 2006–2010 och maktskiften vid valet 17 september 2006 samt maktskiften sedan valet 2006, Stockholm. Sydnytt (2008), ‘Svalt intresse för nya vårdnadsbidraget’, SVT, 25 November. Sydnytt (2009), ‘Skåne. Fler söker vårdnadsbidrag’, SVT, 23 July. Sydsvenskan (2008), ‘Stor tvekan om vårdnadsbidraget’, 20 May. Tvärnytt (2008), ‘Sala blev först med vårdnadsbidrag’, SVT, 1 September. Umeå kommun (2008), Inget vårdnadsbidrag inom barnomsorgen i Umeå, available at: http://www.umea.se/umeakommun/arkivforumlankar/nyheter/ingetvar dnadsbidraginombarnomsorgeniumea.5.5df2398c11695225c37800057476.html; accessed 20 April 2010. Värmlandsnytt (2009), ‘Vårdnadsbidrag i Säffle’, SVT, 3 April. Västerbottennytt (2009), ‘Slopat vårdnadsbidrag skapar oro’, SVT, 25 March. Västnytt (2008), ‘Vårdnadsbidrag kan bli kvinnofälla’, SVT, 23 September. Västnytt (2009), ‘Vårdnadsbidrag dåligt utnyttjat’, SVT, 27 February. Widman, Marit (2006), Vem utnyttjar vårdnadsbidrag? En studie av uttaget av vårdnadsbidraget 1994, D-uppsats, Nationalekonomiska institutionen, Uppsala universitet.

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6.

Cash-for-care in Norway: take-up, impacts and consequences for mothers Marit Rønsen and Ragni Hege Kitterød

INTRODUCTION Since the early 1970s, the main pillar of childcare policies in Norway, as in other Nordic welfare states, has been the state-sponsored provision of high-quality daycare centres. This was especially motivated by the rising employment of mothers, and universal coverage has been the aim although this has not yet been fully achieved in all Nordic countries (Leira, 2006). However, in the early 1990s, another powerful issue appeared on the political scene: parental choice. Cash benefits to parents who stay at home and look after the children themselves or who use other non-subsidized care is one expression of this policy focus. After a heated public debate, a cash benefit for childcare (the so-called cash-for-care, CFC) benefit was introduced in Norway in 1998–99 by the then centre coalition government.1 All parents of 1–2-year-olds who do not use state-sponsored childcare are entitled to the benefit, and children in part-time care may receive a reduced benefit proportional to stipulated weekly attendance. The benefit is a monthly, tax-free flat-rate payment, which, at the time of its introduction, was NOK3000, roughly equivalent to the state subsidy for a place in a daycare centre. Today (2009) the monthly amount is NOK3303 (approximately EUR390). The stated purpose of the reform was threefold: (1) to enable parents to spend more time with their children, (2) to give parents more flexibility in their work and childcare choices, and (3) to distribute public transfers more equally between users and non-users of subsidized care. Proponents of the reform further argued that a cash benefit for care would upgrade the status of women’s traditional unpaid work and lead to greater income equality between working and non-working mothers (Ministry of Children and Family Affairs, 1998; Ellingsæter, 2003). Opponents of the reform warned of several possible negative effects, mainly related 89

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to setbacks in gender equality, a reduction of female labour supply and a shift in childcare demand from high-quality professional daycare to more informal arrangements based on private childminders. Fears were also expressed that the building of new daycare centres would come to a halt, leading to increased excess demand and longer queues for a daycare places. In order to fulfil the intention of giving parents more flexible work and childcare arrangements, the right to a partial amount for part-time users is regarded as an important means in the Norwegian CFC scheme. Based on a similar reasoning, there is no obligation for parents who claim the benefit to stay at home and care for their children themselves. They are free to buy any other form of childcare as long as it is not publicly subsidized. The reform was introduced in a booming economy, making employment a real option for Norwegian mothers, whereas the choice of childcare was much more restricted due to large surplus demand for subsidized daycare, as we shall see later. Shortly after its introduction, a government-commissioned, large-scale appraisal of the reform concluded, somewhat surprisingly, that the effects were very modest (Baklien et al., 2001). In fact, it was even suggested that the most intriguing question left unanswered by the investigation was why such a large reform had such small effects, and articles have subsequently appeared addressing this question (Ellingsæter, 2003). One weakness with this conclusion was, however, that it was mainly based on data that had been collected soon after the full implementation of the programme. Hence, the evaluation only captured short-run effects. Yet one of the analyses addressing the labour market consequences predicted a fairly substantial reduction in the long-run labour supply of mothers of 1–2-year-olds (Håkonsen et al., 2001), and later analyses substantiate this prediction (Rønsen, 2005, 2009). In this chapter we review the existing evidence of the impact of the Norwegian CFC scheme on mothers’ behaviour and focus especially on changes in their employment activity. For any policy to have effect, however, it must be taken up by the target group, that is, the group eligible for a particular policy must perceive its usefulness and actively choose to participate in the programme (here: receive the benefit and forgo a daycare place if planning on working outside the home). We shall therefore start with an overview of the trends in the take-up rates of the Norwegian CFC benefit and look more closely at some contrasts between users and nonusers of the benefit. Next, we move on to the evaluations of effects in both the short and the somewhat longer run. As mentioned, our main emphasis will be on labour market effects, but since the CFC programme is so closely linked to the childcare sector, we shall also look at the development

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in this area. Finally, we shall discuss issues related to gender equality in the labour market and in the home, and convey some of the present discussions and debates of family-policy reforms in Norway.

TAKE-UP OF THE CFC BENEFIT – TRENDS AND DIFFERENTIALS A common conception in the early 1990s was that parents found themselves in a time squeeze. The Norwegian parental leave had been fairly short until the end of the 1980s, but by 1993 it had been greatly extended to 52 weeks with 80 per cent wage compensation or 42 weeks with full compensation. Nevertheless, the paramount family policy question of the 1990s in Norway was how to give parents more time with their children, and the controversy over the cash-for-care benefit dominated much of the public debate (Ellingsæter and Gulbrandsen, 2007). When it was introduced in 1998, most parents of small children were very aware of the reform, and early figures also suggested that it was a success in the sense that the great majority of eligible parents did indeed choose to receive the benefit. In the spring of 1999, only a few months after the full implementation of the programme, a special survey showed that 76 per cent of children aged 1–2 years used the CFC benefit (Reppen and Rønning, 1999), and in a follow-up survey three years later (spring 2002) this proportion was just a few percentage points lower, 73 per cent (Pettersen, 2003). No more special surveys have subsequently been undertaken, but statistics based on administrative registers show quite a dramatic drop in benefit take-up after about 2002–03.2 By September 2006 parents received cash-for-care for less than half of 1–2-year-old children (48 per cent), and by September 2008 the benefit was used for only about a third of eligible children (34 per cent; NAV – The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration, 2006, 2008). Even if some of this decline is due to a shortening of the statutory benefit period from 24 to 23 months from January 2006, it can only explain a fraction of the substantial drop in take-up rates. To understand why the popularity of the CFC programme has apparently diminished so much over the last few years we must turn to the development of the daycare sector. Daycare centres in Norway may be owned and run either as public or private enterprises, but both forms of ownership receive state subsidies as long as the centre is publicly approved. The expenses for a publicly approved daycare place are shared between the state, the municipalities and the parents, and the owner, that is, the municipality or the private enterprise, sets the price to be paid by the parents.

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Historically, there has been a large unmet demand for daycare places in Norway, and this was also the situation in 1998–99 at the time of the introduction of the CFC reform. In contrast to the other Nordic countries, Norway has been classified together with states that have generous services for older people, but less developed services for children, in particular for children under the age of 3 (Anttonen and Sipilä, 1996). Norwegian childcare services have been legitimated by a social pedagogical child perspective rather than gender equality rationales, and attitudes toward mothers’ employment have been somewhat ambivalent and less positive than, for example, in Sweden and the UK (Leira, 1992; Knudsen and Wærness, 2001). The pedagogical perspective has been further accentuated recently as childcare policies have been moved from the Ministry of Children and Family Affairs to the Ministry of Education and Research. The CFC programme continued Norway’s dualistic family policy, combining dual earner support with traditional breadwinner elements of generous cash transfers to families (Ellingsæter, 2003). The slow expansion in daycare places in the 1990s indicates that parents’ demand for childcare was overshadowed by the paramount policy debate of the 1990s: ‘more time for children’ and ‘parental choice’ (ibid.). Nevertheless, since the late 1980s, ‘full coverage’ of childcare services has been a unified political aim of Norwegian family policy, but childcare was only institutionalized as a right in January 2009.3 The real demand for childcare is usually not known, however. Annual statistics tell us how the coverage rate (the proportion of children in various age groups that are enrolled in daycare institutions) has developed over time, but in countries where spaces have been in short supply, this does not say anything about the demand. Researchers therefore have to turn to surveys to find out more about parents’ demand for childcare. In a special survey in 2002, mothers were asked both whether they had a place in a daycare centre and, if not, whether they had applied or would apply for a place for the coming autumn. According to the responses to these questions, the total demand was estimated to be 70 per cent among mothers of 1-year-olds and 86 per cent among mothers of 2-year-olds (Ellingsæter and Gulbrandsen, 2007). Compared with the coverage rate for 1–2-year-olds, which was only 41 per cent the same year (Statistics Norway, 2003), this survey demonstrated that there was still a substantial unmet demand for childcare in Norway. With the CFC reform in place, the political controversy was put aside for a while, and there was a shift of focus towards more and cheaper daycare services. Traditionally, a daycare place has been relatively expensive in Norway, and around the introduction of the CFC reform the average parental payment in large cities and suburbs was about NOK3500

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(about EUR420) per month, with slightly higher prices for younger than for older pre-school children (Statistics Norway, 1998a). In 2003, the majority opposition pressured the minority centre-right government into an agreement on a reform introducing maximum payment for daycare from May 2004. Thereafter the maximum fee was gradually reduced to NOK2250 (about EUR270) per month for an ordinary full-time place from January 2006, which was inflation adjusted up to NOK2330 (about EUR280) in 2007. Declining prices have certainly increased the demand for childcare, but during the last few years there has also been a lot of emphasis on the expansion of services and building of more daycare centres. Accordingly, the coverage rate has risen substantially to 75 per cent among 1–2-year-olds and 96 per cent among 3–5-year-olds at the end of 2008 (Statistics Norway, 2009), and most of the expansion has consisted of full-time places. Today (August 2009) the Norwegian daycare sector is very close to ‘full coverage’, even if there are still waiting lists for the youngest pre-school children in some municipalities. Evidently, the CFC reform seriously undervalued parents’ unmet demand for childcare and strong preference for a daycare place.4 In a special survey conducted in the spring of 1998, a few months before the introduction of the reform, almost 90 per cent of the mothers of preschool children said that a daycare place for all who want it would be a good family policy initiative. Only 50–60 per cent gave a similar positive assessment of a cash benefit given either to those who did not use a daycare place (as was finally agreed upon) or only to those who would stay at home and take care of the children themselves (Rønning,1998). When asked to rank their preferences, two later surveys in 1999 and 2002 corroborated that daycare was high up on parents’ preference hierarchy (Reppen and Rønning, 1999; Pettersen, 2003). The most popular policy measure in parents’ opinions both in 1999 and 2002, however, was an extension of parental leave to two years, followed by a reduction in stipulated working hours for parents to six hours per day. Because of the large and persistent unmet demand for formal childcare in Norway, the uptake of the CFC benefit has been very closely linked to the availability of daycare places. In recent years, the popularity of the CFC benefit has therefore declined apace with increased availability of subsidized care and reduced parental prices. This is totally different from Finland, where the daycare system was completed in the early years of their CFC reform, and the popularity has remained constant (see Repo, Chapter 4 this volume). In addition, ample opportunities for part-time work on the Norwegian labour market and a booming economy with low unemployment in most of the years following the CFC reform, have

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facilitated the employment of mothers in Norway. This is also different from Finland, where part-time work is scarce and unemployment increased shortly after the full implementation of its CFC programme.

WHO RECEIVES THE CFC BENEFIT? The greatest contrast in benefit take-up is, as expected, between mothers and fathers. In the early years after introduction, only about 5 per cent of the recipients were fathers. This proportion has recently risen somewhat, and at the end of 2008 it had reached about 10 per cent (NAV, 2008). The vast majority of the recipients are thus still women. Soon after its introduction it also became clear that there were large regional differences in benefit take-up with high proportions in the southwest (Agder and Rogaland) and low proportions in and around the metropolitan area (Oslo and Akershus) (Reppen and Rønning, 1999; Pettersen, 2003). This pattern has remained more or less the same since (NAV, 2008), and is likely to be associated with both differences in the provision of childcare services, and in cultural and normative attitudes and values related to motherhood, childrearing and mothers’ employment. Oslo and Akershus, for example, have had a relatively high daycare coverage and constitute a region with more paramount secular and post-modern values, while the south-west is characterized by more traditional and religious values and has had a relatively low daycare coverage (Magnussen et al., 2005). Another noticeable contrast in the take-up of the CFC benefit is that between immigrants and non-immigrants. In the first years after its introduction about 80 per cent of immigrants born in Africa, Asia and South America received the benefit, 5 percentage points or more above the takeup rate among parents born in Norway (Reppen and Rønning, 1999; Pettersen, 2003). Furthermore, the trend has been quite stable among immigrants, leading to larger divergences over the years. Towards the end of 2004, 78 per cent of eligible children of immigrants from the above regions including countries in Eastern Europe and Central America used the CFC benefit as compared with 62 per cent of eligible native Norwegian children (Daugstad, 2006). Also in contrast to the general pattern, the take-up rate for children of the before-mentioned immigrant group is higher in Oslo than in the rest of the country, 84 versus 74 per cent, while the corresponding average take-up rates for all eligible children were 47 and 64 per cent respectively in 2004 (ibid.). It has been suggested that one reason for the contrasting pattern in Oslo is the special composition of the immigrant population in the capital city. Oslo, for example, has a large

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community of immigrants from Pakistan, and this is a group with very high take-up rates, 89 per cent in 2004 (ibid.). Not surprisingly, the take-up rates vary with mothers’ educational level and employment activity. About 80 per cent of eligible children of mothers with primary- or secondary-level education used the benefit during the first few years after the CFC reform, while there was a slight downward trend in the corresponding proportion among mothers with tertiary education, from 68 per cent in 1999 to 62 per cent in 2002 (Reppen and Rønning, 1999; Pettersen, 2003). Mothers who were not employed or who worked very short hours (less than 20 hours per week) had very high takeup rates for their 1–2-year-olds, 85 and 92 per cent respectively in 2002, while mothers who worked full-time or more (35–44 hours per week) used the benefit for about 50 per cent of their children (Pettersen, 2003). The use of the benefit is also strongly associated with mothers’ working time arrangements, and varied from 96 per cent of the children of mothers who worked evening or night-shifts to 57 per cent of the children of mothers who worked regular daytime hours in 2002 (ibid.). Finally, the take-up rates vary with household composition and income. Mothers in households with a sole breadwinning husband are the most likely to use the benefit, even more likely than single mothers who are not gainfully employed (take-up rates of 86 and 77 per cent, respectively). Moreover, employed single mothers have a take-up rate that is very close to mothers in dual breadwinning families (just below 70 per cent in both groups; ibid.). Regarding gross household income, there is no clear linear relationship. The use of the benefit was found to increase with income up to fairly moderate levels (less than NOK400 000 in 2002 prices or about EUR47 000), while it fell in higher-income categories. This is probably because the mother’s income component plays a larger role in households with a relatively high total income, and mothers in such households are more likely to work long hours. As expected, the take-up of the CFC benefit also increases with the number of children below school age in the household. If the mothers had one pre-school child, the benefit was used for about 70 per cent in 2002, whereas it was used for nearly 90 per cent in households with three or more children below school age (ibid.). The take-up rate further decreases with increasing age of the eligible child, from 77 per cent among 1-year-olds to 69 per cent among 2-year-olds in 2002. These associations are closely linked to mothers’ employment activity, as it is a wellestablished finding from labour market research that mothers’ labour supply decreases with the number of children and increases with the age of the youngest child.

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IMPACT EVALUATIONS Prior to its introduction the CFC reform was fiercely debated, and opponents warned of several possible negative effects, mainly related to setbacks in gender equality, a reduction of female labour supply and a shift of childcare demand from high-quality professional daycare to more informal arrangements based on private childminders. However, since cash benefits for care were quite a novelty internationally, except for the introduction of a similar scheme in Finland a few years before, there was little knowledge of the consequences of such programmes. To monitor the development, two sample surveys among parents with pre-school children were therefore conducted, one just before (spring 1998) and the other just after the full implementation of the programme (spring 1999). The surveys were especially designed to collect detailed information of the parents’ choice of childcare modes and uptake of the CFC benefit, their labour market participation and the division of household work.5 Shortly after introduction, the government further commissioned a large-scale appraisal of the reform under the auspices of the Norwegian Research Council.6 The evaluation covered impacts in several areas including mothers’ (and fathers’) employment, parents’ demand for daycare and other modes of childcare, gender equality at home and in the labour market and consequences for children with special needs, among others immigrant children. Somewhat surprisingly, the general conclusion was that the effects were very modest (Baklien et al., 2001). In fact, it was suggested that the most intriguing question left unanswered by the investigation was why such a large reform had such little effect, and subsequent articles have appeared addressing this question (e.g., Ellingsæter, 2003). Yet the target of a more equal distribution of public subsidies among parents of small children was achieved at the moment of implementation, and as long as the behavioural effects are small, this will also contribute to an equalization of income between families (Baklien et al., 2001; Håkonsen et al., 2001). One weakness in the conclusion of small impacts, however, was that it was mainly based on data that had been collected soon after the full implementation of the programme. Hence, the evaluation only captured short-run effects. Moreover, the pre-reform situation was ascertained in a postal survey, whereas the post-reform situation was ascertained by telephone interviews.7 Our main focus in this chapter will be on impacts and consequences for mothers’ employment, where we believe the different methods of sample collection is of minor importance, and where there have also been more follow-up analyses based on newer data (see endnote 5). But let us first turn to impacts in some of the other areas.

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The Daycare Sector One of the consequences of the CFC reform was that it substantially increased the relative price of subsidized daycare, since parents who use that kind of care forgo a sizeable cash benefit. Hence, there were fears that parents would switch from professional care to other more informal arrangements. Consequently, further expansions of the daycare sector could come to a halt, and in the worst case, some centres might even have to close down. In this scenario, it may become even harder to get a place in a daycare centre, and parents could end up having fewer childcare choices instead of more. The development since 1998 has shown these fears to be mainly unwarranted. There was a slight reduction in the coverage rate among 1–2-year-olds in 1998 and 1999, but this was more than compensated for by a similar increase in the attendance of 3–5-year-olds (Statistics Norway, 1999 and 2000). At the end of 2002, the total coverage rate had reached 57 per cent and the rate among 1–2-year-olds was 41 per cent, about the same as in 1997 (Statistics Norway, 1998b, 2003). The use of private childminders had been declining for several years prior to the reform, and the introduction of the CFC programme did not seem to change this downward trend (Ellingsæter and Gulbrandsen, 2007). This is also corroborated by mothers’ stated preferences in the 2002 survey, where about half reported that their preferred mode of care for 1–2-year-olds was professional daycare, while less than 10 per cent would prefer informal care by relatives or private childminders (Pettersen, 2003). Immigrants The integration of immigrants has long been a much debated topic, and daycare centres are seen as an important policy tool in this respect. Fears were therefore expressed that the CFC reform would cause a decline in the number of children of immigrant background in daycare. On the other hand, previous experience had shown that children of immigrants usually did not attend daycare centres before they were 4–5 years old, and this weighed against a significant impact on immigrants (Baklien et al., 2001). Some still argued that fewer children would attend, however, as older pre-school children might not sign up for or withdraw from daycare if their younger siblings were cared for at home due to the CFC reform. As large groups of immigrant mothers are traditionally very home-care oriented and have relatively poor job prospects, the cash benefit would be an important economic transfer that acknowledged and rewarded their more traditional family and cultural values (ibid.).

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One analysis in the evaluation project addressed short-term effects of the CFC reform on the use of daycare services by immigrant parents. The immigrant groups investigated were parents from Pakistan, Somalia and Vietnam living in the metropolitan area, and Kavli (2001) estimated that on average the benefit had reduced the demand in these groups by about 10 per cent. The estimate is based on survey questions on what parents would have done if the CFC reform had not been introduced, and may therefore be regarded as a causal effect. On the other hand, the sample is relatively small with a large non-response, implying that the estimate is quite uncertain. However, judged by later statistics showing persistently high benefit take-up rates among immigrants (see previous section), the initial concerns that the CFC reform would hinder integration are still valid. The Labour Market One of the main goals of the CFC reform was to enable parents to spend more time with their children, and the achievement of this goal rested on the assumption that parents would reduce their employment activity if they were given a cash benefit for care. For those taking care of their own children the cash benefit, together with the savings in childcare expenses, often exceeding the benefit amount, constitutes a significant sum of money. However, since mothers generally earn less than their partners and have a looser attachment to the labour market, it was also reasonable to expect more mothers than fathers to cut down on their labour market work. Consequently, the opponents of the reform warned of large negative effects on mothers’ labour supply, and serious setbacks in gender equality. One of the most surprising results from the initial evaluation was therefore the conclusion that the short-term effects on mothers’ employment were very moderate (Baklien et al., 2001). Nevertheless, some of the analyses included in the evaluation did indicate a certain negative effect. Using data from the regular Labour Force Surveys up to third quarter 2000, Håkonsen et al. (2001) estimated, for example, a significant reduction in the employment rate, while Knudsen (2001) and Rønsen (2001) both reported a noticeable shift from full-time to part-time work based on the special survey data collected in 1998 and 1999. Analyses that appeared after the evaluation corroborated these findings. Investigating the division of paid work among couples based on the 1998 and 1999 survey data, Naz (2004) revealed that mothers did less paid work following the reform, while fathers’ labour supply was not significantly affected. Finally, Schøne (2004) estimated both a reduction in mothers’ employment rate and a decline in annual working hours based on administrative register data up to the end of 2000.

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Table 6.1

99

Employment activity among mothers with children aged 1–2 years 1998

Employed Not employed At work Not at work (on leave) Full-time Part-time Weekly working hours, all mothersa

1999

2002

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

952 281 760 191 375 384 1231

77.2 22.8 79.9 20.1 49.4 50.6 19.0

1291 403 1061 230 468 589 1690

76.2 23.8 82.2 17.8 44.3 55.7 18.3

1207 367 926 281 428 498 1574

76.7 23.3 76.7 23.3 46.2 53.8 17.6

Note: a. Working hours of non-working mothers are set to zero. Source:

Rønsen (2009).

The collective evidence thus indicates that the CFC reform did indeed reduce mothers’ labour supply in the short run, but the impact was fairly moderate with estimates ranging from 3–5 per cent. Since all adaptations take time, it is reasonable to believe that the long-term effects may be larger. Some support in this direction can be found in Håkonsen et al. (2001) who, based on a simulation model and data from 1998, predicted that the long-run labour supply of mothers of 1–2-year-olds might be reduced with about 10 000 woman-years or 18 per cent.8 However, arguments in favour of smaller effects in the long run have also been evinced, mainly based on the reasoning that younger cohorts of women will have a stronger work preference and therefore respond less to cash benefits. When looking at aggregate statistics, the changes in mothers’ employment may seem very moderate, even in the longer run. As shown in Table 6.1, the proportion of employed mothers with children in the eligible age group fell by only 0.5 percentage points from 1998 to 2002, from 77.2 to 76.7 per cent. Further, in the short run (1999), there was no sign of a decrease in the proportion of employed mothers who were ‘at work’, but in the longer run (2002) it fell to 77 per cent. This indicates that a larger proportion of mothers had taken unpaid temporary leave following the expiry of the paid parental leave period. Finally, we notice a shift in the full- and part-time proportions of working mothers. In 1998 almost half the mothers worked full time, by 1999 this had dropped to 44 per cent, but by 2002 it had again risen by a couple of percentage points. The main change in the short run thus seems to be a reduction in full-time work,

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while in the long run both the proportion at work and the full-time proportion had decreased somewhat. However, the above approach does not answer the key question of all impact evaluations: how to identify a causal effect of a certain policy programme? Certainly, a mere comparison of the situation before and after introduction based on some aggregate indicators is too simplistic. In the case of the Norwegian CFC reform, it is, for instance, not possible to establish whether there has been an effect on mothers’ employment just by looking at the time trend of some employment indicators from just before to a few years after the reform. The reason why this approach is too simplistic is, of course, that there may also have been other changes that have affected mothers’ labour supply, for example changes in the demand for labour and in the provision of daycare places. Furthermore, the characteristics of eligible mothers may have changed. In particular, new cohorts of mothers will tend to be better educated, and education is known to be a strong positive determinant of female labour supply. To identify a policy effect it is therefore paramount to control for other observable changes. However, since there may also be changes that we are not able to observe, the ideal analytic approach would be to have a control group. What we are really after is to establish what the labour market outcome would have been for these mothers if the CFC benefit had not been introduced, that is, the counterfactual situation. This is the fundamental problem common to all programme evaluations (Moffit, 2005). In non-experimental research the solution is usually to construct a control group similar to the ‘treatment’ group in all observable characteristics. Under certain conditions, the treatment effect can then be estimated as the difference in outcome between the treatment and the control group. Since the CFC programme was introduced nationwide and simultaneously and for all parents with children of eligible age, it is not possible to construct a control group of mothers with children of the same age at the same time, but who were not entitled to the benefit. In some previous analyses mothers with older pre-school children have been used instead (Håkonsen et al., 2001; Knudsen, 2001; Naz, 2004). This approach presupposes that the trend in employment activity would have been the same among mothers with 1–2-year-olds as among mothers with somewhat older children if the reform had not been introduced, which is not obvious. Besides, the two trends may not be mutually independent. If, for example, there is a decrease in labour supply and childcare demand among mothers with 1–2-year-olds, mothers with older children may find it easier to obtain daycare for their children and thus increase their labour supply. Another possibility is to use a control group of mothers with children aged 1–2 years before the CFC reform was introduced. Applying this

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approach, Schøne (2002 and 2004) finds that the negative effect on labour supply becomes much weaker than when mothers with older children constitute the control group. However, this method also has its weakness, as it presupposes that except for the introduction of the CFC, the underlying employment trend was the same in each period. Other macroeconomic shocks could thus blur the picture. To adjust for this, Schøne introduces yet another control group of mothers with older children that were not eligible for the CFC benefit in each period, and employs a difference-in-differencein-difference estimator to compute the reform effect. This further reduces the estimated decrease in mothers’ labour supply, but only slightly. A triple difference approach as outlined above requires data covering a period long enough to compare changes in labour supply over some years both before and after the reform was introduced. In addition, there is a need for detailed information about the labour market behaviour of parents of pre-school children, and in regular labour force surveys this group tends to be fairly small. Schøne therefore uses Norwegian administrative register data that have long time series and cover the whole population, but the disadvantage is that temporary leaves tend to be underreported and, until quite recently, working hours have only been recorded in broad categories. The three special sample surveys among parents with pre-school children that were collected for the specific purpose of investigating their labour market adaptations and childcare choices before and after the CFC reform (see endnote 5) contain rich details on relevant variables, but the pre-reform situation is only observed at one point in time, shortly before introduction. This precludes a triple-difference approach, and since a double-difference model based on a control group of women with older pre-school children seems to overestimate the reform effect, Rønsen (2009) uses a simple ‘before and after’ approach in a multivariate setting that controls for other changes. If ‘all else’ is equal, the change in labour supply from before to after then represents the reform effect. This presupposes that it is possible to control for ‘all else’, which is, of course, never possible, but the richness of the data goes a long way to ensuring comparability, and factors that are left out are not very likely to distort the estimated effect. The main results reported in Table 6.2 indicate that there have been much larger negative effects on mothers’ labour supply in the long run. In the short run (1999), the estimated reduction in employment probability is not significant at conventional level, while for 2002 there is a clear negative effect. If employed, the probability of being at work had also declined significantly in 2002, implying that the CFC reform had led to an increase in the propensity to be on leave. In the short run, the main effect seemed to be a shift from full- to part-time work, as the likelihood of choosing full-time

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Table 6.2

Parameter estimates of labour supply among Norwegian mothers with children 1–2 years old (standard error in parentheses)a Sequential Logit Model

1999 2002

Tobit Model

Employed vs. not employed

At work vs. not at work

Full-time vs. part-time

Weekly working hoursb

–0.187 (0.099) –0.211 (0.103)

–0.099 (0.144) –0.610 (0.140)

–0.241 (0.104) –0.162 (0.108)

–2.38 (0.93) –3.73 (0.96)

Notes: a. The models also control for various personal characteristics, daycare provision and the business cycle. Coefficients in bold: significant at 5% level. Coefficients in italics: significant at 10% level. b. Working hours of non-working mothers are set to zero. See Rønsen (2009) for further details.

when working was significantly lower in 1999 than in 1998. In 2002, the full-time propensity was not significantly lower than before the reform, indicating that working mothers did not in the long run work shorter hours. Measured as weekly working hours for a random mother regardless of her employment status (employed or non-employed, working or non-working; Tobit model, column 5), the reduction in labour supply is estimated to have been 2.4 hours in 1999 and 3.75 hours in 2002. This is a reduction in the long run of about 11 000 woman-years or about 20 per cent. The substantial drop in mothers’ labour supply in the long run thus indicates that the initial evaluation of the CFC programme needs to be modified. This indicates, on the one hand, that the reform has achieved one of its goals: to enable parents to spend more time with their children, but no analyses have actually studied the degree to which the additional disposable time is used for children.9 Moreover, the potential extra parental time is mainly provided by mothers, as fathers’ labour supply has only been affected very modestly (Rønsen, 2005). The warnings of the opponents therefore also seem justified. The CFC reform preserves traditional gender roles by stimulating a more unequal division of labour between the parents, and has thus a negative effect on another stated political goal, greater gender equality. Impacts on Different Groups of Women So far we have discussed the consequences of the CFC reform for mothers of eligible children in general. However, one question unanswered is whether the CFC reform has had a greater impact on some groups than others. We

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may, for example, hypothesize that mothers with low earning potential and relatively flat earnings profiles over the life-cycle would be more responsive to the CFC reform than other mothers, as the benefit would compensate a larger share of their forgone earnings and they would have less to lose from staying out of the labour market for longer periods. Moreover, mothers with a high-income-earning partner would presumably be more able to afford not to work. Without information on economic variables it is difficult to test these hypotheses directly, but covariates such as educational level and field, sector of work and immigrant background will also reflect mothers’ earnings differentials. Accordingly, one may expect greater labour supply effects of the CFC reform among, for example, mothers with little education, within the health and social sector (consisting mainly of nurses, who have relatively low pay in Norway), and among immigrants. Somewhat surprisingly, the initial evaluation of the CFC reform did not corroborate this assumption. The results rather suggested that in the short run, it was mothers with lower tertiary education who had reduced their labour participation the most, and teachers in particular were singled out as a group with a relatively large decline (Knudsen, 2001; Rønsen, 2001). Most of these differences did not prove significant in formal tests, however. To follow up on the question of differential impacts in different groups, the more long-term analyses by Rønsen (2009) also investigated possible interaction effects between the annual dummies and other covariates. Very few of the interactions turned out to be significant, however, but a couple of results may deserve mention. Employed mothers in the education sector were found to have reduced their propensity to be at work more than mothers in ‘other sectors’ (the reference group) also in the longer run, and, contrary to expectations, mothers of immigrant background seemed to be less negatively affected than non-immigrant mothers. Without further knowledge of the opportunity structure of these mothers, including among others the economic situation of the family, it is difficult to interpret these findings. Moreover, when analysing the total number of weekly working hours supplied to the market (Tobit model, Table 6.2) these interaction effects were not significant. All in all, there is thus little support for the notion that the CFC reform has had a greater impact on the labour supply of some groups of mothers, and in particular that mothers with low education and poor labour market prospects would be affected the most.

CONCLUDING REMARKS The controversy over the cash-for-care (CFC) benefit in Norway dominated much of the family policy debate in the 1990s. The background

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was a situation with a large unmet demand for subsidized daycare, and the proponents pointed to the unfairness of a system that granted large subsidies only to parents who succeeded in getting a daycare place, and to parents’ need for more flexible solutions to their time pressure problems. The opponents, on the other hand, warned of several negative effects, mainly related to setbacks in gender equality, a reduction in female labour supply and a shift of childcare demand from high-quality professional daycare to more informal arrangements. After a heated public debate, the CFC programme was introduced in 1998/99 by the centre coalition government in office, granting a cash benefit to all parents of 1–2-year-olds who do not use state-sponsored childcare. To secure the flexibility of the programme, children in part-time care were granted a reduced benefit proportional to stipulated weekly attendance, and there are no obligations for parents to stay at home and look after the children themselves. They may use the benefit to buy any other form of care as long as it is not publicly subsidized. Partly in response to the fierce debate, the government commissioned a large-scale appraisal of the programme shortly after its introduction. Somewhat surprisingly, the main conclusion was that the impact was very modest, and it was suggested that the most intriguing question left unanswered by the investigation was why such a large reform had such small effects (Baklien et al., 2001). One weakness of this conclusion, however, was that it was mainly based on data collected soon after the full implementation of the programme. Hence, the evaluation only captured short-run effects. In the longer run, the fears that the expansion of the daycare sector would come to a halt has proved unwarranted, but this is mainly due to a renewed political emphasis on more and cheaper daycare services following a compromise between the majority opposition and the minority centreright government in 2003. However, regarding mothers’ employment subsequent research indicates that the conclusion of the initial evaluation was premature. In a subsequent assessment based on more recent data, Rønsen (2005, 2009) finds much larger negative effects on mothers’ labour supply in the somewhat longer run. In the spring of 2002 the employment probability of mothers of 1–2-year-olds had been significantly reduced, and if employed, the ‘at-work’ probability had declined even more substantially, implying that employed mothers were much more likely to be on leave. Measured as weekly working hours for a random mother, the reduction in labour supply in the longer run was estimated to be 3.75 hours, which constitutes an annual reduction of about 11 000 woman-years or about 20 per cent. When addressing the impact of any reform, it is important to bear in

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mind that it is not possible to assess the effect by just looking at the development of some aggregate indicators. If looking at the change in the proportion of mothers of 1–2-years-olds who were employed just before and a few years after the CFC reform, one might, for example, still conclude that the reform has had very little effect, as the employment proportion in this group has been fairly stable. The crucial question in all programme evaluation is rather what would have happened if the reform had not been implemented, that is, what the counterfactual situation would be. Using this as a point of departure, all analyses of the effects of the CFC reform on mothers’ labour supply in Norway have concluded that there has been a negative effect, varying from 3–5 per cent in the short run (e.g., Schøne, 2004) to almost 20 per cent in the longer run (Rønsen, 2009). This implies, on the one hand, that the reform has achieved one of its goals: to enable parents to spend more time with their children. On the other hand, the extra parental time is mainly provided by mothers, as fathers’ labour supply has only been affected very modestly (Rønsen, 2005). The warnings of the opponents therefore also seem justified. The CFC reform preserves traditional gender roles by stimulating a more unequal division of labour between the parents, and has thus a negative effect on another stated political goal, greater gender equality. In conclusion, we should emphasize that the Norwegian CFC reform was introduced at a time when there was a large unmet demand for daycare. Since the impact analyses tried to isolate the effect of the reform given that ‘all else’ is equal, it means that they are contingent upon a situation with strong rationing and high parental prices in the daycare market. In this situation, the effect on mothers’ employment is likely to be stronger than in a situation with full provision and lower daycare prices, as in the present circumstances in Norway. The lesson of the Norwegian CFC reform is therefore that, if introduced in a setting with poor provision of formal daycare, a cash benefit for care may have a substantial negative effect on mothers’ participation in the labour market. Besides negative consequences for the labour market in terms of a smaller supply of labour, longer career interruptions among women may be detrimental to their future job prospects and earning potential. So far few analyses have focused on the longer-term consequences for individual mothers. Yet, in the present political debate, there is often a focus on the persistent wage gap between mothers and fathers, and longer career breaks among mothers have been suggested as one reason for this apparent stagnation in gender equality. In addition, there is a public focus on the negative consequences of the CFC programme for the integration of immigrants, as their women are much more likely to use the benefit to stay at home and take care of their children themselves. A recent OECD

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report maintains, for example, that the CFC benefit boosts the withdrawal of immigrant women from the labour market and recommends that the programme should be abolished (OECD, 2009). The CFC benefit is thus still debated in Norway. Many politicians would like to see it abolished, and would rather spend money, for example, on further extensions of parental leave for fathers, while others would like to increase the benefit and/or restrict it to parents who stay at home to take care of the children themselves. If abolished, the effect on mothers’ employment as a group today may not be so very great due to the vast improvement in daycare provision, but the effect on individual employment careers may still be significant, particularly if coupled with extended parental leave for fathers. If gender equality is to be achieved, as is the stated goal of all Nordic societies, there is therefore a need for policies other than cash benefits for care.

NOTES 1. One-year-olds were included in the programme in August 1998 and 2-year-olds in January 1999. 2. The statistics from administrative registers are based on data extracts from September each year, while the survey data were collected in the spring (March/April). Because of new intakes of children in daycare centres in August, the proportions using daycare will be higher and the proportions using cash-for-care will be lower in the autumn than in the spring. For 1999 and 2002, figures published in Daugstad (2006) indicate, for example, that take-up proportions based on September extracts from the registers will be 2–3 percentage points lower than take-up proportions based on survey data from March/April. 3. The statutory right to a daycare place concerns all children who are 1 year old before the end of August in the year of application. 4. It has also been argued that the CFC reform overlooked the steadily rising preference for employment among mothers as well as the growing diversity in women’s employment practices (Ellingsæter, 2003). In emphasizing equality between different groups of women, policy-makers often conceptualized women as ‘working mothers’ or ‘stayat-home mothers’, which is an outdated distinction. For some time, the choice mothers normally make is not between staying in the labour market or staying at home, but rather between different strategies for combining work and children (ibid.). 5. The 1998 survey was carried out as a postal survey among a representative sample of 3500 mothers with pre-school children aged 0–5 years. Replies were obtained from 2436 mothers, a response rate of 70 per cent. The 1999 survey was conducted as telephone interviews, and the gross sample was about 3900 with a response rate of 86 per cent. To monitor changes in the longer run, a follow-up survey was conducted in the spring of 2002. As in 1999, this was a telephone survey based on a gross sample of about 3900 mothers, and the response rate was 81 per cent. For further documentation, see Rønning (1998), Reppen and Rønning (1999) and Pettersen (2003). 6. The Council commissioned a series of studies and appointed a lead team of researchers who summarized the results and drafted the concluding report (Baklien et al., 2001). 7. This may also hamper assessments of possible changes, but probably the more so for attitudinal questions than for actual behaviours. 8. In a more recent analysis based on a different specification of the simulation model and

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a larger data set, Kornstad and Thoresen (2007) predict a reduction in mothers’ labour supply of about 9 per cent. 9. What we know from previous research is that mothers who use the CFC benefit spend more time with their children than mothers who do not use the benefit (Kitterød, 2003), but these groups may be very different at the outset.

REFERENCES Anttonen, A. and J. Sipilä (1996), ‘European social care services: is it possible to identify models?’, Journal of European Social Policy, 6(2), 87–100. Baklien, B., L. Gulbrandsen and A.L. Ellingsæter (2001), Evaluering av kontantstøtteordningen, Oslo: Norwegian Research Council. Daugstad, G. (2006), Omfang og bruk av kontantstøtte blant barn med ikke-vestlig innvandrerbakgrunn, Report No. 2006/26, Oslo: Statistics Norway. Ellingsæter, A.L. (2003), ‘The complexity of family policy reform. The case of Norway’, European Societies, 5(4), 419–43. Ellingsæter, A.L. and L. Gulbrandsen (2007), ‘Closing the childcare gap: the interaction of childcare provision and mothers’ agency in Norway’, Journal of Social Policy, 36(4), 649–69. Håkonsen, L., T. Kornstad, K. Løyland and T.O. Thoresen (2001), Kontantstøtten – effekter på arbeidstilbud og inntektsfordeling, Report No. 2001/5, Oslo: Statistics Norway. Kavli, H.C. (2001), En dråpe, men i hvilket hav? Kontantstøttens konsekvenser for barnehagebruk blant etniske minoriteter, Oslo: Forskningsstiftelsen Fafo. Kitterød, R.H. (2003), ‘Mødre med 1–2-åringer – mye tid sammen med barna?’, Økonomiske analyser No. 3/2003, 37–48. Knudsen, C. (2001), Hvem lot seg påvirke? Kontantstøtten og mødres yrkesaktivitet, Report No. 11/01, Oslo: NOVA – Norwegian Social Research. Knudsen, K. and K. Wærness (2001), ‘National context, individual characteristics and attitudes on mothers’ employment: a comparative analysis of Great Britain, Sweden and Norway’, Acta Sociologica, 44(1), 67–79. Kornstad, T. and T.O. Thoresen (2007), ‘A discrete choice model for labor supply and childcare’, Journal of Population Economics, 20(4), 781–803. Leira, A. (1992), Welfare States and Working Mothers, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Leira, A. (2006), ‘Parenthood change and policy reform in Scandinavia, 1970s–2000s’, in A.L. Ellingsæter and A. Leira (eds), Politicising Parenthood in Scandinavia. Gender Relations in Welfare States, Bristol: The Policy Press, pp. 27–51. Magnussen, M.-L., T.S. Mydland and G. Kvåle (2005), Arbeid ute og hjemme: Sørlandske mødres valg og vurderinger, Rapport fra prosjektet Likestilling og arbeidsliv på Agder, Fou-rapport No.5/2005. Ministry of Children and Family Affairs (1998), Stortingsproposisjon 53, 1997–98. Moffit, R. (2005), ‘Remarks on the analysis of causal relationships in population research’, Demography, 42(1), 91–108. NAV (2006), ‘Arkiv – Kontantstøtte pr. September 2006’, available at: http:// www.nav.no/805338676.cms; accessed 21 April 2010. NAV (2008), ‘Arkiv – Kontantstøtte pr. September 2008’, available at: http:// www.nav.no/167930.cms; accessed 21 April 2010.

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Naz, G. (2004), ‘The impact of cash-benefit reform on parents’ labour force participation’, Journal of Population Economics, 17(2), 369–83. OECD (2009), Job for Immigrants. Labour Market Integration in Norway, Paris: OECD, available at: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/35/17/43247521.pdf; accessed 21 April 2010. Pettersen, S.V. (2003), Barnefamiliers tilsynsordninger, yrkesdeltakelse og bruk av kontantstøtte våren 2002, Report No. 2003/9, Oslo: Statistics Norway. Reppen, H.K and E. Rønning (1999), Barnefamiliers tilsynsordninger, yrkesdeltakelse og bruk av kontantstøtte våren 1999, Report No. 1999/27, Oslo: Statistics Norway. Rønning, E. (1998), Barnefamiliers tilsynsordninger, yrkesdeltakelse og økonomi før innføring av kontantstøtte, Notater No. 98/61, Oslo: Statistics Norway. Rønsen, M. (2001), Market Work, Child care and the Division of Household Labour, Report No. 2001/3, Oslo: Statistics Norway. Rønsen, M. (2005), Kontantstøttens langsiktige effekter på mødres og fedres arbeidstilbud, Report No. 2005/23, Oslo: Statistics Norway. Rønsen, M. (2009), ‘Long-term effects of cash for childcare on mothers’ labour supply’, LABOUR, 23(3), 507–33. Schøne, P. (2002), ‘Kontantstøtten og effekter på arbeidstilbudet: Hva er en god sammenligningsgruppe?’, Søkelys på arbeidsmarkedet, 19(1), 23–30. Schøne, P. (2004), ‘Labour supply effects of a cash-for-care subsidy’, Journal of Population Economics, 17(4), 703–27. Statistics Norway (1998a), ‘Weekly Statistics’ No. 45. Statistics Norway (1998b) ‘Kindergartens 1997: Official Statistics of Norway NOS C492’. Statistics Norway (1999), ‘Kindergartens 1998: Official Statistics of Norway NOS C583’. Statistics Norway (2000), ‘Kindergartens 1999: Official Statistics of Norway NOS C646’. Statistics Norway (2003), ‘Children in kindergartens’, final figures, 2002, available at: http://www.ssb.no/barnehager_en/arkiv/; accessed 21 April 2010. Statistics Norway (2009), ‘Children in kindergarten’, final figures, 2008, available at: http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/04/02/10/; accessed 21 April 2010.

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7.

Rationalities of cash-for-childcare: the Nordic case Minna Rantalaiho

INTRODUCTION This chapter approaches Nordic cash-for-childcare (CFC) policies from a comparative perspective. CFC policies are often observed as a controversial feature in the context of Nordic welfare states (e.g., Mahon, 2002). For a long time Finland was the only Nordic country with a CFC policy system. This situation, however, has changed, and since 2008 all the Nordic countries have had a CFC policy – either as a national statutory right of families, as in Finland and Norway, or as a local municipality-level entitlement, as in Sweden, Denmark and Iceland (Eydal, 2008; Rantalaiho, 2009). A common trait in these policies is that they all, leaning politically on the rationale of increased choice for individual care arrangements, establish an alternative support for public services – a cash payment for parents who do not use publicly funded daycare. A closer look to the Nordic CFC policies, however, shows considerable variation in both the national CFC policy designs, and their political rationales. This chapter will explore CFC policies in three Nordic countries, Finland, Norway and Sweden.1 The differences and similarities between CFC policies are examined from a comparative perspective. The chapter aims to ascertain if a common Nordic CFC architecture is discernible. Instead of explaining the emergence or outcomes of CFC policies,2 the chapter will focus on the policy rationales of CFC in the three case countries. This is done mainly by comparing the current policy entitlements, but also by studying discursive framing of CFC in the process of policymaking. It is important to study political framings as they not only articulate more concretely the intents of CFC policies, but as discursive activity also participate in the constructing of social norms and values in a society (Taylor, 2004, p. 437; cf. also Hiilamo and Kangas, 2009). This also concerns CFC entitlements. By establishing new childcare-related rights, the state makes visible and informs parents of socially acceptable ways of organizing childcare (cf. Daly and Lewis, 1998). 109

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In comparative studies on childcare, the Nordic countries are often grouped together or are at least located close to each other (e.g., Bruning and Plantenga, 1999; Leitner, 2003; Bettio and Plantenga, 2004; Moss and Deven, 2006).3 The Nordic countries have many common features both in the model of public childcare policy and in the organizing of childcare in practice that distinguish them from other countries as representatives of the Nordic childcare policy model. One common feature is the strong role of state in childcare policy. Parents of small children have access to statutory and (mostly) universal entitlements that offer time and money as well as services for childcare (Ellingsæter and Leira, 2006). Another common feature is the directly articulated emphasis on gender equality in childcare policy. Besides advancing welfare in general, Nordic childcare policies have deliberately aimed at a combination model of earning and caring for both women and men – a model in which the equal sharing of childcare plays a central role (ibid). Parental leaves with income-based financial compensation together with easy access to full-time daycare services are considered the cornerstone of the Nordic childcare policy model. The controversy around CFC is linked to these policies and to the intentions they represent. CFC policies break with the core ideas of a gender egalitarian childcare policy that has been strong in the Nordic countries (cf. Mahon, 2002). The key controversy of CFC relates to its gender neutrality, which has had strongly gendered outcomes. Contrary to other Nordic childcare policies that increasingly endeavour to transform the gendered models of childcare, CFC policies are considered to perpetuate the prevailing structures and cultural models of childcare (Mahon, 2002; Ellingsæter and Leira, 2006; Ellingsæter, 2007). The moral message and normative guidelines that are sent to society, for example, the reserving of some parental leave to the father, cannot be found in the CFC policies framed by claims of increased individual choice. As pointed out by Morgan (2009, p. 51), ‘ostensibly gender-neutral policies . . . rarely produce gender-neutral outcomes’. Indeed, CFC has been used almost exclusively by women, and often for the purpose of extending the period of parental childcare. It is ‘generally perceived as supporting a traditional family model with mothers staying at home’ (Kvande, 2007, p. 20), and considered to ‘cement’ the existing cultural models and practices of childcare that other childcare policies keep trying to change (Brandth et al., 2005; Rantalaiho, 2009). In order to understand the meanings of CFC policies in the Nordic context, it can be useful to study them in more detail, and also to analyse the extent to which they represent a common policy trend. For this it is crucial to look at the overall organization of CFC policy. It is also

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important to place CFC policy in its institutional and cultural context. The first section in the chapter thus gives a short introduction to other childcare policy entitlements, which in different ways are linked to CFC, and form one key context of meaning for CFC policy. Thereafter, in the first of two empirical sections, I will examine CFC entitlements, asking what is offered, to whom and on what conditions. In the second empirical part, my focus is on the political framing of the entitlements and what CFC is needed for (cf. Bacchi, 1999). The chapter ends with a discussion on whether or not a common Nordic architecture of CFC is discernible. The chapter draws on a detailed analysis of CFC entitlements, empirical studies in which the ideological foundations and rationales of Nordic politics of CFC have also been approached (e.g., Ellingsæter 2003, 2007; Hiilamo and Kangas, 2009; Rantalaiho, 2009), and further readings of key policy document material from each country.4

THE INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT: IN BETWEEN PARENTAL LEAVES AND DAYCARE The meanings of CFC and the significance of CFC policy are configured in the context of different structural, cultural and ideological features that directly and indirectly relate to the care of children (cf. Sipilä, Repo, Rissanen and Viitasalo, Chapter 3 this volume). Distinguishing CFC policy outcomes is thus difficult, and requires multi-causal and contextual approaches (Ellingsæter, 2003, p. 423). Accessibility and quality of parental leave and daycare services define the demand for other childcare arrangements and have an impact on the extent to which parents find CFC entitlements attractive (cf. Ellingsæter and Gulbrandsen, 2007). The timing of a CFC reform can also be of significant importance as ‘policy interventions may for one thing play different roles in different historic periods’ (Ellingsæter, 2003, p. 422).5 To achieve a holistic comparative approach to CFC policies, I will first briefly describe other childcare policy entitlements in the three case countries. In comparative studies on childcare policy, CFC policies are often approached as one version of parental leave, or an extension of it (e.g., Deven and Moss, 2002; Bettio and Plantenga, 2004). I will start from parental leave policies, and continue with public daycare services. The political and practical meanings of CFC connect directly to public daycare policy in all three countries. It is thus important here to briefly consider daycare services. An overview of key childcare policies in the three countries is presented in Table 7.1.

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CFC benefit can be applied for if child is in publicly maintained part-time daycare Municipal CFC benefit

168

Supplement benefit amount depends on family size and income No

Some municipalities pay supplements to national CFC

314 94 60

Euro*/ Month

<3-year-old-child <3-year-old sibling <7-year-old sibling

Finland

–

Yes, but benefit is lower

1 <3-year-old child Full CFC benefit if child is not in publicly maintained daycare Partial CFC benefit when child is in part-time daycare

Norway

Childcare policy entitlements in Nordic countries in 2009

National CFC benefit

Table 7.1

79–318

397

Euro*/ Month

Municipalities may pay CFC if child is not in full-time publicly subsidized daycare and 250 days of parental leave has been used Maximum benefit

291

Euro*/ Month

Yes, but benefit is lower (cf., information below)

Sweden

113

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21–233

*1 euro = 8.32 NOK and 1 euro = 10.31 SEK.

Depends on family size and income (youngest child max €233, 2nd €210 and next one about 20% max cost)

Yes 263 days (+ optional ‘father month’ days) Yes, whole daycare

Average food cost

Depends on municipality (for siblings or families with social problems less) (about 70% of municipalities have fixed costs)

No 230/280 (days during three years) depends on compensation rate Yes, whole daycare

21

0–280

Yes, but part-time care (three hours/day) if parent/s are at home Maximum cost (less for siblings) – or 1st child max 3%, 2nd child max 2% and 3rd child max 1% family income; if child is over 4 years old, three hours/day or 15 hours/week are free of charge

No 480 days in eight years

122

Sources: Finland: Kela (2008, pp. 136–8, 260–64); Laki lasten päivähoidosta (Law on Child Care) 1973/36; Laki sosiaali- ja terveydenhuollon asiakasmaksuista (Law on Social Welfare) 1992/734. Norway: Forskrift om foreldrebetaling i barnehager (Regulation of Parental Care) 2005/1473; Lov om barnehager (Law on Kindergartens) 2005/64; Lov om endringer i barnehageloven 2008/73 (The law amending the Kindergarten Act) (right to place in the nursery); NAV (2009a, 2009b); Rognerud (2008). Sweden: SFS (1962, 1985, 1995, 2008); Skolverket (2009). Collected by: Minna Rantalaiho and Niina Viitasalo.

Note:

Subjective right to daycare Public daycare costs in family

Taxed Parental leaves

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Parental Leaves: Long Leaves – Fathers in Focus In all three countries, the focus of childcare policy has turned to advancing the reconciling of work and family (Ellingsæter and Leira, 2006). The centrality of this is reflected both in the extending of parental leaves and developing of flexible entitlements that allow parents to combine childcare with paid work. Politically such reforms are often framed by the discourse of work-life change and the increased need for individual childcare arrangements (ibid.; Brandth et al., 2005; Rantalaiho, 2009). Another key trend in Nordic parental leave policy development is the increased focus on the role of fathers as active parents. Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish mothers have access to paid prenatal and postnatal maternity leave, and fathers to paternity leave. Variation is found both in the length of maternity leave and the model of paternity leave, but the overall picture is, however, that the three countries resemble each other in how childcare is arranged at the time and immediately after the child’s birth.6 Meanwhile, considerable differences are found in both the length and organizing of parental leave that follows the maternity leave and is sharable between the parents. Sweden offers a considerably longer parental leave than Norway and Finland (see Table 7.1). In practice this means that in both Norway and Finland, parents have to arrange post-parental leave childcare earlier than in Sweden. When exactly the parents need to find other childcare arrangements than parental care can also depend on how flexibly parental leave can be taken. In Sweden, parental leave can be taken on a full-time or parttime basis, and in several periods until the child is 8 years old. Parents can take the leave in turns, postpone it, and tailor leave arrangements to fit to both their own needs and the needs of the child. The complex of paid and unpaid childcare-related leaves allows for parents to combine paid and unpaid leave, thereby prolonging the stay at home (Haas et al., 2008). Norwegian parental leave is also flexible, enabling various different combinations of childcare and employment. Parents can choose longer leave by accepting less compensation, and by combining part-time leave with part-time employment they can prolong the length of parental leave. Recently, Norwegian parents received the right to interrupt parental leave. The requirement for interruption is that the parent is returning to full-time employment for the duration of the break (Rantalaiho, 2009). Compared with Sweden, the Norwegian parental leave, however, is more clearly directed to early childcare. The leave must be taken before the child reaches 3 years of age (ibid.). In this respect, the Norwegian leave policy offers parents less flexibility than the Swedish system. Finnish parental leave policy is clearly less flexible than in both Norway

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and Sweden. From the mid-1980s until 2003 flexibility was limited to the right to share the leave between parents and take it in turns. In 2003 a part-time parental leave was established in Finland. The implementation of the reform reflects the overall rationale of the Finnish childcare policy model. Access to part-time leave requires that both parents must take it at the same time and combine it with part-time employment – thus, the responsibility for the child’s care is kept fully in the family (ibid.). This is a significantly different model from those of Norway and Sweden, where parents can alternate on part-time leave, stop the paid leave for a while, and thus prolong the length of the period in which leave is taken. In Finland the parental leave is restricted to the time immediately after the child’s birth and access to entitlement entails full-time parental care of the child. Consequently, access to part-time parental leave is not an individual right of a parent, but requires that both parents will and can make use of it.7 Perhaps the recent developments in Nordic parental leave policies are best characterized by an increased father focus (Rantalaiho, 2003; LammiTaskula, 2006). In 1993, Norway carried out an extensive parental leave reform in the context of which it established a father quota arrangement. Four weeks of parental leave were reserved for fathers on the principle that the leave is lost unless the father takes it (Kvande, 2007). Sweden and Finland carried out similar reforms in 1995 and 2003 respectively, and currently all three countries have an arrangement that reserves some parental leave for the father. In each country, the purpose of these policies is to increase the father’s involvement in childcare (Lammi-Taskula, 2006). Though the purpose of the policy is the same in all three countries, here, too, we can find significant differences in the model of implementation – above all, between Finland and the two other countries. Currently the Norwegian father quota is ten weeks, and, as indicated above, it cannot be transferred to the mother. If the father does not take the leave, the family will lose a relatively long period of paid parental leave. A similar situation prevails in Sweden, where the length of the quota is now 60 days. In Finland, a slightly different policy rationale has been introduced. Instead of having access to a quota arrangement Finnish fathers can earn two extra paternity leave weeks by taking the two last weeks of parental leave. At the time of the reform, the Finnish government reflected on the positive results the quota arrangements had produced in other Nordic countries, but did not introduce a corresponding model. The government argued that such an arrangement would violate the principle of choice inherent in Finnish childcare policy (Rantalaiho, 2009). But, contrary to Norway and Sweden, where fathers’ use of parental leave became clearly more popular along with the quota arrangements, in Finland the

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effects of the new leave arrangement remained modest (Takala, 2005; Lammi-Taskula, 2007). This led to a new reform as early as in 2006. An argument was evinced that a potential obstacle to men’s parental leavetaking was – besides the financial reasons – that in the majority of families the mother was not returning to work directly from parental leave, but continued on childcare leave (receiving CFC) (Rantalaiho, 2009). The idea was that in many cases the father was not able to take his own ‘father month’ as that would have interrupted the leave taken by the mother – in line with that, it was argued to be complicated for the mother to return to her job for only a short period. As a solution to the problem, Finnish fathers were allowed to postpone their leave until the child was approximately 15 months old. A condition for this was, however, that the child’s home care was not interrupted, in other words, that one of the parents (obviously the mother) continued directly from parental leave to childcare leave and continued until the father took his ‘father month’. The way of framing the reform in the government proposal was revealing: ‘this would provide uninterrupted home care for the child, without the mother needing to return to work for the time of the father month’ (HE, 2006, p. 25). Reserving of parental leave for the father (father quota) has been described as a transformative childcare policy that deliberately aims at a change in the organization and practice of childcare (Ellingsæter, 2007). Parental leave quotas also restrict the choices families have, thereby articulating the expectations concerning the ‘best model’ for childcare in society. Compared with Norway and Sweden, this transformative dimension of parental leave policy is clearly weaker in Finland. The paradox of the Finnish parental leave reforms is that the father’s own parental leave rights, which should represent a transformative family policy, have been adapted both to the gendered practices of childcare and the policy rationale of choice (Rantalaiho, 2009). In Finland the aim of changing the unequal sharing of childcare responsibilities (and rights) between men and women has been much less prescribed compared with both Norway and Sweden. Moreover, the Finnish parental leave reforms have kept the responsibility for early childcare firmly in the family, whereas in Norway and Sweden they have opened up flexible use of leave entitlements – even for combining them with daycare services. Childcare Services: Extensive Rights to Public Daycare All three Nordic countries have extensive public daycare service systems, but as in the case of parental leaves, here, too, we can find differences in the policy model. Since the 1990s, children in both Finland and Sweden have had a statutory right to public daycare services. In Norway they won

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this right only recently, in 2009. In Finland, children under 3 years of age received the right to daycare in 19908 and since 1996 the right has been extended to older pre-school children. This right to daycare services is often described as a subjective right that reflects the absence of any needs assessment – every child has an unconditional right to public full-time daycare, irrespective of what the parents are doing or earning. The right starts after the statutory parental leave, and lasts until the child starts school.9 Municipalities are obliged to arrange the child a daycare place at the parents’ request. As in Finland, so also in Sweden the municipalities are obligated to offer services at parents’ request. The right to daycare concerns 1–6-year-old children. The statutory right to full-time daycare services, however, is restricted to children with employed or studying parents, whereas other children have a right to part-time services (Haataja and Nyberg, 2006, p. 221).10 As mentioned, in Norway the statutory right to daycare services was introduced in 2009. The new law gives every 1–5-year-old child the uncontested right to subsidized daycare services.11 As in Finland, in Norway, too, children are all equally entitled to daycare services, and whether the parents are active on the labour market or not, makes no difference. In Norway the developing of daycare services remained a controversial political issue, longer than in other Nordic countries (Korsvold, 2008). Pushing the municipalities to develop the service supply has been a more difficult issue in Norway than in Finland or Sweden. The central role of private service producers has also complicated the process of establishing the statutory right. The differences in the timing of public daycare policy, as well as in the length and flexibility of parental leave entitlements have served to create different demands for alternative childcare arrangements in the three countries.

CFC ENTITLEMENTS: WHAT, FOR WHOM AND ON WHAT PREMISES The main argument for establishing a CFC policy has in each country been that it will give more choice for families in arranging childcare (e.g., Anttonen, 1999; Bergqvist and Nyberg, 2002; Ellingsæter, 2003; Hiilamo and Kangas, 2009; Nyberg, Chapter 5 this volume). What kind of choice CFC offers, and for whom, depends, however, not only on the range of other ways of organizing childcare (cf., the section above) but also on the CFC entitlement itself, and how it is organized in practice. In the three countries studied here, considerable variation can be found in what exactly the CFC policy is offering for families and how much and what kind of

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choice and flexibility it thus offers for parents in organizing childcare. The differences between the three national policy designs makes comparing CFC policies challenging, yet, the details in the entitlement level, structure and eligibility rules all merit attention, as we can reasonably assume that differences partly also explain the differences in the ways of using CFC in Nordic families. Moreover, they reveal differences in childcare policy rationales between the three countries. My focus is here primarily on the current CFC entitlements. What CFC Policies Offer It is common to associate CFC with parental or home care of children. As pointed out earlier, in comparative childcare studies CFC policies are often defined as extended or prolonged parental leave. In all three countries studied here, parents are entitled to childcare leave when receiving CFC, but in none of them is parental care of the child a condition for receiving CFC.12 This means that parents are free to use CFC as they want – to compensate the income loss due to home care of the child, for purchasing daycare services from the private market as well as for employing an au pair.13 In all three countries, the CFC entitlement is a low payment (see Table 7.1). In any of them, relying on CFC allowance as the main family income means accepting a low economic standard of living. Only the Finnish CFC policy acknowledges the economic situation of the family. Finland is also the only country where CFC is taxable income for the recipient. The Finnish CFC is composed of the basic allowance paid to all eligible families and an additional allowance that is paid for families with a family income under a certain limit (Table 7.1).14 Norwegian or Swedish CFC policy does not recognize differences in families’ economic standing. We can assume that the economic value of CFC plays a role when parents are making decisions on how to organize childcare. When compared simply in money (see Table 7.1), the Norwegian CFC seems most generous, but it is clear that this is an inadequate method of comparison. In Table 7.2, two further comparisons are made that aim to illustrate the relative value of CFC in the three countries. If we relate the value of CFC to what a daycare place costs, the Swedish CFC is the most generous, but if our point of comparison is the minimum maternity benefit, then the most generous is again the Norwegian CFC. These crude method comparisons manage to demonstrate some of the variation between the countries. Comparing the actual economic value of CFC for families in these three countries, however, is much more challenging, and beyond the scope of our analyses here. In Norway, families can receive other social security

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Table 7.2

119

CFC entitlement features in Finland, Norway and Sweden in 2009

Relative value of CFC Maximum daycare fee = 100 Minimum maternity leave benefit = 100*** Child-based Family-based Means tested Taxed income Coordinated with other social security benefits Separate CFC for purchasing of private market services Flexibility (combinable with daycare) Municipality supplements

Finland

Norway

Sweden*

134** 66** Partly yes Yes Partly yes Yes Yes

144 121 Yes No No No No

237 78 Yes Yes No No Yes

Yes

No

No

No Allowed

Yes Not allowed

Yes Not allowed

Notes: * In Sweden municipalities can make their own rules that restrict the use of CFC from what the national law would allow (Nyberg, Chapter 5 this volume). ** Means-tested additional CFC not included. (Note: municipality supplements may raise the level of CFC considerably.) *** Minimum daily benefit multiplied by 21.5, and divided by the level of the CFC (for first eligible child in the family). (Norway has no minimum benefit, but a lump sum payment. The payment was divided by the maximum number of parental leave days and multiplied by 21.5.) Sources:

See Table 7.1.

benefits simultaneously with CFC, in Finland the CFC scheme includes vertical distribution and the family can receive CFC for older siblings. These and many other differences influence the actual value of CFC. In all three countries the CFC is an alternative to public daycare services and access to CFC allowance requires that the child the CFC entitlement is received for is not simultaneously attending public daycare. In both Norway and Sweden this rule is flexible, however, and does not prevent the child from attending part-time daycare. This is a crucial difference compared with Finland, where receiving CFC excludes the right to use any public daycare services. In Norway the level of CFC decreases according to the weekly hours the child spends in daycare, and it can be combined with daycare in a very flexible way. Such flexibility enables parents to combine part-time work with part-time childcare leave. In Sweden, the national law on CFC enables a similar kind of flexibility, but the final

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decision is left to the municipality. This brings us to another difference between the three CFC policies. In both Finland and Norway the right to CFC entitlements is a statutory right.15 In Sweden the general rules for CFC are also defined by law, but the decision whether to implement CFC or not is left to local policymakers – CFC is optional for municipalities.16 As described by Nyberg in this volume, not all Swedish municipalities offer CFC and CFC policy has thus added regional variation in otherwise universal public childcare. The Swedish CFC policy also challenges the principle of universalism in another way. Though the general lines of CFC policy are defined in law, municipalities can tailor these further and impose additional eligibility rules that direct the CFC to certain groups of families. The municipalities cannot, however, depart from the general eligibility rules or offer CFC over the maximum prescribed by law. Here the Finnish CFC policy is both similar to and different from the Swedish. In Finland the municipalities are obligated to allocate statutory CFC but also free to establish supplementary CFC allowances. Many municipalities use this opportunity, aiming at savings in daycare expenditures (Miettunen, 2008).17 Such a supplementary CFC allowance can make a considerable addition to the statutory CFC and increase the attractiveness of child home care. Like the optional CFC in Sweden, the municipality-specific CFC policies in Finland also violate universalism in childcare policy. Considering the differences in municipalities’ authority over CFC, only Norwegian CFC policy is thoroughly universal and families in different regions entitled to the same benefit on equal terms. For Whom and on What Conditions One significant difference between the three CFC policies concerns the coordination between CFC entitlements and other welfare goods. In Sweden, the CFC policy is deliberately directed to ‘working families’. Families that receive some social security benefit (for example, unemployment or parental leave benefit) are not entitled to CFC, although children in these families have a right to attend (part-time) daycare (cf. Nyberg, Chapter 5 this volume). In Sweden the choice between public daycare services and alternative ways of organizing childcare does not thus concern all families equally. To some extent a corresponding rationale also prevails in Finland, but the coordination of CFC and other welfare goods is more flexible. CFC is coordinated with the parental leave and unemployment benefits the family is receiving, but receiving these benefits does not categorically exclude the family from receiving also CFC, as in Sweden. In Finland, a parent who receives unemployment benefit is entitled to CFC,

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but the amount of CFC is deducted from the unemployment benefit. In practice this means that the economic significance of CFC diminishes considerably or disappears completely. Coordination, however, is not applied to families with one parent receiving unemployment benefit and the other parent receiving CFC and being responsible for childcare and thus prevented from participating in the labour market.18 For families receiving parental leave benefit the rules are to some extent different, and especially for low-income families with many children (cf. below) the CFC entitlements can retain economic importance.19 In Finland the coordination is thus clearly less strict than in Sweden, where any social security benefit the family receives excludes it from CFC. In Sweden the rationale of CFC refers to actual need for care, whereas in Finland no such rationale is discernible. However, in Finland, too, the CFC entitlements are clearly family-based. Contrary to Finland and Sweden no rules of coordination are to be found in Norwegian CFC policy. In Norway, CFC is a thoroughly childbased welfare good, and is paid to all families irrespective of where the family-income originates and what the parent(s) are doing. The only eligibility rule is that the child eligible for the allowance does not attend public daycare on a full-time basis. Unemployed parents thus receive CFC like any other parents, and a parent on parental leave can receive parental leave benefit for the baby and full CFC allowance for older sibling(s). If the parent is taking parental leave on a part-time basis, extending its duration over the child’s first year, she (or he) can receive both CFC and parental leave benefit for the child. Multiple combinations of parental leave, CFC and daycare are available to Norwegian parents and the policy rationale of the Norwegian CFC is clearly different from those of both Finland and Sweden. In each of the three countries, CFC is directed to the care of children under 3. The lower age limit varies between the three countries, reflecting mainly differences in parental leave policy. In Norway, the CFC is directed to 1- and 2-year-old children, which signals that the parental leave benefit should cover the care of the child from birth to its first birthday.20 In Sweden, where parental leave policy is the most flexible of the three countries, and parental leave days can be split until the child is 8 years old, there is a rule that at least 250 parental leave days have to be used before the family is eligible for CFC (on likely consequences, see Nyberg, Chapter 5 this volume). In Finland, the right to receive CFC starts after the parental leave period has expired – that is, when the child is 9–10 months old. However, as pointed out earlier in this chapter, since 2007 Finnish fathers have been allowed to postpone taking of the ‘father month’ and the requirement for the postponement is that it does not interrupt the home

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care of the child. In such a case, the family can receive CFC though the parental leave period is not yet complete. In Norway from the totally child-based model it follows that each 1- to 2-year-old child in the family is entitled to CFC. Thus, if there are three children of the right age in the family, it is entitled to three CFC allowances. This is also the rationale in Swedish law, but as shown above, each municipality can add its own further rules to those stipulated in the legislation. In Finland the logic of CFC is also in this respect more complex than in Norway and Sweden. The CFC policy even covers older siblings in the family (see Table 7.1). The logic is that the youngest eligible child in the family is entitled to full CFC allowance, and siblings can each receive a supplement. This is a significant difference between Finland and the two other Nordic countries, as it increases the relative cost of purchasing public daycare also for the over 3-year-old children in the family. Extending CFC to older children sends a signal of public support for the home care of preschool children, thus encouraging families, when choosing CFC, to have all pre-schoolers in home care. Consequently, the line that distinguishes the care needs of pre-school children under and over 3 years, is less clear in Finland than in Norway and Sweden. Summary to Policy Models: Three CFC Models – Three Policy Rationales Above, a number of differences in CFC policies have been elaborated that distinguish the three CFC policy models from each other. On the basis of the comparisons so far, the three countries are difficult to group together as representatives of one CFC policy. Reflecting on CFC entitlements in the context of other childcare policies does not make the picture less complex. The different features of Nordic CFC policies are summarized in Table 7.2. Excluding the low level of CFC in all three countries, none of the features are to be found in all three countries. In Sweden and Finland, access to CFC allowance is a family-based right, whereas the Norwegian CFC is more reminiscent of a universal child allowance, the only difference being that access to CFC is linked to the child’s attending public daycare. Only the Finnish CFC policy takes into account the economic situation in the family, thus deviating from the flat-rate rationale in the two other countries. This reflects a significant difference in the broader welfare policy role of CFC. In Finland the CFC policy does not only offer an alternative to public daycare services, but also contributes to vertical income redistribution entitling low-income families to higher CFC allowances (cf. Hiilamo, 2002). In this case, Finnish CFC is to a larger extent a family-based entitlement than in both Norway and Sweden.

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Perhaps the most interesting difference concerns the freedom of choice that has been the main goal of CFC policy in all three countries. In all three countries CFC increases choice in childcare for families with small children, in Sweden access to choice is, however, restricted to ‘working families’. In Finland, too, a similar rationale is discernible, although the criteria for coordinating CFC and other benefits are not as strict as in Sweden. Thus, only the Norwegian CFC is purely an alternative to public daycare services – that is, direct compensation for unused services.21 Related to choice another key difference concerns the flexibility of CFC – in Finland combining CFC and other childcare policy entitlements is not possible, and receiving CFC in practice means full-time parental care.22 One source of criticism of CFC policies has been that access to CFC requires no previous work-life history and does not, contrary to parental leave policy, encourage women’s labour market participation. Based on a comparison of European care policies, Anttonen and Sointu (2006, p. 76) argue that Finland has become one of the leading European countries in home motherhood and find an explanation for this in Finnish CFC policy. In 2007 over 52 per cent of all Finnish under 3s23 were in homecare subsidized by CFC (Kela, 2008, p. 266). In Norway, too, CFC is received for a considerable share of 1- and 2-year-old-children (41 per cent in 2007) (SSB, 2008, Table 145). In Norway, the popularity of CFC has, however, decreased dramatically during the last decade, and the trend seems to be continuing (see Rønsen and Kitterød, Chapter 6 this volume). In Finland the popularity of CFC has also decreased, but the change is much less dramatic than in Norway. The share of under 3-year-old children receiving CFC decreased from 57.4 per cent in 1998 to 52.4 per cent in 2007 (Kela, 2008, p. 226). This can be interpreted to indicate that to what extent CFC has deactivating impacts on women’s labour market participation also depends on issues other than the existence of such a policy scheme alone. In the context of Finland, Salmi (2000) has underscored the role of labourmarket-related factors, such as the demand for women’s labour power and access to permanent jobs. Compared with Norway, one must also recognize the prevalence of the full-time working model (Julkunen and Nätti, 1997) and the inflexibility of childcare policy in Finland that together are scarcely supportive of combining part-time employment and family life, which is quite typical for many mothers in Norway. To some extent, explanations can also be found in the cultural ideas of good childhood and motherhood (cf. Moss and Deven, 2002). Compared with Finland, for example, the role of daycare in children’s lives is more positively framed in Norwegian society.

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POLITICAL FRAMING OF CFC – ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST The controversy over CFC in its Nordic context is reflected in public policy debates. In all three countries the establishing of CFC has been a matter of considerable political argument. In Norway it became ‘one of the most controversial political issues in the past decade’ (Ellingsæter 2003, p. 425). CFC has in all three countries been politically a much more contested issue than, for example, extending parental leaves (Håland, 2005; Hiilamo and Kangas, 2009; Rantalaiho, 2009). Håland (2005) explains this by the multiple aims of parental leave policy that make its value definable in different contexts. It resonates with different political ideologies, something that CFC seems not to do. In the Norwegian context, for example, CFC policy was considered contradictory to the strong (paid) work orientation in Norwegian welfare policy and understood as a competitor for public daycare services – both considerations narrowed the space for other interpretations (ibid.). Contrary to Norway, the Finnish CFC reform of 1984 has been described as a political compromise that to a large extent calmed down the long-continued struggle between the daycare advocates and CFC advocates (Rantalaiho, 2009). The CFC rationales are now studied further by comparing the different political framings of CFC policy in the three countries. What is CFC claimed to be needed for – and, why is it perceived as a problematic and unwelcome childcare policy? To a large extent the repertoires of arguments both for and against CFC resemble each other in the three countries. As has been pointed out already, the CFC advocates frame it with a discourse of choice, arguing that families should decide individually on the best model of childcare. The critique of and opposition to CFC in all three countries also draws on similar arguments, paying attention to gender equality and illustrating the negative effects of CFC on women’s (and children’s) lives in particular (Håland, 2005; Hiilamo and Kangas, 2009; Nyberg, Chapter 5 this volume). The picture is more nuanced, however, and a closer look at CFC reforms reveals differences in how the meanings of CFC are constructed, perceived and interpreted in each country. Perhaps the most important difference concerns the criticism of CFC policy. As already indicated, in each country the introduction of CFC met with strong opposition. Contrary to Norway and Sweden, in Finland the criticism of CFC has later trailed off, and the most recent amendments to CFC have been carried out without any political opposition. It thus seems reasonable to argue that CFC policy has become an institutionalized element of the Finnish childcare policy model (Rantalaiho, 2009), whereas in both Norway and Sweden it is a controversial childcare policy and its position is clearly less stable.

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Choice – and Respect for the Family In all three countries CFC is presented as a solution to an increased need for choice. CFC is framed as a policy that makes a crucial contribution to the organizing of childcare according to the needs and wishes of families. In Finland the choice arguments developed into a hegemonic discourse (Hiilamo and Kangas, 2009) that has later influenced policy-making beyond the CFC policy (cf. Rantalaiho, 2009, and the examples of ‘father month’ reforms in this chapter). Increasing choice is not restricted to CFC policies, but also reflects recent changes in both Nordic parental leave and daycare policies (Ellingsæter and Leira, 2006; Ellingsæter, 2007; Rantalaiho, 2009). Choice rhetoric is often connected to the emerging of a neo-liberal policy discourse and the idea of welfare policy retrenchment, but in the Nordic context increasing of choice has (so far) meant establishing new welfare goods (cf. Morgan, 2009).24 In CFC advocates’ discourse25 the need of choice relates to perceiving families as a heterogeneous group – that is, different families need different childcare arrangements. Public daycare services are presented as inflexible, and though not (necessarily) considered bad childcare policy, as insufficient alone. CFC is claimed to meet the different needs, and thus also further equal and fair treatment of different families. In Sweden that rationale was argued to represent ‘modern family policy’: The point of departure for a modern family policy must in the government’s conception be that all families are different, have different expectations and needs, and are equal. Therefore freedom of choice and flexibility are important. Family policy should respect the choices of individual families, and to as large an extent as possible aim at being supportive, not directive. (Proposition 2008, p. 17)

Increased choice is moreover argued to acknowledge the equality of all families; it is also argued to manifest respect for families – and parents. In the CFC advocates’ discourse increasing choice is explained to decrease the power of the state over the family, as it leaves childcare-related decisions to parents (Håland, 2005; Hiilamo and Kangas, 2009).26 In all three countries, respect also emerges in the argument that childcare policy should not lead to the undervaluing of parents, but instead strengthen their confidence in their parenting qualities. In the CFC advocates’ discourse, giving parents increased choice is presented as a contribution to it: Parents are the ones who have the main responsibility for the child’s well-being and, based on a family’s life situation and the child’s needs, shall take care of the best interests of the child. Parents are also those who know their children best. Modern family policy is based on these conditions. (Proposition 2008, p. 17)

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In the CFC advocates’ discourse parents are constructed as the experts in childcare, those who best know their children’s needs and how these needs relate to the needs of parents and the overall family situation. Establishing CFC was thus claimed to enhance the quality of childcare, as it enabled care arrangements that were based on an individual evaluation of each child’s needs. In all three countries, the opponents and critics of CFC policy have evinced completely opposite arguments, pointing out how the choice that CFC enables is a risk for children with special needs or in otherwise marginal positions. For the opponents, the risk of such a policy is that children who would most benefit from attending daycare, remain outside that service. In Norway, the then children’s ombudsman underscored this in his criticism of CFC when the reform was in parliament in 1998 (Innstilling, 1998), and the present ombudsman has repeated the criticism more recently (Rantalaiho, 2009). This criticism in Norway was also linked to the observation that CFC would encourage purchasing of private market services that are under no formal control. This was considered problematic in several different ways, also from the perspective of children’s safety and well-being. The critique of CFC policy relates to the choice rationale in other ways too. In Norway the daycare supply at the time of the CFC reform was still insufficient to meet demand for services, and the CFC opponents brought this up, pointing out that establishing CFC gave no real choice. For them actual choice required access to daycare services for all who needed them: In a situation in which parents are claiming a place in daycare . . . it is undesirable to give them cash rather than offer them safe and good care arrangements for children. The money that is used for CFC could have provided many new daycare places and contributed to lower charges. (Innstilling 1998, comments from the Labour Party)

In Finland the opponents of CFC also reflected the consequences of CFC policy on the daycare sector, articulating concerns about the further developing of universal daycare services. The 1984 reform, however, also included the right to daycare services that made these arguments less valid than in Norway. In Sweden, the opponents of CFC pointed out that as establishing CFC was to be financed by the municipalities, it is to be expected that the resources were taken from the daycare sector, thus having negative effects on the quality of services (e.g., Riksdagens protokoll, 2008). In all three countries, the opponents of CFC framed CFC as a reform that increases inequality. As a modest cash payment it is argued to mainly give choice to families who ‘can afford it’ – the low payment is not enough for subsistence to make a living, and thus disfavours lone parent families,

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but also other families with a low income. In Norway, where daycare services were at the time of the CFC reform very expensive, an argument was evinced that CFC restricts choice for families, as it increases the relative costs of daycare and makes choosing public services less attractive, if not irrational: ‘Nobody can blame parents with young children and tight family budgets if they think twice, and choose a fully financed child minder instead of a day-care place that will cost them up to 40 000 kroner net per year’ (Innstilling ,1998, comments from Socialist Left Party). A Just Childcare Policy – Increased Equality in Access to Childcare Subsidies In both Finland and Norway one of the key arguments for CFC was that it would contribute to a more just and fair welfare policy. Cash payment for the families that for one reason or another did not use public daycare services, was in the discourse of CFC advocates framed as a politics of fair redistribution of public resources and a means for greater equality between different families (Hiilamo and Kangas, 2009; Korsvik, 2009; Rantalaiho, 2009). In both countries the critics pointed out that CFC would mainly benefit families with good economic resources, thus increasing the inequalities between families, not decreasing them. The political framing of CFC has on the advocates’ side been gender neutral in all three countries. In Norway, the CFC advocates deliberately pointed out that CFC was concerned with children’s best interest, not gender equality (Ellingsæter, 2007). In none of the three countries introducing CFC was reference made to fathers’ role in childcare. Moreover gender-related arguments have been pivotal in the criticism from the CFC opponents; gender also emerges in the political framing of CFC in other ways. Interconnected to the rhetoric of a just welfare policy, the CFC advocates both in Finland and Norway framed CFC as means of acknowledging the (unpaid) care work women carried out in families. In Norway the advocates of CFC ‘defended themselves’ this way against criticism, pointing out the negative effects that CFC would have on gender equality. The advocates argued that CFC represents an innovative gender equality policy because it acknowledges the informal care work in homes (Stortingsproposisjon, 1998, p. 31): Women are not a homogeneous group and make different practical and gender equality political choices. The consequences of CFC must be considered in light of that too. So far gender equality policy has mainly addressed the interests of employed women. Justice requires a broader gender equality policy. (Ibid., pp. 31–2)27

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Time with Children In both Norway and Sweden the need for a CFC policy was framed with time rhetoric. The CFC advocates constructed a picture of parents who needed more alternatives to manage both the hectic working life and responsibilities as parents. CFC is claimed to increase parents’ opportunities to spend more time with their children. In Norway, framing CFC as time politics received support from the general discussions on family life – the ‘time squeeze’ (tidsklemma) was a pivotal metaphor in Norwegian society throughout the 1990s (Ellingsæter, 2005): The time squeeze for many families with small children is tight. For that reason today a considerable group of parents want most of all more time to be at home with children, also beyond the period covered by parental leave. . . . Improving the economic conditions is necessary so that it would be possible for more [people] to choose to be at home more with children, especially when they [children] are in their early years. (Stortingsproposisjon, 1998, p. 8, italics original)

In Sweden, too, the CFC advocates used a similar discourse, framing CFC as a means of reducing working time, and allocating more time to children. At the same time it was, however, underscored that the most important source of income for families is that from paid work, and thus CFC must be construed to facilitate reconciling paid work and family life. Indirectly it was thus underscored that CFC was not only meant to compensate for some of the income loss that reduced working time would cause parents, but also to enable different childcare arrangements – ‘parents can thus work and simultaneously keep CFC if childcare is organized in another way’ (Proposition, 2008, p. 18). Time arguments are not to be found in the government proposal for CFC in Finland in 1984 or the debate between the CFC proponents and opponents (Rantalaiho, 2009). In the mid-1980s, when the Finnish reform was carried out, the rhetoric of time squeeze was not yet ‘available’, but more recently time arguments also started to emerge in Finland, articulated, however, more indirectly, as a discourse on work and family life reconciliation (see, e.g., HE, 2004). Another difference between the political framing of CFC in Finland and in the other two countries can be related to this. In both Norway and Sweden the CFC advocates presented CFC as a childcare policy entitlement for working parents who could use it flexibly and so combine paid work and parental childcare in various ways. In Finland, CFC was initially framed firmly as an alternative to full-time public daycare services. In 1984 one of the key rationales of CFC was to give all parents access to public childcare support – either in cash (CFC) or kind (daycare services) (Anttonen, 1999; Hiilamo and Kangas, 2009). Even

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though CFC enables combining paid work and home-based childcare in Finland it has been mainly perceived as financial support for full-time parental care of children. Compared with Norway and Sweden, the political framing of CFC in Finland also reflects the full-time working model that dominates in Finland. Moreover, in Finland, the more recent arguments for CFC, besides mentioning the reconciliation of work and family life, articulate more directly perceptions of good care – ‘care that takes place at home is often the best choice, especially for the youngest children, under three year old children’ (HE, 2004, hearing 1K, Taiveaho). The Rationale of ‘Restricted Choice’ As mentioned before, the choice arguments form the basis of legitimizing CFC policy. Yet only the Norwegian CFC policy gives different families equal access to CFC. In Sweden the choice between cash and care services is directed to ‘working families’. In Finland from the coordination of CFC and unemployment and parental leave benefits it follows that the families do not have equal access to equal CFC. The rationale of the Norwegian policy on the one hand, and that of the Finnish and Swedish on the other, is in this respect significantly different. Elaborating on the arguments for these rationales can illustrate the differences further. In Finland, the issue of coordinating CFC and unemployment benefit had not yet been assessed at the time of establishing the law on CFC in 1984.28 Coordination of parental leave benefits and CFC was considered to be reasoned from the beginning but this was to be done so that the birth of a new child would not cause any decrease in family income (HE, 1984, p. 11). Further coordination with the unemployment benefit took place later, in two phases, in 1993 and 1995 (Haataja, 2005, pp. 95–6). At that time Finland was in a state of economic depression and the commitments to cut down public expenditures also framed CFC policy (Hiilamo, 2002; Hiilamo and Kangas, 2009). From the coordination it followed that for families with one parent (that is, a lone parent) unemployed or both parents unemployed, the economic benefit from the CFC arrangement was lost – in a sense; a parent without job, was made to choose between being either unemployed or a home mother/father (Haataja, 2005, p. 96). The reforms also strengthened the family-based character of Finnish CFC policy. Coordination of CFC and unemployment benefits was framed within an activation policy discourse, the idea being that work should always pay. The government argued that it was ungrounded that ‘family political support together with unemployment benefit exceeds the income level the family had been receiving had the income of the family been based on work income’ (HE, 1994).

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CFC was directed at families in which one of the parents was at home and the actual reason for this was full-time care of the child and families in which both parents were employed and childcare organized privately. The arguments concerning every family’s equal access to public support for childcare had lost some of its value, and one interpretation could be that the emerging new rationale connected the Finnish CFC policy more clearly to actual need of care. Compensation for the non-use of daycare services was not paid to unemployed parents on similar terms as to working parents – for an unemployed parent CFC was framed more as a welfare benefit than compensation for childcare. The economic depression context also produced other kinds of framings for Finnish CFC. In 1995 the government cut the CFC level substantially (22.5 per cent). The cuts that were part of the government’s activation policy came in for harsh criticism during the parliamentary proceeding of the reform proposal, and criticism came from all political directions. In 1996 the government planned further cuts in the CFC level. Ultimately the cuts were not carried out. In this context Finnish CFC policy received a new meaning as ‘employment policy’: CFC gives working parents an opportunity to really take care of the child and implies functioning reconciliation of family life and working life. It also implies really applying CFC as a certain kind of job rotation and gives employment opportunities, because a parent withdraws from work life in order to take care of her/his own child. (StVM, 1996)

That the withdrawal from work concerned women was not problematized. Based on the reading of key policy documents (HE, 1996; StVM, 1996; related parliamentary hearings), it also appears that none of the political parties was opposed to the framing of the CFC policy as ‘employment policy’.29 In Sweden the CFC was deliberately directed at ‘working families’ – the actual need for support for childcare is presented as a condition for gaining access to CFC.30 The way of arguing for this in the government proposal reveals the rationale of CFC and its relationship to general purpose in social policy: If it would be possible for unemployed people to receive CFC that would most probably cause traps for an individual, that means dire economic obstacles to employment . . . an opportunity of getting extra income in the form of CFC, to take care of one’s own child, constitutes a risk of decreasing the incentive to search for a job. (Proposition, 2008, p. 34)

That unemployed people were excluded from benefiting from CFC on equal terms with other parents was further justified by a reference to the daycare policy system, and the fact that the children of unemployed

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parents had only limited access to daycare and thus in these families the parents were already spending time with their children: ‘As mentioned earlier, the main aim with CFC is to give [parents] an opportunity to spend more time with their children . . . children of unemployed people today already have less access to time in pre-school activities compared with e.g. children of employed people’ (ibid.). In Sweden, the directing of access to working families was thus deliberate, and framed with both the activation policy discourse and articulating of children’s actual care needs. CFC was not considered as equally beneficial entitlement for all families and the CFC advocates openly articulated the negative effects it could have for people outside the labour market – for these people CFC was argued to be a plausible trap that could marginalize them even more (cf. Regeringskansliet, 2009). In the government proposal it was also clearly pointed out that CFC was not meant to replace salary and the CFC allowance ‘should not be at a level that constitutes a significant economic obstacle to work’ (Proposition, 2008, pp. 28–9).31 Compared with both Finland and Sweden, a completely different framing was constructed in Norway. The issue of coordination was reflected in the government proposal but the advocates saw no good reason to restrict the use of CFC to a certain group of families: All one and two year olds must receive the care that is most convenient for them. . . .The basis for the right to receive CFC shall be the child’s need for care. This means that it will be the individual child of CFC age that is the basis for the amount of CFC and not the family. (Stortingsproposisjon, 1998, p. 9, italics original) CFC will be an extension and prolongation of subsidies around birth and adoption. In addition CFC will function in parallel with and be a supplement to most other subsidies for families with children. (Ibid, p. 15)32

The rationale of Norwegian CFC thus comes close to that of a universal child allowance.33 CFC is presented as an economic transfer that each and every 2-year-old child has an individual right to receive. Criticisms: Trap for Women and Impediment to Integration – But Not in Finland? As noted above, the opponents of CFC policy in all three countries based their criticism on similar issues. The main criticism came from the left wing parties and feminist actors who framed CFC as a ‘trap for women’ (Hiilamo and Kangas, 2009; Korsvik, 2009). The opponents pointed out how CFC is accentuating gendered practices in childcare and devaluing

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women’s contributions in the labour market. But while this criticism was harsh and strong in both Norway and Sweden, this was not the case in Finland. In Finland, the CFC opponents’ criticism in the 1970s and 1980s did not achieve the hegemonic position it did in Sweden (Hiilamo and Kangas, 2009), and later it trailed off. In Norway, the left wing parties did not accept CFC and have since the reform in 1998 constantly called for its abolition. The extensive criticism of CFC in the late 1990s has more recently focused on its distorted use. In Norway, immigrant women are highly overrepresented among CFC recipients and especially in the metropolitan area the contrast between the ethnic majority and ethnic minority background families is marked. In Oslo, in 2004, of all children with immigrant backgrounds 84 per cent received CFC whereas the share among all children was 47 per cent (Daugstad, 2006). Articulating CFC policy as a source of serious problems for the integration of ethnic minority women and children, has become a dominant criticism of CFC in Norway (cf. Korsvik, 2009). Recently the minister (Labour Party) responsible for gender equality issues made the argument that: ‘People must be allowed to arrange things as they want. However, if the CFC arrangement first and foremost plays a part in keeping women from minorities outside work life, we have to review the arrangement’ (Dagbladet 10 June 2009, Minister Huitfeldt). In Norway, the left wing parties have constantly been openly against CFC, actively pointing out its negative consequences for both women and children. Recently the Socialist Left Party (SV, 2009, p. 24) made the argument that: The CFC arrangement has played a part in women staying at home, working part-time or using a child minder. In addition to that, CFC leads to a situation where individual children, who especially could benefit from attending daycare services, are kept at home. The Socialist Left will thus abolish CFC.

In line with the Socialist Left Party, the Norwegian Labour Party (Ap, 2009, p. 37) also stated that it is ‘against cash payment (CFC), and will gradually abolish it when full coverage in daycare services is reached and alternative arrangements established’. In Sweden, too, left wing policymakers have been actively arguing against the CFC – in parliament as well as the media (e.g., Sahlin and Östros, 2008; Motion, 2009). In Finland the left wing parties that once were critical of CFC have now taken a neutral stance, and if there is criticism at all, it is expressed indirectly by emphasizing the importance of public daycare services of high quality (e.g., SDP, 2007). Not a single political party in Finland is currently claiming that it will abolish CFC, or considers it a problematic childcare policy.

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DISCUSSION: CAN WE IDENTIFY A COMMON ARCHITECTURE OF NORDIC CFC POLICY? In this chapter, CFC policies in Finland, Norway and Sweden were approached by studying first the CFC policy models and thereafter the political framing of CFC in each country. A closer look at CFC policy entitlements reveals several significant differences in both the entitlement model and its welfare political rationale or logic. In all three countries CFC has been introduced as a policy that will increase families’ freedom of choice in organizing childcare, and thus improves parents’ opportunities to choose what is best for both the child and the family. Advocates’ discourses on care have been gender neutral, referring to the role of families and the importance of the state’s respect for the choices that families make. The critiques of CFC policy have deliberately pointed out the gendered effects that CFC can have in society, underscoring its negative consequences, especially for women’s labour market participation. The critics also argued that the choice that CFC offers is not equal for all, but mainly favours families with good economic resources. Whereas the criticism of the CFC policy has continued strongly in both Norway and Sweden, in Finland, no such criticism is currently to be heard – compared with the other two countries, in Finland the CFC can be perceived as an institutionalized part of the childcare policy model. The opposition to CFC was never very strong in Finland as it has been in both Norway and Sweden (cf. Korsvik et al., 2008; Hiilamo and Kangas, 2009). It is also reasonable to assume that the compromise solution of introducing both CFC and unconditional right to daycare services (Anttonen, 1999), has had conflict-decreasing impacts in Finnish childcare policy. The compromise between the CFC and daycare supporters constructed a status quo in Finnish childcare policy that has been difficult to challenge later – especially because the CFC policy immediately became popular among parents (cf. Ellingsæter and Gulbrandsen, 2007). Recent amendments to the level of CFC have been carried out without any new arguments and the political criticism has trailed off. The critical voices heard in the 1970s and 1980s, and still in the early 1990s have fallen silent, and the few critical comments mainly come from (feminist) academics who point out the negative effects of CFC policy on Finnish women’s labour market participation (e.g., Anttonen and Sointu, 2006). The timing of the CFC reform is also important. In Finland the CFC policy was established in the mid-1980s as a compromise resulting from debates that had been continuing since the 1960s. When the CFC reform was carried out in 1984, the idea of a more transformative childcare policy was not yet established in Finland and the cultural context of approaching

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care as a social question at the time of the reform was clearly different from that in Norway and Sweden where CFC reforms took place later, coinciding with the well-articulated discourse on shared parenting. In Norway and Sweden the CFC policy advocates were compelled to reflect the gender equality goals and find political frames for CFC that did not challenge those goals too radically (e.g., time discourse). Considering that in Finnish society, too, aims related to active fatherhood have emerged and policy-makers from left to right are concerned about gendered use of childcare leaves, the silence around CFC is puzzling. Instead of criticism, the level of the CFC allowance has been raised, and it receives strong and stable support from parents (see e.g., Kontula, 2004; Salmi et al., 2009, p. 41).34 Can we then find a common architecture in Nordic CFC policy? When compared with both Norway and Sweden, it seems that the Finnish CFC policy has no single clear core. The Finnish CFC has broad and multidirectional social political purposes that go well beyond childcare. These policy aims manifest both in the complex logic of the entitlement (what) and in the coordination of CFC and social security benefits (for whom). CFC offers an alternative to daycare services, besides it aims at vertical redistribution of public support for families (cf. Hiilamo, 2002). CFC was established to give all families equal access to state support for childcare but during its history it has also been adjusted to the changing needs of Finnish society. The framing of CFC as ‘employment policy’ in the mid1990s is specific to Finland – no similar framing can be found in Norway or Sweden, where the establishing of CFC policy coincides with activation politics aimed to increase the employment rate. In the case of Finland it is not possible to bypass the role of municipalities that (by the acceptance of state) can further emphasize the role of CFC, and by paying additional municipality-based CFC encourage parents to choose home care for children instead of public services. Considering the widespread support for CFC, its broad social political role and institutionalized position, it is tempting to argue that it represents the primary care model for under 3-year-old children in Finland. In both Norway and Sweden, the logic of CFC policy is different. In Norway CFC is a public transfer for families with under 3-year-old children and although it is an alternative for services it does not categorically exclude children from attending public daycare. In Norway all families are entitled to CFC on equal terms and the logic of CFC policy does not seem to be intended to equalize economic differences between families (cf. Finland) – it resembles child allowance more than other childcare policy entitlements. At the same time, it is a public transfer that may have significant economic value for low-income families outside the labour market. The core of Swedish CFC is different from both the

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other two Nordic countries. Like its neighbour countries, Sweden’s CFC also offers an alternative to public daycare, but only for ‘working families’. Moreover, the final decision on CFC policy is directed at municipalities – the aims of the Swedish CFC policy seem to relate to the aim of decentralizing childcare policy-making to municipalities. Compared with Finland the role of the state is reversed, however. When in Finland the municipalities are obliged to offer CFC and free to add on the minimums stipulated by the state, in Sweden the municipalities are free to choose whether they implement CFC or not but may not exceed the maximum entitlement determined by the state. Then back to the question – the answer is yes and no. Clearly in all three countries the aims of CFC policy are based on the idea of wider choice in childcare policy – and yes, in all three countries access to CFC is somehow linked to public daycare services. Considering the entitlement, eligibility criteria and political framings – what, for whom, and what for – the CFC policies in the three countries are decidedly different, and defining them as representatives of a common Nordic architecture does not appear justified.

NOTES 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Denmark and Iceland are excluded from the comparison. In Denmark CFC is not popular among parents and in comparative studies on childcare it is not even mentioned. The explanation may be that receiving CFC for the care of one’s own child does not entitle one to any statutory childcare leave. For an employed parent this means that the right to leave as well as the terms of the leave must be negotiated individually with the employer. In 2006 some Icelandic municipalities started to offer CFC for families in order to manage the demand for daycare services (Eydal, 2008). Information on the Icelandic case so far is sparse. On the history and development of CFC policy see, for example, Anttonen (1999); Leira (2002); Hiilamo (2002); Hiilamo and Kangas (2009); Nyberg (Chapter 5 this volume). Outcomes are elaborated on, for example, by Rønsen and Kitterød (Chapter 6 this volume). It is worth mentioning here that these studies, though identifying a Nordic pattern in childcare policy, often include a note pointing out the existence of several differences between the Nordic countries. How closely each Nordic country ranks in childcare policy comparisons depends partly on what exactly is compared (see, e.g., Plantenga and Remery, 2005). Empirical material includes government programmes, CFC policy proposals and parliamentary hearings (debates in plenary sessions). Party programmes (main parties) were studied to gain an overview of the extent to which CFC represents an issue of active party politics. The timing of CFC policy varies considerably in the three countries. Swedish CFC was established recently, in 2008 (see Nyberg, Chapter 5 this volume), whereas the Finnish CFC dates back to the mid-1980s (to some extent even to the 1960s), and the Norwegian to the late 1990s. The three CFC policies thus each have a history of different length. In Finland the maternity leave is clearly longer and the role of paternity leave more

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7.

8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

Cash-for-childcare significant than in Norway and Sweden (see also Haataja, 2009). Until 2003, encouraging fathers to take childcare leave was in Finland mainly carried out by developing paternity leave that the father takes when the mother is also on leave. In Norway and Sweden paternity leave is clearly shorter (and uncompensated) and encouraging men to take childcare leaves has been carried out by reserving part of the parental leave to the father. Such differences might indicate a different emphasis in the overall purpose of parental leave. Compared with Norway and Sweden, there has not been a similar focus on fathers’ individual responsibility for care in Finland (cf. Rantalaiho, 2009). Contrary to Norway and Sweden, in Finland the family model impacts on the parental leave rights. Lone parents are not eligible for part-time parental leave, and due to the paternity leave rules the total length of parental leave is shorter for mother-only families than for couples. In Norway and Sweden lone parent families have access to all parental leave entitlements on equal terms with other parents (Hakovirta and Rantalaiho, 2009). The reform that had been made in 1984 was implemented in 1990. Children under 3 then became entitled to full-time daycare with CFC as an alternative. In Finland and Sweden children start school at the age of 7, in Norway at the age of 6. The Law on Child Care in Sweden was amended in 1993, and the municipalities were obliged to offer services in a reasonable time from request (Bergqvist and Nyberg, 2002, p. 290). Every child’s right to (at least) part-time daycare services was established in 2001, as a continuation to the pre-school reform of 1998 (Haataja, 2006, pp. 45–6). From the model of administrating daycare services it follows, however, that some children have to wait for access to daycare. In Norway the intake of new pre-schoolers takes place in autumn, and thus children who have their first birthday after the main intake, may have to wait for a place until the following autumn (Gulbrandsen, 2009, p. 24). Two exceptions must be mentioned. In Finland, municipalities can pay CFC supplements and also require that children are in home care. In Sweden the municipalities can add further criteria to those defined in the national law. Both issues are discussed below in more detail. Finland is the only country of the three that currently has a dual model of CFC. In 1997, a separate CFC policy arrangement was established to support parents in purchasing of private market services. The purpose of the reform was to avoid double taxation of CFC in case parents wanted to use it for purchasing of services on the private market. The ‘old system’, with only one category of CFC, included that parents first paid taxes on CFC at the time of receiving it and later the service provider paid taxes on the service fee parents had paid. After the reform CFC for the purchasing of private services was free of tax for the parents. CFC for purchasing of private childcare services is paid directly to the service producer and thus the reform also decreases the risk of creating a black market of care services. A clear majority of CFC allowances are paid in Finland for parental home care of children. In 2008, of all families that received CFC during the year, 92 per cent received it as a child home-care allowance (Kela, 2009, p. 83). This part of the Finnish CFC policy is not studied here in more detail. The rationale of income limit is equal to that for defining the daycare service fee. Both the size of the family and family income are taken into consideration. In Norway the economic costs for CFC are covered by the state. In Finland and Sweden the financial responsibility rests with the municipalities. In the earlier law on CFC from 1994, the entitlement was defined as a statutory right of each child under 3 years of age (SFS, 1994). Municipalities also direct supplements to particular families by imposing additional eligibility rules, requiring, for example, that the child is in parental care and the parent on childcare leave from a permanent job, and/or that all pre-school children in the family are in home care (Miettunen, 2008). The total amount of municipality supplements has increased constantly in the 2000s (Kela, 2008, p. 264). Coordination with unemployment benefit was first introduced in 1987 before the CFC was implemented as a statutory entitlement and concerned the means-tested CFC

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20. 21.

22.

23. 24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

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supplement (Haataja, 2005). Coordination was tightened in two phases, in 1993 and 1995. The latter reform in practice meant that families receiving unemployment benefit were no longer benefiting economically from CFC policy. The main argument for the reforms was that these would abolish the poverty traps that the double paying of public transfers was considered to cause – that is, it was meant to make ‘work pay’. Receiving CFC for one parent and full unemployment benefit for other parent was, however, possible if the parent receiving CFC was due to full-time childcare not available for the labour market (ibid.). In Sweden, the 1994 CFC policy did not include any coordination. In the current CFC the main argument for the coordination has been that welfare goods should not constitute disincentives to employment. The complexity of Finnish CFC policy is reflected in the fact that until 2006 CFC and unemployment benefit were coordinated in families that also received parental leave benefit. The main argument for removing the criteria was that the birth of a new child should not deteriorate the economic situation of the family (HE, 2005). In 2005 the maximum CFC period was reduced from 24 months to 23 months. The amendment was implemented 1 January 2006. It is worth mentioning here that in Norway the access to public daycare services was not a legal right of parents until autumn 2009. Thus, the choice between CFC and daycare services has so far been more rhetorical than a statutory right. A number of studies from Norway have demonstrated that for a considerable number of parents the CFC payment has represented a substitute more than any real alternative to public daycare services – something they would not choose were the services available (see, e.g., Lauritzen, 2005). In Finland, parents can also choose part-time childcare leave and reduce their working time until the end of their child’s second year at school. While on part-time childcare leave for a child under 3 years, or a child who is starting school, the parent may be entitled to a partial care allowance. This entitlement (€70/month in 2009) can be combined with public daycare services. Nine months <3 years. It is worth noting here the different timing of CFC reforms. In Finland the major reform took place in the mid-1980s, and the rhetoric of choice was not yet drawn from market- or consumer-oriented discourses that to a large extent frame current childcare policy-making in Europe (cf. Kemp and Glendinning, 2006, pp. 6–7). In all three countries the advocates of CFC are found in the political centre-right axis and among Christian Democrats. In both Finland and Norway the role of the traditional equal-value-oriented women’s association has also been central (Tyyskä, 1995; Korsvik, 2009). In Finland the opponents of CFC in the 1970s and 1980s still quite openly argued that parents should not consider themselves experts in child upbringing, suggesting instead that children need professionally organized daycare activities. For the CFC advocates home care was unquestionably the best solution, and miserable descriptions of daycare institutions were construed (Hiilamo and Kangas, 2006, p. 30). Over time the CFC advocates’ interpretations of good care have remained strong, and have even become a hegemonic discourse on the best care of children under 3 in Finland (cf. Jallinoja, 2006). Linking CFC to the recognition of women’s unpaid work does not emerge in the CFC advocates’ political framing of the policy in Sweden, where the choice arguments are thoroughly gender neutral and care is not linked to work but to choice and parents spending more time with their children. The first coordination with the unemployment benefit took place in 1987, when the supplement CFC (see Table 7.1) started to be deducted from parents’ unemployment benefit. At that time the right to supplement CFC required that the parent was actually taking care of the child at home, and as the parent was thus not available for the labour market, the coordination was considered justified (Haataja, 2005, p. 95). It seems that the new rationale that linked CFC to employment policy also had some

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30. 31.

32. 33.

34.

Cash-for-childcare impact on the political criticism of CFC. When the 1996 government proposal was processed in parliament, the idea of emphasizing homecare for under 3-year-old children received support from social democrats who referred to its presumably positive impacts on unemployment (e.g., HE, 1996, hearing 1K, Skinnari; Vehkaoja). Sweden had a statutory CFC arrangement for a short period in 1994 (see Nyberg, Chapter 5 this volume). At that time the arrangement was accessible to all families with no coordination with social security benefits. It is worth mentioning here that in Sweden the CFC was framed as an alternative that should not push parents in one or another direction in organizing childcare: ‘The point of departure for CFC is that it creates an alternative for those parents who want to be at home with their child longer than parental leave makes possible. . . . It is also crucial that CFC is not framed so as to cause major manipulation of families’ choices, e.g. between the pre-school activities or care of the child at home’ (Proposition, 2008, pp. 30–31). Combining parental leave benefit and CFC allowance was also considered unproblematic because it did not change the total amount of parental leave benefit the parent could receive (Stortingsproposisjon, 1998, p. 15). The reform was carried out by a minority government led by the Christian Democrats with support from two right wing parties outside the government. These parties were in favour of a policy model according to which all public subsidies to childcare (including state support for daycare service producers) had been lumped together and given directly families (i.e., extended child allowance). That other Nordic countries have introduced similar entitlements can also make critical perspectives less relevant.

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vanhemmuus’, in Aino Kääriäinen, Juha Hämäläinen and Pirjo Pölkki (eds) Ero, vanhemmuus ja tukeminen, Helsinki: Lastensuojelun keskusliitto, pp. 36–60. Håland, Kari (2005), ‘Fra enighet til strid i familiepolitikken’, in Berit Brandth, Brita Bungum and Elin Kvande (eds), Valgfrihetens tid. Omsorgspolitikk for barn møter det fleksible arbeidslivet, Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS, pp. 26–43. HE (1984), Hallituksen esitys Eduskunnalle perhepoliittisen työsuhdeturvan kehittämistä koskevaksi lainsäädännöksi, HE 203/1984, Helsinki. HE (1994), Hallituksen esitys Eduskunnalle laiksi työttömyysturvalain 27 a §:n muuttamisesta, HE 331/1994vp, Helsinki. HE (1996), Hallituksen esitys pienten lasten hoidon tukemista koskevan lainsäädännön uudistamiseksi, HE 208/1996vp [including the 1K (parliamentary hearings)], Helsinki. HE (2004), Hallituksen esitys eduskunnalle laeiksi lasten kotihoidon ja yksityisen hoidon tuesta annetun lain sekä elatusturvalain muuttamisesta, HE 162/2004vp [including the 1K (parliamentary hearings)], Helsinki. HE (2005), Hallituksen esitys Eduskunnalle laiksi työttömyysturvalain muuttamisesta, HE 130/2005vp, Helsinki. HE (2006), Hallituksen esitys Eduskunnalle vanhempainpäivärahoja ja työnantajakustannusten korvaamista koskevan lainsäädännön muuttamiseksi, HE 112/2006vp, Helsinki. Hiilamo, Heikki (2002), The Rise and Fall of Nordic Family Policy: Historical Development and Changes During the 1990s in Sweden and Finland, Helsinki: Stakes. Hiilamo, Heikki and Olli Kangas (2006), ‘Trap for women or freedom to choose? Political frames in the making of child home care allowance in Finland and Sweden’, Publications of the Department of Social Policy, A:18/2006, University of Turku. Hiilamo, Heikki and Olli Kangas (2009), ‘Trap for women or freedom to choose? The struggle over cash for child care schemes in Finland and Sweden’, Journal of Social Policy, 38(3), 457–75. Innstilling (1998), ‘Innføring av kontantstøtte’, Innst.S. No. 200, 1997–98, Oslo: Stortinget. Jallinoja, Riitta (2006), Perheen vastaisku: familistista käännettä jäljittämässä, Helsinki: Gaudeamus. Julkunen, Raija and Jouko Nätti (1997), Työn jakaminen: moraali, talous, politiikka, Tampere: Vastapaino. Kela (2008), Kelan tilastollinen vuosikirja 2007, Helsinki: Kela. Kela (2009), Kelan perhe-etuustilasto 2008, Helsinki: Kela. Kemp, Peter A. and Caroline Glendinning (2006), ‘Introduction’, in Peter A. Kemp and Caroline Glendinning (eds), Cash and Care: Policy Challenges in the Welfare State, Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 3–8. Kontula, Osmo (2004), Perhepolitiikka käännekohdassa, Perhebarometri 2004, Väestöntutkimuslaitos Katsauksia E. No.18/2004, Helsinki: Väestöliitto. Korsvik, Trine Rogg (2009), ‘Childcare policy in the “most gender equal country of the world” since the 1970s: a field of grassroots activism and conflicts’, article manuscript. Korsvik, Trine R., Minna Rantalaiho and Solveig Bergman (2008), ‘Research on political actions and claims by women’s movements and other NGOs in childcare and parental leave issues in Norway and Finland’, FEMCIT Working Papers No. 1, available at: http://www.femcit.org/; accessed 23 April 2010.

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Korsvold, Tora (2008), Barn og barndom i velferdsstatens småbarnspolitikk. En sammenlignende studie av Norge, Sverige og Tyskland 1945–2000, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Kvande, Elin (2007), ‘Leave policy and social inequality: the case of Norway’, in Peter Moss and Karin Wall (eds) International Review of Leave Policies and Related Research 2007, Employment Relations Research Series, No. 80, London, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, pp. 19–24. Laki lasten päivähoidosta (Law on Child Care) 1973/36. Laki sosiaali- ja terveydenhuollon asiakasmaksuista (Law on Social Welfare) 1992/734. Lammi-Taskula, Johanna (2006), ‘Nordic men on parental leave: can the welfare state change gender relations?’, in Anne Lise Ellingsæter and Arnlaug Leira (eds) Politicising Parenthood in Scandinavia. Gender Relations in Welfare States, Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 79–99. Lammi-Taskula, Johanna (2007), Parental Leave for Fathers? Gendered Conceptions and Practices in Families with Young Children in Finland, Research Report No. 166, Helsinki: Stakes. Lauritzen, Tonje (2005), ‘“Kontantstøtteelskere” og “kontantstøttehatere”!’, in Berit Brandth, Brita Bungum and Elin Kvande (eds), Valgfrihetens tid. Omsorgspolitikk for barn møter det fleksible arbeidslivet, Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, pp. 111–23. Leira, Arnlaug (2002), Working Parents and the Welfare State. Family Change and Policy Reform in Scandinavia, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Leitner, Sigrid (2003), ‘Varieties of familialism’, European Societies, 5(4), 353–75. Lov om barnehager (barnehageloven) (Law on Kindergartens) 2005/64, Lov 17 June 2005, No. 64, Norsk Lovtidend, 2005, Avd. I (8). Lov om endringer i barnehageloven (rett til plass i barnehage) (The Law Amending the Kindergarten Act) (right to place in the nursery) 2008/73, Lov 8 August 2008, No. 73, Norsk Lovtidend, 2008, Avd. I (9). Mahon, Rianne (2002), ‘Child care: toward what kind of “social Europe”?’, Social Politics, 9(3), 343–79. Miettunen, Laura (2008), Lasten kotihoidon tuen kuntalisät osana suomalaista päivähoitojärjestelmää, Sosiaali- ja terveysturvan tutkimuksia 101, Helsinki: Kela. Morgan, Kimberly, J. (2009), ‘Caring time policies in Western Europe: trends and implications’, Comparative European Politics, 7(1), 37–55. Moss, Peter and Fred Deven (2006), ‘Leave policies and research: a cross-national overview’, Marriage & Family Review, 39(3/4), 255–85. Moss, Peter and Fred Deven (2002), ‘Leave arrangements for parents: overview and future outlook’, Community, Work and Family, 5(3), 237–55. Motion (2009), Utgiftsområde 12 Ekonomisk trygghet för familjer och barn, Motion till riksdagenm 2009/10:Sf392, Veronica Palm m.fl. (s). NAV (2009a), ‘Kontantstøtte til småbarnsforeldre’, available at: http://www.nav. no/Familie/Kontantst%C3%B8tte; accessed 23 April 2010. NAV (2009b), ‘Svangerskap, fødsel og adopsjon’, available at: http://www.nav. no/Familie/Svangerskap%2C+f%C3%B8dsel+og+adopsjon, accessed 3 May 2010. Plantenga, Janneke and Chantal Remery (2005), Reconciliation of Work and Private Life: A Comparative Review of Thirty European Countries, Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Union.

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Proposition (2008), Vårdnadsbidrag – familjepolitisk reform, Regeringens proposition 2007/08:91, Stockholm: Socialdepartementet. Rantalaiho, Minna (2003), ‘Pohjoismaisen isyyspolitiikan isäkuva’, in Hannele Forsberg and Ritva Nätkin (eds) Perhe murroksessa. Kriittisen perhetutkimuksen jäljillä, Helsinki: Gaudeamus, pp. 202–29. Rantalaiho, Minna (2009), Kvoter, fleksibilitet, valgfrihet: indre spenninger i den nordiske familiepolitikken, NIKK Publikationer No. 2009:2, Oslo: NIKK. Regeringskansliet (2009), ‘Frågor og svar. Vårdnadsbidrag’, available at: http:// www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/10218#item92663; accessed 23 April 2010. Riksdagens protokoll (2008), 14 § Vårdnadsbidrag – familjepolitisk reform, Riksdagens protokoll 2007/08:115, 20 May 2008, Stockholm: Riksdagen. Rognerud, Live Margrethe (2008), Undersøkning om foreldrebetaling i barnehager, January 2008, Oslo: SSB. Sahlin, Mona and Thomas Östros (2008), ‘Vårdnadsbidraget slopas när s tar tillbaka makten’, Dagens Nyheter, 1 January 2008. Salmi, Minna (2000), ‘Kotihoidon tuki ja naisten asema: tutkimushaasteita ja tulkintaongelmia’, Yhteiskuntapolitiikka, 65(1), 46–56. Salmi, Minna, Johanna Lammi-Taskula and Johanna Närvi (2009), Perhevapaat ja työelämän tasa-arvo, Työ- ja elinkeinoministeriön julkaisuja 24/2009, Helsinki. SDP (2007), Reilu Suomi – työtä ja välittämistä, Eduskuntavaaliohjelma 2007, available at: http://www.sdp.fi/sites/www.sdp.fi/files/politiikka/SDPnvaaliohjelma07. pdf; accessed 23 April 2010. SFS (1962) Lag (1962:381) om allmän försäkring, SFS (Svensk författningssamling). SFS (1985), Skollag (1985:1100 t.o.m. SFS 2009:1039), SFS (Svensk författningssamling). SFS (1994), Lag (1994:553) om vårdnadsbidrag, SFS 1994:553, Rättsnätet, available at: http://www.notisum.se/RNP/sls/lag/19940553.htm; accessed 23 April 2010. SFS (1995) Föräldraledighetslag (1995:584), SFS (Svensk författningssamling). SFS (2008), Lag (2008:307) om kommunalt vårdnadsbidrag, SFS (Svensk författningssamling). Skolverket (2009), ‘Förskolan’, Skolverket, available at: http://www.skolverket.se/ sb/d/2406/a/3408; accessed 23 April 2010. SSB (2008), Statistical Yearbook of Norway, Oslo: SSB. Stortingsproposisjon (1998), ‘Innføring av kontantsøtte til småbarnsforeldre’, St.prp. No. 53, 1997–98, Oslo: Barne- og familiedepartementet. StVM (1996), Sosiaali- ja terveysvaliokunnan mietintö 35, Hallituksen esitys pienten lasten hoidon tukemista koskevan lainsäädännön uudistamiseksi, StVM 35/1996, Helsinki: Eduskunta. SV (2009), ‘SVs arbeidsprogram for perioden 2009–2013’, available at: http:// www.sv.no/Forside/Politikken/Arbeidsprogram/Program-09-13-pdf; accessed 23 April 2010. Takala, Pentti (2005), Uuden isyysvapaan ja isän muiden perhevapaiden käyttö, 43/2005, Sosiaali- ja terveysturvan selosteita, 43/2005, Kelan tutkimusosasto, Helsinki: Edita Prima Oy. Taylor, Sandra (2004), ‘Researching educational policy and change in “new times”: using critical discourse analysis’, Journal of Education Policy, 19(4), 433–51. Tyyskä, Vappu (1995), The Politics of Caring and the Welfare State. The Impact of the Women’s Movement on Child Care Policy in Canada and Finland, 1960–1990, Helsinki: Suomalainen tiedeakatemia.

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The paradox of cash-for-childcare: are there ways to solve the dilemma? Katja Repo, Jorma Sipilä, Tapio Rissanen and Niina Viitasalo

Cash-for-childcare as a social benefit is a contested and controversial subject. The main paradox of cash-for-care schemes is their contradictory nature: they have strong positive and negative features at the same time. In this chapter we discuss this paradox, taking into account the comments and ideas developed by the authors of this book, but we also look at the future and ask how the negative features of such schemes could be minimized. We start by making an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of cash-for-care schemes and then continue by considering how cash-for-childcare schemes could be developed in the future.

THE ADVANTAGES OF CASH-FOR-CARE SCHEMES In principle, cash-for-childcare benefits provide parents with more flexibility in daily life practices when it concerns reconciling work and family responsibilities (Rønsen and Kitterød, Chapter 6 this volume). They provide families with flexible means to arrange childcare while improving women’s access to the labour market (Kamerman and Gatenio Gabel, Chapter 2 this volume). One possible function of CFC is to increase consumerism in childcare. It, for its part, evinces incentives to develop childcare markets where parents, mainly mothers, can make their choices regarding childcare consumption. (Kamerman and Gatenio Gabel, Chapter 2 this volume; Uttal, 2002).1 In this book, however, we have not studied CFC benefits as childcare vouchers but have concentrated on another function: CFC as a way to support maternal childcare at home. One reason why cash-for-care schemes are popular today is that many people simply like to stay at home with their children and do not feel that they are more satisfied if alternating between work and family (Repo, Chapter 4 this volume). The intensification of work does not only produce

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more rewards for those employed but also good reason to withdraw from the labour market or to extend the periods outside working life. Today, when there is no surplus of unoccupied persons in families, the existence of informal care resources is regarded as a positive phenomenon in itself. The sufficiency of informal ‘care capital’ means flexibility in hectic daily life situations, for instance when a child is ill or the parents are overstressed. The option to rely on informal childcare arrangements may alleviate the stress faced by families or solve intra-household conflicts and problems. The amount of care capital that cash-for-childcare systems are in their way generating is related to satisfaction with family life (Repo, 2001; Anttonen and Sipilä, 2007; Kilpeläinen, 2009). Nowadays the cultural ideas and understandings of ‘good motherhood’ and ‘good fatherhood’ also tend to require a longer stay at home and emphasize the importance of care leaves and cash-for-childcare schemes. Although the Nordic welfare state has been seen as having a strong commitment to gender equality on the basis of ‘woman-friendly’ reforms, such as the public childcare system (see Anttonen, 1994), and they have, using Esping-Andersen’s term (2002a), actively ‘de-familialized’ welfare responsibilities, perhaps both new cultural ideas of parenthood and the strain in the labour market have caused a counter-reaction, leading parents to emphasize intensive parenting and family time. The notion of family time has actually attained growing cultural significance. Nowadays parents live their daily lives in the midst of increasing pressure to allocate more time to the family and to childcare (Daly, 2001; Jallinoja, 2006). There are also studies showing that parents have also done so in practice and have increased the amount of time spent on childcare (Österbacka and Mattila-Wiro, 2009). The measure to enable parents to spend more time with children has also been one of the main political arguments for cash-for-childcare schemes in the Nordic welfare states, as maintained by Nyberg, Rønsen, Kitterød and Rantalaiho in this book (Chapters 5, 6 and 7). The increase of family time is in turn an important aim of the CFC for its recipients interviewed by Repo in Chapter 4. Although the cash-for-childcare schemes do not guarantee increased family time, since the benefit can be used to purchase non-parental care, the cultural image and everyday understanding of the benefit evokes such an interpretation. There is thus a cultural trend to place increasing value on family time as well as on family care, but a similar trend can be discerned from the present Nordic family policy design. Researchers have conceptualized the phenomenon by a term of refamilizing of care comprising the public support allocated to the parental care. This support includes paid parental leave systems but increasingly also the institutions of cash benefits for

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parental care (Lister et al., 2007, p. 132). As Lister et al. (ibid.) argue, policy approaches to cash benefits are ‘presenting moves to refamilization’. Family values are reflected in the legislation but also, conversely, the legislation gives norms for parents (Leira, 2002). Legislation concerning childcare can be seen to give a message to people about the most appropriate way to care for children. In this respect the welfare state functions as ‘a source of moral authority’ as Kremer (2007, p. 237) argues. For example, in Finland there is – perhaps due to the introduction of the cash-forchildcare benefit – a powerful discourse that emphasizes the value of home care. Berg (2008) has even stated that Finnish society has been witnessing the growth of new kinds of ‘home mothering subcultures’. The assessments of home care often include self-reflections concerning mothers’ life and value systems and in this way home care forms a stage for identity politics (Kilpeläinen, 2009; Repo, 2009, 2010). Although the positive aspect of home care is not shared by all families, although there is powerful opposition to home care, and although the argumentation for and against home care involves country-specific features, in general it can be argued that the introduction of CFC schemes has generated a new cultural domain to express pro home care ideas and to establish pro home care movements. In other words, home care has become a politicized issue. Perhaps we should add that the norm of increasing the length of home care is not favoured by all people, particularly employers, who tend to have different expectations regarding their key personnel. In addition, career-oriented parents are often critical of long absences from the labour market due to caring responsibilities, instead of emphasizing childcare services as a care solution, although they may simultaneously think that family life acquires its value by seeing family time as important (Repo, 2001, 2004). Another reason for the popularity of cash-for-care is the ethos of individualism that has gained strength particularly among middle class people. Individualism acquires new expressions in the ways in which parents, believing they know what is best for their children, intervene in the schools and the daycare centres, regarding public services with doubt, demanding their own solutions, and wanting to control their children’s daily lives (Ramkvist, 2006). In Finland the parents’ freedom to choose the form of care is the most powerful argument for cash-for-care (Hiilamo and Kangas, 2006). The idea of choice is also widely expressed when discussing or seeking political legitimation for the Swedish and Norwegian systems of cash-for-childcare benefits (Nyberg, Chapter 5; Rønsen and Kitterød, Chapter 6; Rantalaiho, Chapter 7 this volume). This fits the idea that modern social services are those in which consumers are enabled to optimize their own preferences (Ungerson and Yeandle, 2007, p. 187).

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Some of the cash-for-care schemes do not regulate the conditions of care and as such they are perfect for individualists. If the users want to spend money to support their informal caregiving they can do so in a flexible way either on the market or by hiring a childminder at home. As mentioned by Rantalaiho in Chapter 7, in the Nordic context the idea of choice is also characterized by an emphasis on establishing new public goods and not just by the retrenchment of public spending (see also Morgan, 2009). Individualism related to the cash-for-care scheme is often infiltrated by the ideas of individual pleasure and psychological reasoning. Repo (2009) has written about a notion of individualistic familism that seeks to describe childcare arrangements as a field for making individual choices and gaining individual pleasures. Thus, the argumentation for home care often involves the best interests of the child and the pleasure that home care is seen to generate for the carer. The meanings attached to home care thus become entwined with and are influenced by other spheres of social meaning making. The politicization of childhood, the growing importance of childhood as a social category, the power of individualism and the psychological knowledge produced by professionals all frame the daily life understanding of home care (Repo, 2009). Choice is not only important for individualists but also for minorities. Today’s societies consist of heterogeneous social groups, thus social diversity has become a reality, which also increases the importance of choice. It is increasingly difficult to provide public daycare that meets the expectations of different religious, ethnic and other social groups. Cash-for-care allows such groups to arrange children’s daycare as they prefer. Third, the value of caring is a permanent issue in feminist theory and politics (Tronto, 1993). In principle, cash-for-care is a policy that esteems caring. Fraser (1997, p. 42) says that caregiving should be universalized, meaning ‘carework should yield the status and pay attached to primary sector work’. By establishing a cash-for-care scheme the state shows that caring is valued although it is not rewarded with high payments. To some extent the cash benefit also recognizes the parent’s right to give care. In principle this right is gender neutral although it is not so in practice. Thus, there are several reasons for the popularity of the cash-for-care schemes. For instance, in Finland only one out of six parents does not use the child home care allowance at all (during 1998–2001; Hämäläinen, 2005, p. 63). In other words, only 15 per cent of the parents used only childcare services. In spite of the subjective right to public daycare, Finnish parents use daycare for their children the least in the Nordic countries (Haataja, 2005). Similar findings on the popularity of cash benefits have been made in other countries where the choice of money vs. service has been readily available (Sipilä et al., 2009). Some authors claim that

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cash-for-care schemes are replacing social service provision (Michel and Mahon, 2002). Governments, too, perceive advantages in cash-for-care schemes. The present international aim to retrench public expenditure fosters informalization in principle, and in social care in particular (Sipilä, Anttonen and Kröger, 2009). The pragmatic necessity of cost containment favours home care, assuming that it will compensate for the more expensive daycare, but cash-for-care schemes are, at the same time, also a reaction against the decrease of informal care resources. For governments the problem is that nowadays they cannot increase informal care without sharing some of the costs borne by the families. The idea of shared care, which means that care responsibilities are shared between public and private actors, has gained popularity in the Nordic countries (Kröger, 2009). Although the idea is more noteworthy when it concerns the care of elderly, it is also an important concept that captures some post-modern elements of public support for childcare. In addition, there are several administrative reasons why governments have increased the use of cash-for-care schemes. Ungerson and Yeandle (2007) have noted some special advantages connected to cash-for-care schemes. On the one hand, these policies have the particular capacity to encourage informal carers motivated by affect or obligation to provide unpaid care services (in the context of childcare there are grandmothers, friends and neighbours who step in when the carer is ill or absent). On the other hand, cash-for-care schemes enable the state to reduce both the employment costs and the organizational costs. The costs of recruitment, training new staff, security checks, performance management, risk management, staff development and sickness absence are negligible (ibid., pp. 187–9). More administrative gains can be added if the government relies on the producer-provider models, which are quite popular at the moment. The management of producer-provider systems is cumbersome and expensive: they require a growing amount of legal expertise, tendering is wearisome for small providers, and the detailed contracts do not allow flexibility in practice. Cash-for-care schemes, instead, can be operated with small streetlevel bureaucracy. Another problem with the producer-provider model is that the bureaucracy instead of the users guides the development of services and their needs. Such a setting is not popular in present politics. The last issue to be mentioned here, as a possible advantage of cashfor-childcare, is fertility. We do not actually know the present validity of the traditional finding that comprehensive maternal leave policies and cash benefits do not directly encourage fertility (Rindfluss and Brewster, 1996). There are some studies that challenge this view and suggest that

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in some contexts, at least, long care leaves may raise birthrates (Rønsen, 2004; Lalive and Zweimüller, 2005). More studies are needed to elucidate this issue.

THE DISADVANTAGES OF CASH-FOR-CARE SCHEMES If there are advantages related to the cash-for-childcare there are also many risks involved, as the authors of this book have described. From the parental point of view the major problem with cash-for-care benefits comes from their long-term consequences. The benefits support parental care when children are young but a longer absence from the labour market tends to reduce parents’ human capital. This even leads to increasingly negative consequences on employment and earnings over the subsequent career (Ziefle, 2004) and finally on pensions.2,3 From the point of view of gender equality this is a serious drawback. Together with the growing risks of unemployment, insecure working career and low earnings for one of the parents, the risk of child poverty also increases, and culminates in the event of divorce. The risks inherent in reduced labour force participation have a new breeding ground as the labour market is globalizing. There are ever more parents of small children working abroad, travelling for business throughout the week, and working extra-long working weeks. In a sense, cashfor-care policies fit well and support the development of the global labour market. When the working life of one of the parents (usually the man) is overstrained, the cash-for-care schemes help to make the decision that another parent (usually the woman) stays outside the labour force. Here again, cash-for-care consolidates the traditional division of labour and economic gender inequality. Nordic child poverty rates have been quite low. According to EspingAndersen (2002b, pp. 52–3) this is not so much due to social transfers as to parents’ gainful employment and adequate salary. Ferrarini and Forssén (2005, pp. 141–3) suggest in turn that Nordic welfare states have been effective in reducing poverty since family policy provides both adequate benefits that are often earnings-related and services that provide incentives for female labour force participation. However, the situation changes when low-level social transfers like CFC are introduced and used as basis for subsistence. There is thus a growing danger that child poverty will increase since cash-for-care benefits are often low social transfers and since the cash-for-childcare systems create incentives for parents, mainly mothers, to prolong the periods outside the labour markets. Increased

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economic hardship and income-related polarization among families with small children is already a lived experience, at least in Finland (Salmi et al., 2009). There is thus a risk that cash-for-childcare benefits generate polarization among the families with small children. As addressed by Nyberg, Repo, Rønsen and Kitterød (Chapters 4, 5 and 6) in this book, less affluent families and mothers with less education prefer to rely on cash-forchildcare benefits. The evaluation of the Swedish and Norwegian systems also shows that the take-up rates of the CFC benefits among immigrants are higher than among non-immigrant families (Chapters 5 and 6 this volume). The popularity of the cash benefits among immigrants is an important aspect since the overall trend in the Nordic countries has been an increase in the numbers of non-nationals. The largest proportion of non-nationals is in Iceland, almost 8 per cent of the population in 2009, and lowest in Finland, around 3 per cent of the population in 2009, where the share of non-nationals, however, has been rising significantly (Nordic Statistical Yearbook, 2009). The growing number of immigrant families and the economic polarization between users and non-users of the cashfor-childcare benefits increases the likelihood that children at risk and children with culturally mixed backgrounds will be marginalized from early childhood education and the social capital it provides. The relationship between cash-for-care schemes and public economy is not simple. Actually, local governments often favour these schemes because the direct costs falling on local governments tend to be lower than the costs of daycare centres. This calculation may remain valid even if we include the local tax revenue from parents who would not be employed without childcare. However, from the viewpoint of public economy as a whole, also taking the state economy into account, cash-for-care is social expenditure only, whereas child daycare brings local and national tax revenue and a greater volume of national production. Different economic viewpoints are well presented in political argumentations: in Finnish politics child home care allowance is seen to be cheaper than a daycare centre and to save public money, whereas in Swedish politics the same allowance has been seen as an expensive and irrational way of caring for children (Hiilamo and Kangas, 2006). Generally, professional daycare and early childhood education are regarded as a social investment in children. Early childhood education is an unequalled opportunity for investment in human capital because learning in an early life stage begets learning in the next (Cunha et al., 2005). A review of a large amount of research shows that good-quality childcare supports children with a broad range of positive developmental outcomes, both short term and long term (Vandell and Wolfe, 2000). The advantages

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of non-maternal care in infancy seem to concentrate on children from high-risk families (Côté et al., 2008). Although parental care may also be considered as an investment, this is less certain because the quality of family care varies widely with the parents, their aims and skills. Cash-forcare schemes may attract parents at risk of becoming sole carers of their children. Children have the right to receive care. In spite of the mundane phrase: ‘Mother’s care is best for children’ not all mothers or fathers are able to take care of their children, otherwise there would hardly be any child protection cases. Risks found in earlier research include, for example, the absence of the father, the young age of the mother and ethnic minority position (OECD, 2006, p. 33). Actually, there is an enormous variation in the quality of care by the families; families may provide the best possible care but also the opposite. If there are severe social problems in the family the provision of cash-for-care increases the risk of not receiving adequate care. Often child protection officers require instead that children at risk spend their days in the daycare centres. Offering money to parents for taking their children out of public daycare may be a dangerous policy for children at risk. It is important to discuss how children as citizens are constructed in the framework of the social policy design that supports prolonged home care. There are two broad ways to construct the children. Children can be seen as dependants who need care and protection, or as young citizens who are entitled to respect and participation (Neale, 2004, p. 7). It seems that a discourse that favours home care simultaneously intensifies an idea of children as dependent and vulnerable and is thus the opposite of an assertion of the idea of the modern child that represents children as competent and autonomous beings with participation rights (Kjørholt and Tingstad, 2007; Repo, 2010). Bren Neale (2004, p. 11) has argued that a key challenge in the field of children’s rights is to find a balance between respect and protection. In relation to cash-for-childcare this is an important challenge to discuss. There is thus a need to consider how to develop the prevailing cash-forchildcare schemes in the direction in which they would realize more explicitly both elements of children’s rights: to be cared for with protection and to participate with respect. It is also important to take into account that the well-being of children is influenced by the various dimensions of social capital. Social networks form one element of social capital, and have been seen to protect the family and to sustain them in difficult and risky situations. It has even been argued that social networks are one of the most important factors affecting children’s well-being (Tähtinen et al., 2004). Although children

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cared for at home may be surrounded by extensive social networks, public childcare has also been seen to provide the families as well as the children with such networks and with social capital that has a positive effect on children’s well-being and parents’ capacities to bring up their children (Dahlberg, et al., 2002).

IS CASH-FOR-CARE AN INTRINSICALLY PROBLEMATIC BENEFIT? The literature in social sciences abounds in suspicions regarding cash-forcare schemes. The main theme is that these schemes are traps for women, especially their working careers, and because of this they threaten women’s economy, their independence and often also their children (Randall, 1996; Sipilä and Korpinen, 1998; Morgan and Zippel, 2003). In the former analysis we have partly accepted this view and presented the risks connected to cash-for-care arrangements but we have also shown some positive qualities entailed in these policies. Thus, we have to continue our analysis and to ask: are cash-for-care schemes problematic in themselves, do they have some intolerable features due to which they should be rejected as social policies? Is it possible to solve the problems connected to paid informal caring? What are the principal advantages and disadvantages involved in cashfor-care arrangements vs. daycare centres? Table 8.1 presents a simple theoretical analysis by indicating the strengths and weaknesses of the two basic forms of childcare. Table 8.1 helps us to weigh up positive and negative aspects involved in childcare choices but note that the consequences are not the same for different families. In the following we shed light on differences in the consequences of cash-for-childcare arrangements by referring to four stereotype families: ●

●

●

A traditional male breadwinner family experiences the gains and losses described in the middle column of the table. Cash-for-care benefits accentuate the gender equality problems that have been so extensively discussed in feminist literature for centuries. A traditional dual-career family experiences the benefits and problems described in the right-hand column. The supporters of the housewife institution have for their part written numerous judgmental texts about the malaise among employed mothers and their children. A traditional part-time worker undergoes a mixed experience that consists of issues described in both columns. For instance, the part-time

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Table 8.1

Basic social advantages and disadvantages according to the form of childcare

Issues

Cash-for-Care

Professional Daycare Centre

Carer’s economy

Short-term and long-term problems Long absence from working life detrimental to working skills Tranquil and flexible, plenty of informal resources available Fully realized, 24/7 model for one parent Children at risk in marginal cases Tends to decrease equality Savings in social consumption, smaller tax revenue, weaker social investment in individual capital Simple, less public responsibility

Opportunity for full-time employment Better conditions for individual progress at work Continual time pressure, limited flexibility

Carer’s working career Daily family life

Right to give care Right to receive care Gender equality Public economy

Public administration

Source:

●

Prevails outside the working hours Professional care during the time spent in daycare Helps to increase equality More social consumption, higher tax revenue, high social investment rate

Complicated, especially with the producerprovider model

Authors’ own compilation.

worker meets economic problems but her working skills are updated and her future career is not so much threatened. There is some flexibility in her daily schedules but also occasional time pressure. Her right to give care is quite large and her child is not at any particular risk of not receiving care. The gender equality is not in order in the family but better than in a traditional male breadwinner family. A modern family of two part-time workers is rather similar to the previous case but it now concerns both of the partners if their child spends some time in a daycare centre. In this case the gender equality in the family is greatly improved. The setting changes somewhat if the child does not attend daycare outside the family at all because the work of the parents is organized sequentially. The result is that the child loses the benefit of professional care and early education and her development is slightly more at risk.

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The main message of this comparison is that cash-for-care schemes have different meanings and consequences for different kinds of families. Diverse national schemes encourage different divisions of labour in the family and different relations to paid work. For instance, the Norwegian cash-for-care model favours part-time work and has only modest social effects (Ellingsæter, 2003) especially compared with the Finnish model. Second, what is crucial is who uses the benefit and in what kind of a social context. Cash-for-care models are mainly used to consolidate the traditional male breadwinner model but in some cases they help to break the traditional gender order if used as a cash voucher to purchase services (Kamerman and Gatenio Gabel, Chapter 2 this volume). The way in which the cash-for-childcare systems have been organized in themselves is also an important structure for daily life solution as Rantalaiho has highlighted in Chapter 7. There are national differences in what cash-for-childcare schemes offer the families, for whom they are designed and what conditions they impose. If the design of cashfor-childcare is flexible, as in Norway, it does not prevent the child from attending public daycare on a part-time basis (Rantalaiho, Chapter 7). This is a crucial feature of the benefit that eases the possibly inherent social risks. If the scheme offers part-time solutions, the children can attend early childhood education, the mothers can participate in labour markets and the childcare is constructed as a shared responsibility between the private and public spheres. Another important structure of the benefits relates to fathers’ rights. The recent developments in Nordic family policy have increasingly emphasized the father’s role as a carer. The father quota is nowadays an important part of Nordic parental leave systems (ibid.). The increasing significance of father’s role as a carer has not, however, affected the design of cash-for-childcare schemes. There are no father quotas in any of the cash-for-childcare systems analysed in this book. The measures to encourage fathers to take part in the care of their children are thus important means to solve the gender inequality problems associated with the use of cash-for-childcare benefits. If the worlds of work and family were fair and the ways of reconciling work and ‘life’ were generally just and balanced, cash-for-care would not be a big issue. It could be seen as a matter of free choice: do you want to spend more time at work and earn more money or are you satisfied with less money and work but want more time with your children? Fundamentally, the problems attached to cash-for-care policies are problems caused by the uneven division of labour and the gendered privileges both at work and at home. If both could be abolished, which, of course, cannot be presumed, cash-for-care might prove to be a policy that is not particularly reproachable. More realistically speaking, all this

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means that the consequences of cash-for-care schemes vary together with the context in which they are applied. In a chauvinist environment such a scheme sustains chauvinism, but if we lived in a social paradise, cash-forcare could be a sustaining element in our paradise. For the public economy cash-for-care seems to be a short-term microsolution, which becomes less fruitful in the long run. If local governments are allowed to establish cash-for-care schemes and if the municipality receives the same central government support per user as for daycare centres, it is probable that local politicians will eagerly apply such schemes. In Finland, for instance, research has shown that above all, urban municipalities with a large and growing proportion of small children grant local cash-for-care benefits (Pietilä, 2008), apparently to retrench the social expenditure on families. For central government, social investment and long-term politics may be more important. A strong international consensus about the need to increase the female employment rate has emerged in the present Western world4 and this outcome is difficult to achieve without increasing childcare services (European Commission, 2004; OECD, 2007). However, in spite of this challenge many governments are also adding to their cash-for-care schemes although these schemes tend to decrease the female labour supply (OECD, 2006, p. 93). The coinciding increase in the use of both subsidized childcare and cash-for-care benefits is a contradictory phenomenon that will in the future, too, give rise to political debate and social research.

ON THE FUTURE OF THE CASH-FOR-CHILDCARE SCHEMES As presented in this book, the aim of governments to retrench public expenditure fosters informalization in the field of social care (Sipilä et al., 2009). Sipilä et al. even suggested that increasing informalization has actually become a new necessary aim for governments and something that can be seen as the solution to the global challenges in the welfare state. CFC benefits are one of the most important elements of this informalization as they allocate public support to the informal production of care, and as they generate a new realm of care; that of semi-formal care (Geissler and Pfau-Effinger, 2005). As such, by the introduction of cash-for-care schemes governments have introduced benefits that combine formal and informal elements of care production (Anttonen and Sointu, 2006). Although informalization of care can be assessed as a necessary aim of modern welfare states, there is, however, a need to be critical about the ways in which this informalization takes place in a certain societal context.

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This is a most important issue to consider especially when it concerns the informalization of the care of children. In relation to children’s rights, the systems of cash-for-childcare systems should not serve as a vehicle to exclude beneficiaries’ children from attending early childhood education and it should not act as a mechanism that intensifies the cultural understanding of a child as dependent and vulnerable. The design of the allowance should thus itself include elements of flexibility that provide families with a (part-time) right to public early childhood education or there should be alternative ways to provide quality and low-cost early childhood education that is easily available to children cared for at home. Even though some cash-for-care systems have acknowledged children’s right to early childhood education, they are still controversial and problematic in relation to gender equality. As such, the cash-for-childcare systems should also include mechanisms to promote gender equality and to encourage fathers to engage in care. One possible solution to this dilemma is the introduction of father quotas. Although we believe that fathers would increase their share in the distribution of care work, there are still the economic risks involved in the use of CFC. In this respect the purchasing power of the benefit should be sufficient to prevent families from facing poverty and the use of CFC should not dramatically reduce the amount of the future pension. In addition, there should be secure opportunities to return to working life. Bringing the rules for CFC closer to those for care leave could lead to improved solutions regarding both gender and poverty. The modern labour market requires a great deal of flexibility and CFC, if generously applied, may help to achieve such flexibility that also helps the parents of small children in their arduous everyday lives. Children in home care should have access to part-time daycare and their parents to part-time employment or study. In relation to such modern aspects of the labour market as increased fixed-term work and insecurity of employment, cash-for-childcare schemes can even be interpreted as a source of security. They enable job sharing and career breaks. But for them to make a secure bridge between work and family the legislation on cash-for-care benefits should offer adequate income and a safe return to the labour force.

NOTES 1. In Finland there is also a separate allowance – a private childcare allowance – that is designed specifically to enable parents to purchase childcare services from the private market (see Repo, Chapter 4 and Rantalaiho, Chapter 7 in this book). 2. Cash-for-care schemes may include entitlements to pensions but their affects on final pensions are slight.

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3. CFC schemes may also increase risks for hired care workers, even including the growth of an illegal labour force, especially if the use of the money is totally unregulated (e.g., Ungerson, 2004). 4. There are indeed strong policy recommendations, but they have not been particularly well reflected in the changes in social expenditure (Sipilä, 2010).

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Nordic Statistical Yearbook (2009), available at: http://www.norden.org/en/publications/publications/2009-001; accessed 24 April 2010. OECD (2006), Starting Strong II: Early Childhood Education and Care, Paris: OECD. OECD (2007), ‘Matching work and family commitments. Issues, outcomes, policy objectives and recommendations’, in Babies and Bosses, Reconciling Work and Family Life – A Synthesis of Findings for OECD Countries, Paris: OECD, available at: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/18/27/39689983.pdf; accessed 24 April 2010. Österbacka, Eva and Päivi Mattila-Wiro (2009), Child Perspectives on Income and Time Use in Finnish Families in the 1990s, Kela, Research Department 68/2009, Helsinki: Kela. Pietilä, Virpi (2008), Lapsiperheiden kotihoidontuen kuntalisät Suomen kunnissa, Pro gradu – thesis. The Department of Social Policy, The University of Turku. Ramkvist, Karolina (2006), ‘Pappamakten’, Arena, 4(6) 14–17. Randall, Vicky (1996), ‘Feminism and child daycare’, Journal of Social Policy, 25(4), 485–506. Repo, Katja (2001), Care Arrangements in Multi-Career Families, SOCCARE Project Report 3.1., Tampere: The University of Tampere. Repo, Katja (2004), ‘Combining work and family in two welfare state contexts: a discourse analytical perspective’, Social Policy and Administration, 38(6), 622–39. Repo, Katja (2009), Lapsiperheiden arki. Näkökulmina raha, työ ja lastenhoito, Acta Universitatis Tamperensis No. 1479, Tampere: Tampere University Press. Repo, Katja (2010), ‘Families, work and home care. Assessing the Finnish child home care allowance’, Barn, 43–61. Rindfuss, R.R. and K.L. Brewster (1996), ‘Childrearing and fertility’, in J.B. Casterline, R.D. Lee and K.A. Foote (eds) Fertility in the United States: New Patterns, New Theories, pp. 258–89 (Supplement to Population and Development Review 22). Rønsen, Marit (2004), ‘Fertility and public policies – evidence from Norway and Finland’, Demographic Research, 10(6) 143–70. Salmi, Minna, Hannele Sauli and Johanna Lammi-Taskula (2009), ‘Lapsiperheiden toimeentulo’, in Johanna Lammi-Taskula, Sakari Karvonen and Salme Ahlström (eds) Lapsiperheiden hyvinvointi 2009, Helsinki: Terveyden ja hyvinvoinnin laitos, pp. 78–93. Sipilä, Jorma (2010), ‘The social investment state: a new trend in social expenditure or merely a popular political discourse?’, in G.B. Cohen, Ben Ansell, Robert Cox and Jane Gingrich (eds) Social Policy in the Smaller EU States, New York: Berghahn. Sipilä, Jorma and Johanna Korpinen (1998), ‘Cash versus child care services in Finland’, Social Policy and Administration, 32(3), 263–77. Sipilä, Jorma, Anneli Anttonen and Teppo Kröger (2009), ‘A Nordic welfare state meets globalization: from universalism toward privatization and informalization’, in J. Powell and J. Hendricks (eds) The Welfare State in Post-Industrial Society: A Global Perspective, Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 181–99. Tähtinen, Juhani, Mari Broberg, Katja Forssén and Mia Hakovirta (2004), ‘Family resources as positive factors and risk factors for children’s well-being’, in Vesa Puuronen, Antti Häkkinen, Anu Pylkkänen, Tom Sandlund and Reetta

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Toivanen (eds), New Challenges for the Welfare Society, University of Joensuu, Publications of Karelian Institute No 142, pp. 257–74. Tronto, Joan (1993), Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care, New York: Routledge. Ungerson, Clare (2004), ‘Whose empowerment and independence? A crossnational perspective on “cash-for-care” schemes’, Ageing and Society, 24(2), 189–212. Ungerson, Clare and Sue Yeandle (2007), Cash for Care in Developed Welfare States, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Uttal, Lynet (2002), Making Care Work, Employed Mothers in the New Childcare Market, New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press. Vandell, Deborah L. and Barbara Wolfe (2000), ‘Child care quality: does it matter and does it need to be improved?’, Special Report No. 78, Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin-Madison, available at: http://www.irp. wisc.edu/publications/sr/pdfs/sr78.pdf; accessed 24 April 2010. Ziefle, A. (2004), ‘Die individuellen Kosten des Erziehungsurlaubs. Eine empirische Analyse der kurz- und langerfristigen Folgen für den Karriereverlauf von Frauen’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 56(2), 213–31.

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Index Abramovitz, M. 22 Abukhanfusa, K. 65 Adamik, M. 16 administrative advantages 147, 152 advantages of CFC 148–8, 152 Agerskov, U. 51, 52 Alasuutari, M. 54, 55 Andersson, E. 78, 81 Anttonen, A. 14, 28, 39, 47, 48, 52, 60, 92, 117, 123, 128, 133, 135, 144, 154 Australia, maternal employment rates 8 Austria CFC and work–welfare arrangements 33–4 daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8 Bacchi, C. 111 Bäck-Wiklund, M. 55 Baklien, B. 90, 96, 97, 98, 104, 106 Becker, G. 80 Belgium daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8, 9 Bennett, F. 14, 19 Berg, K. 145 Bergqvist, C. 117, 136 Bergsten, B. 55 Bettio, F. 110, 111 Blau, F. 80 Borschini, A. 80 Brandth, B. 110, 114 Bruning, G. 110 Bulgaria employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8

Canada employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8 cash versus care policy issues 6–20 cash benefits, arguments for and against 13 cash benefits and care services definitions 11–13 cash benefits or care services, distinction between 11–12, 15–16 cash benefits, preference for 146–7 daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 early childhood education 6, 7–9, 12, 14, 17, 18 employment and parental leave rates 10 female labour force participation 7 gender equity 9, 14 policy and freedom of choice 17–18 policy goals 12–13 policy options 7–9 politics of cash versus care 13–15 see also individual countries; policy headings cash-for-childcare, traditionalism versus contemporary necessity 21–45 administrative advantages 147, 152 advantages of schemes 143–8, 152 benefit levels, economic considerations of 38 cash benefits, preference for 146–7 child allowances 22 child protection issues 150 children’s rights 150, 152, 155 children’s social development 150, 155 children’s viewpoint 38–40 daycare system expansion 24 disadvantages of schemes 148–51, 152

161

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early childhood education 39, 41 education levels 149 family life satisfaction 144–5, 152 fertility rates, effect on 147–8 future of schemes 154–5 gender divisions 30, 33, 152, 153–4 immigrant communities 149 income-testing 28 individualism and choice 145–6 institutional support 26–7 labour market, effects on 31–5 labour market participation 33, 148, 153–4, 155 maternity and paternal paid leave 22 paradox and possible solutions 143–59 parental care, benefits of 29–30 parental choices 22–3, 25–30 parental leave 144–5 paternal rights 153 polarization of benefits 149 political advantages 147 political frame and choice 35–8 poverty 28, 30, 33, 38, 148–9, 155 problems and suspicions of CFC 151–4 professional childcare 149–50, 153 public childcare, non-use of 35–6 public economy considerations 36–7 public economy, effects on 149, 152 single-parent families 28 social capital 150–51 social policies and labour market flexibility 31–2 social policy background 22–5 state as moral authority 145 tax relief 24 unemployment and CFC schemes 32–3 welfare state informalization, benefits of 23 work–life balance 23–4, 33–4, 145, 152, 153 childcare and child as citizen debate 56–7 child development theory 55, 57 child protection issues 150 children’s rights 150, 152, 155 children’s social development 150, 155

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children’s viewpoint 38–40 time to children and work–life balance 128–9 Christensen, E. 27 Chronholm, A. 14 Côté, S. 150 Cunha, F. 149 Cyprus employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8 Czech Republic daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8 Dahlberg, G. 151 Daly, K. 29, 144 Daly, M. 109 Daugstad, G. 94, 132 daycare access, Nordic case 110 centres, demand for 52, 92–3, 94, 98, 100 centres, subsidized, Norway 91–2 and CFC, simultaneously 119–20, 122, 124, 126, 129, 132 sector, impact of CFC on, Norway 97 system expansion 24 see also private childcare; public childcare Denmark CFC and work–welfare arrangements 33–4 children in daycare 52 daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 female labour force participation 7 maternal employment rates 8, 9 state-subsidized childcare and parental choice 27 Deven, F. 25, 52, 110, 111, 123 disadvantages of CFC 41, 148–52 Duncan, S. 26, 28, 29

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Index economic value of CFC 37, 118–19, 122, 154 education, early childhood 6, 7–9, 12, 14, 17, 18, 39, 41, 51, 149 education levels of parents 95, 103, 149 Ellala, E. 28 Ellingsæter, A. 25–30, 32, 53, 61, 89–92, 96–7, 106, 110–11, 114, 116–17, 124, 127–8, 133, 153 employment see labour market Eräranta, K. 53 Erler, D. 18 Esping-Andersen, G. 39, 144, 148 Estonia daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8 EU CFC and economic growth 37 early childhood education 39 employment and parental leave rates 10 European Employment Strategy 7 female labour force participation targets (Barcelona targets) 7–9, 11 labour market flexibility 32 see also individual countries Eydal, G. 109, 135 family life satisfaction 144–5, 152 Ferrarini, T. 148 fertility rates, effect on 147–8 Finland child home care allowance 46–64 alternatives to 46, 48 popularity of 50–51 use of 49–53 childcare and child as citizen debate 56–7 daily life perception interviews 53–60 pro home care 54–8 protest against working life 58–60 daycare, children in 52 daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 early childhood education 51

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economic value of CFC 119, 122 family respect and CFC 57, 125–7 family-centred thinking 57 gender divide 51–3, 56, 81–2 history of child home care allowance 47 home care, perceived importance of 145 immigrant population 149 labour market participation and CFC 10, 31, 56, 123 maternal employment rates 8 maternity leave 30, 114 means-tested elements of CFC 48 municipal supplements 49, 50, 51, 120, 154 parental choice 53 parental leave 10, 47–8, 114–15, 121 parenthood education and parent– child attachment 55–6 part-time working 59, 115 paternity leave 114, 115–16, 121–2 policy criticism, lack of 132 policy framing 14, 47, 122, 124, 149 politics of cash versus care 14, 149 poverty 28, 30, 149 private daycare allowance 47 public childcare provision 56, 116, 117 recipients and conditions of CFC 112–13, 118, 119, 120–22, 123 restricted choice rationale and CFC 129–30 simultaneous daycare and CFC 119, 120, 122, 126, 129, 132 taxable income, CFC as 118 unemployment and CFC 121, 129–30 universalism of CFC 48, 49–50 welfare policies, fairer and CFC 127 work–life balance 33–4, 58–60, 128 Forbat, L. 57 Forssén, K. 148 France Allocation Pour Jeune Enfant 24 daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8, 9

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Fraser, N. 146 freedom of choice 17–18, 27–8 and gender 52–3 and alternatives 123 and different families 125, 146 Gatenio Gabel, Shirley 6–20 Geissler, B. 154 gender division 30, 33, 51–3, 81–2, 131–2, 148, 152, 153–4 gender equality 9, 14, 68, 69–70, 110, 127, 152–4, 155 Germany CFC and work–welfare arrangements 33–4 child-rearing leave policy 17–18 daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 male breadwinner family model 18 maternal employment rates 8 Glendinning, C. 137 Gordon, L. 22 Greece daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8 Gulbrandsen, L. 91, 92, 97, 111, 133, 136 Haas, L. 114 Haataja, A. 49, 52, 53, 117, 129, 136, 137, 146 Hakim, C. 52 Håkonsen, L. 90, 96, 98, 99, 100 Hakovirta, M. 28, 33, 136 Håland, K. 124, 125 Hämäläinen, U. 33, 51, 146 Hantrais, L. 14 Hatje, A.-K. 65 Hays, S. 54 Hiilamo, H. 27, 33, 56, 109, 111, 117, 122, 124–5, 127–9, 131–5, 137, 145, 149 Himmelweit, S. 23 Hinnfors, J. 66, 67, 71 Hjulgaard, L. 51, 52

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Hungary childcare/rearing allowance 16–17 daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 female labor market participation and labor market needs 16–17 maternal employment rates 8 Iceland CFC and immigrant population 149 children in daycare 52 maternal employment rates 8 immigrant population 72, 78, 82, 94–5, 97–8, 106, 132, 149 income-testing 28 individualism and choice 145–6 institutional support 26–7 Ireland daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8 Italy daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 female labour force participation 7 maternal employment rates 8 Jallinoja, R. 27, 29, 30, 56, 57, 137, 144 Jansson, F. 82 Japan employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8 Julkunen, R. 59, 123 Kahn, A. 7, 9, 13, 18 Kamerman, Sheila B. 6–20 Kangas, O. 25, 27–8, 32–3, 52–3, 56, 109, 111, 117, 124–5, 127–9, 131–3, 135, 137, 145, 149 Karila, K. 48 Kavli, H. 98 Kemp, P. 137 Kilpeläinen, R. 29, 145

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Index Kitterød, Ragni Hege 89–108 Kjørholt, A. 150 Klammer, U. 39, 40 Klinth, R. 66 Knijn, T. 60 Knudsen, C. 33, 98, 100, 103 Knudsen, K. 92 Koistinen, P. 31 Kontula, O. 50, 134 Korintus, M. 16 Kornstad, T. 107 Korpinen, J. 14, 17, 151 Korsvik, T. 127, 131, 132, 133, 137 Korsvold, T. 117 Kremer, M. 27, 60, 145 Kröger, T. 47, 49, 147 Krok, S. 30 Kvande, E. 110, 115 labour market effect 31–5, 90, 98–102, 104, 105–6, 123 part-time work 59, 93–4, 98–102, 114, 115 participation 7, 10, 31, 33, 56, 123, 148, 153–5 specialization 80, 82 Lammi-Taskula, J. 52, 58, 115, 116 Latvia employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8 Lauritzen, T. 137 Lehto, A.-M. 58, 59 Leira, A. 25, 27, 28, 53, 89, 92, 110, 114, 135, 145 Leitner, A. 32, 33, 34 Leitner, S. 110 Lewis, J. 109 Lister, R. 29, 145 Lithuania daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8 Lundqvist, A. 65, 66 Luxembourg daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11

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165 employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8

Magnussen, M.-L. 94 Mahon, R. 23, 29, 39, 52, 109, 110, 147 Malta employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8 maternal employment rates 8, 9 maternity leave 22, 114 Mattila-Wiro, P. 144 Michel, S. 147 Miettunen, L. 41, 49, 120, 136 Mikkola, M. 14, 17 Moberg, Y. 78, 81 Moffit, R. 100 Moisio, P. 28 Morgan, K. 14, 23, 52, 125, 146, 151 Moss, P. 14, 25, 52, 110, 111, 123 municipal supplements, Finland 49, 50, 51, 69, 70–76, 120, 154 Nätti, J. 123 Naz, G. 98, 100 Neale, B. 150 Netherlands daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8, 9 Neuman, M. 9 New Zealand, maternal employment rates 8 Nordic case, rationalities for cash-forchildcare 109–42 childcare access and increased equality 127 children time and work–life balance 128–9 common architecture 133–5 common features 110 comparative studies 110 daycare access 110 economic value of CFC 118–19 entitlements 117–23 gender equality 110, 127

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gendered practices in childcare, accusations of 131–2 immigrant population 132 and labour market participation 123 parental leave 91, 93, 110, 114–16, 121–2, 124, 125, 153 and paternal role 127, 153 policies, what they offer 118–20 policy criticisms 123, 126, 131–2 policy entitlements 112–13 policy rationales 118–20, 122–3 political framing, arguments for and against 124–32 public daycare 116–17 recipients and conditions 120–22, 123 respect for family and CFC choice 125–7 restricted choice rationale 129–31 and simultaneous daycare 119, 120, 122 universalism in 120 see also individual countries Norway cash-for-care scheme 17, 24, 89–108 concerns over 89–90 impact of 96–103 introduction and purpose of 89–90 children in daycare 52 daycare centres demand for 92–3, 94, 98, 100 subsidized 91–2 daycare sector, impact of CFC on 97 demand decline for CFC 93–4 dualistic family policy 92 economic value of CFC 118–19 education levels of mothers 95, 103 gender divide and CFC 82 immigrant population 72, 94–5, 97–8, 106, 149 labour market effect 90, 98–102, 104, 105–6, 123 labour market participation and CFC 123 maternity leave 114 parental choice 89, 92 parental leave 91, 93, 114, 121 part-time work 93–4, 98, 99–100, 101–2, 114

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paternity leave 114, 115 policy criticism 132 policy entitlements 112–13 policy framing 124 policy rationale 122 public daycare centres 89, 92–3, 116–17 recipients and conditions 94–5, 121, 122 respect for family and CFC 125–7 restricted choice rationale and CFC 131 simultaneous daycare and CFC 119, 122, 124, 126, 129 take-up levels of CFC 91–4, 95, 102–3, 112–13, 118, 119 unemployment levels 93–4 welfare policies, fairer 127 work–life balance 128 Nyberg, Anita 53, 65–88, 117, 136 OECD 8, 9, 10, 23, 24, 31, 32, 33, 37, 39, 41, 51, 82, 105–6, 150, 154 Österbacka, E. 144 Osterbusch, S. 37 Östros, T. 132 Paajanen, P. 56 parental care, benefits of 29–30 parental choice 25–30, 53, 89, 92 parental leave 10, 22, 144–5 Finland 47–8, 114–15, 121 Nordic case 91, 93, 110, 114–16, 121–2, 124, 125, 153 Norway 91, 93, 114, 121 Sweden 67–8, 77, 79, 81, 82, 114 parenthood education and parent–child attachment, Finland 55–6 family time and new familism 29–30 responsibility and traditional family values 22–3 part-time work 59, 93–4, 98–102, 114, 115 see also labour market paternal role 127 paternity leave 114, 115–16, 121–2 Pettersen, S. 91, 93, 94, 97, 106 Pfau-Effinger, B. 25, 56, 154 Pietilä, V. 154

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Index Plantenga, J. 7, 9, 110, 111, 135 Poland daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8 policy criticism 123, 126, 131–2 framing 14, 35–8, 47, 122, 124–32, 149 goals 12–13 political advantages 147 politics of cash versus care 13–15, 22, 65–7, 68, 149 rationale 122–3 social policy 22–5, 31–2, 150–51 see also cash versus care policy issues Portugal daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8 poverty 28, 30, 33, 38, 148–9, 155 private childcare 47, 77, 79–80 see also daycare professional childcare as investment in children 149–50, 153 public childcare 35–6, 56, 83, 89, 92–3, 116–17 see also daycare Ramkvist, K. 145 Randall, V. 151 Rantalaiho, Minna 27, 30, 109–42 Remery, C. 135 Repo, Katja 1–5, 21–64, 143–59 Reppen, H. 91, 93, 94, 106 respect for family and CFC choice 57, 125–7 Rissanen, Tapio 1–5, 21–45, 143–59 Rognerud, L. 113 Romania employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8 Rönkä, A. 40, 58, 59 Rønning, E. 91, 93, 94, 106

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Rønsen, Marit 89–108 Rostgaard, T. 25, 27, 28, 53 Sahlin, M. 132 Salin, M. 28 Salmi, M. 25, 28, 51, 58, 59–60, 123, 134, 149 Schiersmann, C. 18 Schmid, G. 31–2 Schøne, P. 98, 101, 105 Siegel, M. 7, 9 Simon, B. 36 simultaneous daycare and CFC 119–20, 122, 124, 126, 129, 132 see also daycare Sipilä, Jorma 1–5, 14, 17, 21–45, 92, 143–59 Sjöberg, O. 26, 27, 50, 53, 61 Skocpol, T. 22 Slovak Republic employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates by age of youngest child 8 Slovenia employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8 Sointu, L. 28, 39, 52, 123, 133, 154 Spain daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 maternal employment rates 8, 9 state as moral authority 145 Sutela, H. 58, 59 Sweden cash-for-childcare schemes 25, 65–88 differences between 1994 and 2008 systems 68–70 restrictions 78–80 two different schemes 67–8 children in daycare 52 children’s days, proposal of 68 daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 dual-earner–dual-carer model 65, 66 early childhood education 41

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economic value of CFC 37, 118, 149, 152 gender equality bonus 68, 69–70 gendered use of CFC 81–2 history of CFC 65–7 immigrant integration 72, 78, 82, 149 labour market participation 10, 123 labour market specialization 80, 82 maternal employment rates 8, 9 maternity leave 114 and municipalities 69, 70–76 parental leave 67–8, 77, 79, 81, 82, 114 paternity leave 114, 115 policy criticism 68, 71–2, 132 policy framing 124 policy rationale 122 political decisions over CFC or services 65–7, 68 politics of cash versus care 14–15, 22, 149 private childcare 77, 79–80 publicly-financed childcare 83, 116, 117 recipients and conditions 112–13, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123 recipients, potential, of CFC 76–80 respect for family and CFC choice 125–7 restricted choice rationale 130–31 simultaneous daycare and CFC 119–20, 122, 126, 129 summer months, opportunity to prolong 83 take-up and consequences of CFC 80–84 taxation and CFC 68–9 unemployment and sickness benefits 78, 83–4, 121, 130–31 windfall gains of CFC 79–80 work–life balance 128 Switzerland, maternal employment rates 8

taxation and CFC 24, 68–9, 118 Taylor, C. 55 Taylor, S. 109 Thoresen, T. 107 Tingstad, V. 150 Tronto, J. 146 Turkey, maternal employment rates 8 Tyyskä, V. 137

Tähtinen, J. 40, 150 Takala, P. 29, 51, 54, 116

Ziefle, A. 148 Zippel, K. 14, 23, 52, 151

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UK daycare and parental leave percentage coverage 11 employment and parental leave rates 10 institutional support for CFC, lack of 26–7 maternal employment rates 8 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 39 unemployment and CFC 78, 83–4, 93–4, 121, 129–31 Ungerson, C. 27, 36, 49, 145, 156 universalism and CFC 48, 49–50, 120 US Aid for Dependent Children 24 maternal employment rates 8 Uttal, L. 143 Vandell, D. 149 Viitasalo, Niina 21–45, 113, 143–59 Vuori, J. 53 Wærness, K. 92 Waldfogel, J. 9, 13, 18 Wennemo, I. 22 Widman, M. 69 Wolfe, B. 149 work–life balance 23–4, 33–4, 58–60, 128, 145, 152, 153 Wroblewski, A. 32, 33, 34 Yeandle, S. 27, 36, 49, 145

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