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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Patterns of grandparental child care across Europe
— the role of the policy context and working mothers' need | | Author(s) | Tove Harnett, Haran Jonson |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 37, no 4, April 2017 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, April 2017 |
| Pages | pp 845-873 |
| Source | cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Grandparents as carers ; Grandchildren ; Family relationships ; Women ; Part time employment ; Leave ; Policy ; Cross national surveys ; Europe. |
| Annotation | Across Europe grandparents play very different roles. This paper studied to what extent grandparents' roles as providers of childcare relates to the country policy context, focusing on public childcare services and parental leave regulation, and to the availability of part-time jobs for women. The study also explored whether mothers' needs to combine family and work influenced the frequency of grandparental childcare across countries. The analysis combined micro-data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and macro-indicators from the Multilinks database and Eurostat. There was found to be a clear association between policy context and frequency of grandparental childcare. Three models emerged. In countries close to the familialism by default model (i.e. characterised by scarce public childcare services and parental leave), when grandparents provided childcare they often did it daily. In countries characterised by defamilialisation and supported familialism policies (with generous public services and parental leave) grandparents took on a marginal role. An intermediate model emerged in countries characterised by a limited offer of childcare or parental leave, where grandparental childcare complemented state support and tended to be offered on a weekly basis. This analysis corroborated the idea that the highly intensive involvement of grandparents in countries with low availability of part-time jobs for women was influenced by the need (unmet by the welfare) of mothers to combine work and family. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-170516013 A |
| Classmark | P6:SW: SW5: DS:SJ: SH: WJF: WKH: QAD: 3K: 74 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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