Overstretched: European Families Up Against the Demands of Work and Care (Broadening Perspectives in Social Policy)

Overstretched

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Overstretched European Families Up Against the Demands of Work and Care

Edited by

Teppo Kröger and Jorma Sipilä

© 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd First published as volume 38, number 6 of Broadening Perspectives in Social Policy BLACKWELL PUBLISHING 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The rights of Teppo Kröger and Jorma Sipilä to be identified as the Editors of the Material in this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. 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, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN 1-4051-3212-4 (paperback) A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in 10.5/11pt Baskerville MT by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards. For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website: www.blackwellpublishing.com

CONTENTS Notes on Contributors

vi

 Editorial Introduction: European Families Stretched between the Demands of Work and Care Jorma Sipilä and Teppo Kröger



 Atypical Working Hours: Consequences for Childcare Arrangements Blanche Le Bihan and Claude Martin



 Managing Work and Care: A Difficult Challenge for Immigrant Families Karin Wall and José São José



 Combining Work and Family in Two Welfare State Contexts: A Discourse Analytical Perspective Katja Repo



 Family Commitments under Negotiation: Dual Carers in Finland and Italy Minna Zechner



 Work and Care Strategies of European Families: Similarities or National Differences? Trine P. Larsen



 Caregiving in Transition in Southern Europe: Neither Complete Altruists nor Free-riders Simonetta Simoni and Rossana Trifiletti



 Managing the Family: Productivity, Scheduling and the Male Veto John Baldock and Jan Hadlow

 

Index

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

John Baldock is Professor of Social Policy in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent, UK. Jan Hadlow is Senior Lecturer in Social Work in the Canterbury Christ Church College, UK. Teppo Kröger is Senior Lecturer in Social Work in the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä, and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Tampere, Finland. Trine P. Larsen is Research Fellow in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent, UK. Blanche Le Bihan is Research Fellow in LAPSS, Ecole Nationale de la Santé Publique, Rennes, France. Claude Martin is Director of Research in CNRS, CRAPE, University of Rennes 1, and Director of LAPSS, Ecole Nationale de la Santé Publique, Rennes, France. Katja Repo is Research Fellow in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Tampere, Finland. José São José is Research Fellow in the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal. Simonetta Simoni is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University Ca’ Foscari, Venice, Italy, and Consultant for public and nonprofit social and health services. Jorma Sipilä is Professor of Social Policy and Social Work in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Tampere, Finland. Rossana Trifiletti is Associate Professor of Sociology of the Family and Social Policies in the Department of Political Science and Sociology (DISPO), University of Florence, Italy. Karin Wall is Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal. Minna Zechner is Research Fellow in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Tampere, Finland.

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Title O riginal Article December  Blackwell Oxford, SPOL © - Social Blackwell Policy UK Publishing,  Publishing & Administration Ltd. 

1 Editorial Introduction European Families Stretched between the Demands of Work and Care Jorma Sipilä and Teppo Kröger

International comparative research on social care has become a remarkable stream within today’s social sciences. From the early s, many of us have worked in this field by comparing national social service systems. We have studied how these systems have been shaped in distinct cultural environments, how they have been affected by political ideas and what have been the historical reasons why they have put their trust in different providers. After a decade of research, however, we did not know what practical importance all these differences between national social care service systems had. Therefore, we felt that it was time for comparative research to look at social care services through the eyes of the people who use them. What is the role of social care services for people when they are arranging care for their children or their elderly parents? Are there other issues that matter for them more than the service provisions? How do social care services function in relation to everyday family life, in particular, under the strained conditions European families face in the early s? As a result, we planned a qualitative research project designed to understand the practical significance of the different care policies of different countries. Consequently, the project focused on the grassroots level. However, qualitative comparative research projects that operate in different languages do have their challenges. In addition to methodological difficulties, such projects have their organizational challenges. One of them was to find reliable and creative partners to work with. Another was, naturally, how to fund such a project. Finance from the European Commission was the only plausible way to get a larger comparative research project started. In our application to the th Framework Programme (FP), we promised to explore viable future solutions: how can policies support European families so that these will continue to be able to cope with the social care needs of their members while at the same time participating in paid employment? We received the funding and the SOCCARE Project came into being.1

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Although EC FP projects are usually well funded, they have very busy, structured schedules. Often they are not able to provide participating researchers with the time needed to make full use of the richness of the data gathered during the project period. Qualitative and comparative research settings offer especially interesting but multiform data that take time to analyse, in particular, if we are not to lose sight of local and national contexts. This volume represents a major attempt to reanalyse the SOCCARE data after the project has officially ended. Members from all five national teams have participated in this reanalysis by writing new, original articles. All of them make use of original interview transcriptions that were made in five languages, even though some Finnish transcriptions have been translated into English.

Methodology of the Project Social care has often been analysed by dichotomizing the concept between public and private, professional and non-professional, paid and unpaid care and studying only one half of the dichotomy. However, the everyday reality of care tends to transcend these dichotomies. This project has been based on an integrated concept of social care. Social care is defined here as the assistance and surveillance that is provided in order to help children or adults with the activities of their daily lives. Formal service provisions from public, commercial and voluntary organizations, as well as informal care from family members, relatives and others, such as neighbours and friends, are here included within the concept of social care. This broad definition has been the point of departure for this project. The SOCCARE Project studied the social care arrangements of European families in five different socio-economic and cultural environments that represent the variety of European welfare states and social care regimes (Finland, France, Italy, Portugal and the UK). Many conditions that influence the choices available are different for families living in the five countries (see table ). The project focused on four key family types that have all been heavily affected by the ongoing demographic, socio-economic and structural changes, and that face particular forms of pressure and stress. These family categories are () lone-parent families, () dual-career families, () immigrant families, and () families that care for both children and elders at the same time. In order to reach satisfactory care arrangements, all of these families have to combine resources from different sectors in a skilful way. By its methodology, the SOCCARE Project has been comparatively oriented but it has also adhered strongly to local and national contexts. Common interview guides for each family type were applied to ensure that each national team used the same interview frame. Also, the data have been analysed according to common frames. However, in all of its phases, the research work has been open to necessary national adaptations. Due to their limited size, the national samples of this project could not be made identical or representative. However, this is not such an important idea in qualitative research. The main idea has been to study the interaction of 

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Editorial Introduction Table  Particular characteristics of work and care contexts in Finland, France, Italy, Portugal and the UK Finland

France

Italy

Portugal

UK

Level of female full-time work

High

High

Medium

Very high Medium

Level of female part-time work

Very low

Low

Low

Very low

High

Employer flexibility

Medium

Medium or high

Variation between public and private employers

Low

Low

Availability of childcare services for under-schoolage children

Universal

Universal

Huge regional variation

Medium

Low (high cost)

Availability of childcare services for schoolchildren

Limited

High

Huge regional variation

Limited

Low

Paternal participation in childcare

Likely

Varied

Low

Low

Varied

Availability of care services for older people

Limited Standardized (by needs- but limited testing) (by needs- and means-testing)

Low (high cost)

Low

Limited (by needs-testing and high cost)

Scope of family support

Limited

Very high (“the long family”)

High (not always available)

Limited

Limited

individual social policies and individual families in their national and local social contexts. Altogether, almost  European families were interviewed in detail about their opportunities and difficulties in making flexible and responsive care arrangements and combining these with participation in paid employment. The interviews were conducted in national languages by the five national research teams. The project had a particular cooperative character that was also reflected in the division of responsibilities. In its turn, each partner coordinated the research work of all five partners. Comparative social research that uses qualitative data produced in several languages is a daring enterprise. It is self-evident that comparisons that are 

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not based on standardized tools open the way to a multitude of diverse interpretations. On the other hand, even when using statistical or survey data, such interpretations cannot be avoided. For us, the distinctiveness of the interpretations made by the five national teams was actually advantageous. Diverse theoretical and cultural starting points and emphases of the members of the national project teams led us to understand in new ways how social services are seen among different social groups living in different corners of Europe. Probably, qualitative methodology would have lost a part of its genuineness if the work in the project had been coordinated by one centre only. The social care that we found in our research not only transcended dichotomies but was more like a world full of an endless variety. In our meetings, it was often repeated that care consists of details. This world full of details may even make the image of social care so fragmented that, when creating care policies, politicians and administrators are not able to see the actual, important needs of citizens.

The Papers This volume consists of seven papers. First, Blanche Le Bihan and Claude Martin analyse the difficulties that atypical and unpredictable working times cause for dual-earner and lone-parent families. What are the main strategies of parents facing this pressure? How is the situation negotiated between the parents? How are grandparents, ex-partners, siblings and neighbours mobilized? What is the contribution of formal services? The writers find out that atypical hours do not always cause problems for the families: in situations where working hours are both predictable and negotiable, atypical hours actually help to reconcile work and family life. On the other hand, in situations where working hours are unpredictable and non-negotiable, atypical hours threaten all solid arrangements. Le Bihan and Martin do not approve very extensive formal care as a solution for childcare as parents want to spend sufficient time with their children. Immigrants face strong pressures arising from work conditions, economic difficulties, racial and social discrimination, and contrasting cultural and religious values. Karin Wall and José São José study how immigrants manage the difficult challenge of reconciling work and family life, and childcare in particular. The national samples the authors use represent many different types of migration patterns and, as a result, they emphasize the need to take the diversity of immigrant families into account. Concerning the most vulnerable immigrant families—unskilled worker migrant families as well as immigrant lone parents—their findings point to the weakness of the welfare states in protecting these families. Labour migrant families would need responsive care services corresponding with their low income and familyunfriendly working hours. This is highly important because the unavailability of close kin networks entails severe difficulties in access to informal nonparental childcare. Gender inequality also proved to play a large role in shaping work and care strategies of migrant families. For migrant lone mothers in low-paid jobs, it is difficult to purchase even low-cost care services, which often leads to unreliable informal care arrangements, taking children to the workplace, or leaving a child alone. 

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Katja Repo compares the way in which British and Finnish mothers of dual-career families construct cultural meanings on the work and family interplay. The paper argues that despite the many structural and ideological differences between British and Finnish welfare states, mothers living in them often construct their daily lives by using similar discursive frameworks. Both groups appreciate shared parenthood and care as a value in itself. However, these discourses are contextualized and interpreted differently. For example, parental sharing was more of a feminist or ideological issue for the British than for the Finnish women. Minna Zechner examines care life stories of Finnish and Italian “dual carers”, that is, people who simultaneously care for their young children and for an elderly person. She concentrates on those points of the stories where the need for negotiation is most evident, that is, life’s various turning points. There are many individual similarities in negotiations performed in Finland and Italy but the author also reveals many instances where the welfare state contexts create differing actions and responses. In addition, some clearly cultural differences also become visible. One of them is the issue of money; handling somebody else’s money created suspicions of misuse only among the Finnish interviewees. Both these preceding chapters clarify the importance of larger welfare state frameworks in the discourses of carers. By contrast, Trine P. Larsen calls into question the significance given to national differences in comparative research. Her starting point is that families in similar work and care situations face the same problems of balancing jobs and care responsibilities. Hence, structural similarities in the patterns of families’ care arrangements may transcend national traditions. She tests this hypothesis by matching couples who live in similar work and care situations in different countries and comes to the conclusion that national differences may not be as marked as is often indicated by contemporary research. Simonetta Simoni and Rossana Trifiletti give much attention to the question: how does the construction of a particular family affect informal and formal caregiving? They focus on French, Italian and Portuguese multigeneration families who take care of children and elderly people at the same time. They study how the number of elders and children influences the character and amount of social care that is expected from the women in the middle. Their reassuring message is that the growing number of fourgeneration families in Europe rather relieves the burden of informal care than aggravates the lack of informal caregiving resources. However, another demographic trend, the widening age interval between generations, is worsening the situation of the sandwich generation. Eventually, the authors emphasize that the family caring resources should be counted as a specific kind of social capital that is to be protected and enhanced. Social protection systems should not use this social capital punitively, as a demerit that denies an individual’s right to receive public assistance and service. In the last paper John Baldock and Jan Hadlow ask the fundamental question whether all the policy support for employed workers with caring responsibilities truly eases the pressures on them. Improving the volume of, and access to, care services as well as encouraging and requiring flexible work regimes that recognize families’ caring functions are necessary steps but 

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they do not solve all difficulties. What the families themselves speak about are time pressures and “scheduling problems”. Another issue highlighted by the paper is the persistence of gender roles. The authors even speak of a “male veto”: the preferences of men play a critical, though often passive, role in the construction of work and care arrangements.

Conclusions After all these interesting analyses, where are we now? What can we say to policy-makers about the viable future solutions that we so boldly promised to explore? Knowing that politicians and administrators never have time to read long reports, we try to give a short preliminary answer based on our findings. First, the articles affirm the common belief that European social care cultures are diverse, but, on the other hand, they are not totally different. There are numerous ways for a family to meet the need for social care. These include: turning to family members, relatives, friends, or ex-spouses; hiring a domestic worker; finding affordable services; reducing the amount of work outside the home; or taking a child to the workplace. Some solutions are open only to the rich; in contrast, poor immigrants have the fewest alternatives to choose from. The selection of a caregiver is not only dependent on family resources; there are also national predispositions to favour some solutions and to disregard some others. However, these national inclinations should not be exaggerated: not all of those who trust the grandmother in childcare are from Italy; lovely helping friends are sometimes available also outside France; not all women who decide to reduce their working hours are British; it is not only the Finns who expect their government to provide affordable services for everybody; and it is not only Portugal where individual solutions depend strongly on the family’s social position. You may find any arrangement anywhere. Second, we underline the importance of formal care services to needy families. This should be the leading aim for social care policies. Affordable social care services should be seen as the backbone of social care, enabling families to have real choices in their lives. When they are available, care services usually solve care problems during working hours ( out of  hours a week). Informal care is still needed at all other times ( out of  hours) but it becomes much easier to organize when it is not needed during working hours. But if the whole care arrangement is based only on an informal caregiving network, human relationships come under constant strain and may break down unexpectedly. The time and space created by social care services allows women in particular to make individual choices about how they live and work. Last but not least, formal services regulate the working conditions of caregivers whereas informal care can often in practice mean exploitation of a person who is in a weak social position. On the other hand, while formal care services are important, they can hardly be seen as a sufficient solution to the whole issue of social care. At the moment, it is unrealistic to imagine that formal services would carry the 

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Editorial Introduction

main load of social care provision. Our findings indicate considerable gaps in childcare service provisions and even more extensive gaps in services for the elderly in all of the project countries. Concerning particularly care services for older people, their quality and responsiveness to the needs and values of families demand a major improvement all over Europe. Furthermore, services cannot be flexible enough to meet all the needs caused by atypical working times as the service workers also have their informal care-giving commitments. Third, one of the main results of our research is that social care services are very strongly intertwined with informal care. From the viewpoint of families, service organizations should never be isolated institutions. They ought to be flexible organizations capable of meeting specific human needs in individual ways. Service providers must recognize that they form only one part of the whole system of care arrangements of families. At the moment, there is a need for improvement in several domains: public services (schools in particular) and social security do not thoroughly take into account the caregiving tasks that people have. As emphasized in the chapter on “sandwich caregivers” by Trifiletti and Simoni, the service providers should find such a way to cooperate that they could approach a family’s situation comprehensively—not only certain clinical or sectored dimensions of it. In addition, the service system should presume a shared division of responsibilities among the relatives so that the need for informal care would not overwhelmingly burden only one person. Fourth, the sine qua non for caring is time. The idea of quality care is immediately associated with the availability of sufficient time. Carers need to be able to combine working and caring, both simultaneously and sequentially. To enable a simultaneous combination of these roles, carers must be able to adapt the hours and places of their work. Time pressures come nowadays first and foremost from the growing demand for working overtime and business travelling. The recent increase in atypical working hours has undermined the well-being of families and increased the financial costs of local authorities. Opportunities for reduced working hours need to be offered to employees, but after a period of shorter hours it must be secured that employees can return to their former work positions without problems. To make a sequential combination of work and care possible, employees must have the opportunity for care leave with financial compensation schemes for the loss of income. In this respect, family members of older people are now clearly disadvantaged compared with parents of young children. In addition to the simultaneous and sequential combination of working and caring, other people can be used to carry a part of the carework. This requires money and close social relationships. Fifth, when neither work nor services are flexible enough, the flexibility that is necessary is ultimately taken from informal sources. In practice, this means women and, at worst, exploitation of women. Today, women are not expected to give up their individual life goals when care needs emerge in families. It has to be admitted, realistically, that both informal care and women’s large participation in the labour market are here to stay and even to expand. Consequently, the pursuit of gender balance in caring is not a 

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vanishing but a growing issue. The participation of men in care has to be supported by all means, including social security policies. As social networks are necessary for informal social care we must also seriously consider the fact that families become very vulnerable when they are isolated from their original social networks. As a result, immigration policies should support these networks, not negate them. In addition, immigrant families cannot properly organize care for their members if they are continuously discriminated against in the labour market and public services. Finally, we want to emphasize that it is highly necessary that social care policies abandon strict dichotomies. Citizens of Europe are not either workers or carers. They are both at the same time. In addition, children, disabled people and older people are not in need of either informal or formal care. Both are essential and, at the level of everyday family life, there is practically always a need to integrate both. To face the challenges of the future, an integrated policy perspective on work and care is required. The full range of social policies must be evaluated and reformed from this perspective: do the policies really support—or instead hinder—the combination of worker and carer roles?

Note . European Commission funding contract No. HPSE-CT--; for the period  March  to  August . We are grateful to the Commission that, to our relief, proved to be not only a heavy bureaucracy but also an organization with friendly and efficient managerial services. Despite having responsibility for a large number of research projects, Virginia Vitorino gave us plenty of practical and mental support. We also thank the Academy of Finland, which funded a researcher training position, that is, an extra researcher to work within the project. All the reports of the SOCCARE Project can be read at: http://www.uta.fi/ laitokset/sospol/soccare/reports.htm.



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Title O riginal Article December  Blackwell Oxford, SPOL © - Social Blackwell Policy UK Publishing,  Publishing & Administration Ltd. 

2 Atypical Working Hours: Consequences for Childcare Arrangements Blanche Le Bihan and Claude Martin

Introduction Working at atypical times is certainly not a new phenomenon, since industrial work imposed specific working hours and rhythms: shift work, evening work and night work. It is the same in the business and craft sectors: working on Saturdays, even Sundays, is a phenomenon which has been more or less usual for many decades depending on the country. However, the development of the public and private service sectors and the precariousness of jobs in many sectors, for instance in retail or transport, have intensified this phenomenon since the mid-s. Several surveys have been conducted since  on this phenomenon, whether it be on the European or the national scale (see Fagnani ; Marcil-Gratton and Le Bourdais ; Boisard et al. ; La Valle et al. ; Rochette ; Statham and Mooney ). We speak about flexibility in order to qualify this progressive transformation of jobs, in relation both to status (increase in the number of fixed-term contracts, temporary jobs, enforced part-time jobs, etc.) and to working conditions (increase in atypical working hours). The flexibility of working hours has important consequences for the daily life and rhythm of families, particularly of those who look after children or elderly people who have become dependent. However, it is difficult to assess the effects induced without taking account of a whole series of variables (type of atypical working hours, level of job qualification, household structure and resources, quantity and quality of provision of care services, etc.). The SOCCARE Project, carried out with the support of the European Commission in five countries (Italy, Finland, France, Portugal, United Kingdom) on a series of family types under pressure from the point of view of their care needs, enables us to provide some elements of analysis on the question of reconciliation between care work and professional life with atypical working hours. In order to do this, we propose adopting the point of view of people and becoming aware of the arrangements they need to cope with this double pressure: that of their job and that of their parental responsibilities. We will give preference to two types of family situations here:

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households where both parents work (dual-earner couples) and lone-parent households. We will concentrate on childcare needs in three out of the five countries studied: Portugal, France and Finland. These three countries are contrasted from the point of view of both the quantitative importance of these types of jobs and also the provision of services enabling people to cope with these atypical working hours. Finland is the country where these types of jobs are the most usual but it also offers the largest services, enabling the people concerned to cope with the situation. France is in an intermediate position: atypical working hours are less frequent there, although above the European average. However, the childcare services hardly take these new needs into account. Finally, in Portugal, atypical working hours are less frequent (at least in the formal labour market), but the services do not help people to cope with atypical time schedules. In Portugal, available solutions are mostly informal—whether it be relatives or persons employed in the black market. In the first part of this paper, we present a certain number of quantitative data at the European level. These data concern atypical working hours, their importance in each country and their consequences for the workers, but they also concern the variations in the services offered. In the second part, we analyse the situation from a small, consistent sample of cases selected in each country, describing both the types of families’ care arrangements, their larger or smaller stability and the consequences of these work situations on daily life and on social and family relationships.

Atypical Working Hours in Europe By atypical working hours we mean all situations where people have to work at times which are usually reserved for family or rest: working very early in the morning ( before  a.m.), late in the evening (after  p.m.), during the night, on Saturdays and/or on Sundays. These types of working timetable raise the problem of access to care. In fact, even in countries like France that have a large range of childcare services (nursery schools, crèches, qualified childminders), these solutions are mostly available during classic working hours, from  a.m. to  or  p.m., from Monday to Friday. Outside these opening hours of public services, it is a priori very problematic to find any formal care arrangement solution. Only Finland, like other Nordic countries, is committed to a -hour-a-day childcare provision, widely established over the national territory. In France, these types of services are still at the experimental stage. Working hours may also raise another problem: that of their predictability. In fact, in a number of job sectors, employees are informed at the last moment of their working timetables over the days or weeks to come. While atypical working hours can be planned, enabling relatively stable childcare solutions to be arranged, this is not the case for the types of jobs that have fully flexible working hours. From one week to the next, even from one day to the next, the care solution has to be reinvented, often informally, calling on a network of relatives or neighbours. These working situations are varied. For some workers, atypical working hours are a choice and a positive source of flexibility, enabling them to adjust 

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Atypical Working Hours

their time at work to the needs of their care arrangements or parental time. In these cases (in intellectual work or telecommuting, for example), we can speak about a self-regulation of the time constraint or about adjustable, negotiable working hours. Adjustment between work and care becomes very flexible. On the other hand, a certain number of employees cannot choose their working hours and do not have the possibility of adjusting them in accordance with their care arrangement needs. These are cases where atypical working hours are likely to create particularly precarious and problematic care arrangements. On the European scale, these work situations with atypical working hours are unequally scattered (see Boisard et al. ). Some  per cent of workers do night work (two-thirds work more than  nights a month). Evening work between  and  p.m. is much more widespread since it affects as many as  per cent of workers. Almost one wage-earner in two ( per cent) works at least one Saturday a month and almost a quarter at least one Sunday. A significant number (almost a quarter) of jobs also include very long working days ( hours a week and more). Shift work affects more than one employee in five. It can be either fixed shift work (the employee working always the same shift, in the morning, afternoon or night) or alternative shift work (in ,  or  alternating shifts). Part-time jobs are also affected by these atypical working hours. Working fewer hours often means working unusual hours or working at times when the majority of people are not working. Part-time work concerns on average  per cent of employees in Europe, with large discrepancies depending on gender: only  per cent of men but as many as  per cent of women. However, having a reduced working time does not mean less restrictive work. According to the survey by Boisard et al. (), both full-time and part-time jobs are subject to a high intensity of work. In her survey on retailing in France and Germany, Jeanne Fagnani (: ) also shows this link between part-time work and atypical working hours: “In the companies studied, working timetables of employees, especially of those working part-time, are often unpredictable and variable depending on the weeks, days or seasons. Additional working hours are often allocated at the last moment or the day before, whereas according to employment legislation, the employee should know their working hours at least one week in advance.” Commuting time is also added to working hours. Still on the European scale, more than one employee in four spends more than an hour a day travelling to and from work. Concerning the variability of working hours, almost one employee in four sees his/her working hours change once or several times a month and almost one in three is subjected to working hours that change daily. Men and women are both, more or less equally, concerned by atypical working hours (see table ). Differences in atypical working hours are to be found between different sectors and socio-professional categories: night work is found mostly among industrial workers ( per cent), salespersons and service employees ( per cent), and technicians ( per cent); Sunday work is widespread among service employees and salespeople ( per cent) and Saturday morning is almost a rule for the same two groups, with almost three-quarters working at least one Saturday 

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Blanche Le Bihan and Claude Martin Table  Employees with atypical working hours in the European Union (%)

A number of different hours every day A number of different days every week Variable working hours Outside work-day hours Shift work  alternating shifts  or more alternating shifts

Men

Women

Total

37.4 . . . . . .

32.6 . . . . . .

36.6 . . . . . .

Source: Boisard et al. (: ).

a month. Senior and middle management are mostly concerned by working in the evening (more than one in two) and working longer than -hour days ( per cent of senior management and  per cent of middle management). Finally, shift work mostly affects industrial workers ( per cent) and to a lesser extent salespeople and service employees ( per cent). In addition, it is to be noted that precariousness of the employment status (fixed-term contracts, interim, enforced part-time work) and atypical working hours are often combined. Atypical working hours in the three countries studied If we now focus on the three countries of the SOCCARE Project analysed in this paper, we can appreciate the diversity of these situations (table ). For almost all types of atypical working hours, Finland is very much above the European average and often in first place, whether it involves the proportion of workers concerned by night work, by working more than -hour days, by evening work, by Sunday work, or by changes in working hours during the month. France is in an intermediate situation, slightly above the European average. The reduction of working hours in France (“Réduction du temps de travail” or RTT) has hardly improved the situation for people with low qualifications and salary: “The RTT has introduced more irregularities in working hours, whatever the gender or the socio-professional category. But the proportion of employees who have more variable working hours since the RTT is sensitively higher with blue collar workers or unqualified workers, particularly for women ( per cent), than in the other categories” (Estrade and Ulrich : ). Out of all these indicators, Portugal is clearly placed under the European average. However, the extent of atypical working hours in Nordic countries must not lead to a quick conclusion that working conditions there are worse than in other European countries. As Boisard et al. (: ) point out, “countries like Finland or Sweden have several aspects of atypical working hours, but it should not automatically be associated with a bad quality of working conditions. 

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Atypical Working Hours Table  Employees with atypical working hours in Finland, France, Portugal and the European Union (%)

Finland France Portugal European Union

A number of different hours every day

More than  hours a day once a month

Variable working hours

Work at least one Sunday a month

Shift work

At least one night a month

A number of different days every week

. . .

47  

. . .

35  

. . .

25  

. . .

.



.



.



.

Source: Boisard et al. (: ).

The environment of atypical working hours can play to mitigate their consequences or, on the other hand, to aggravate them.” The provision of care services during extended working hours is one of the responses which can sensitively modulate the negative consequences of these timetables. According to official sources, “half the municipalities in Finland would have sufficient amount of places to look after children whose parents work at night, on weekends or shifts” (Rochette : ). These services began to be developed more than  years ago. Hence, a contact in Finland, responsible for coordinating care services in a Finnish town of , inhabitants, emphasizes that the first local day-care centre with shift hours (offering services from . a.m. to . p.m.) was started as early as , while in  night-time care was added to the range of services. These services are open every day,  hours a day, all year long. The consequences of atypical working hours The studies carried out over the last few years enable us to evaluate the negative consequences of atypical working hours on the health of employees, but also on their family life. In a precursory work carried out in  on the daily life of employees working at atypical times, Pierre Boisard () already emphasized the differences in consequences depending on the type of hours worked: social isolation for night-time workers who “live the opposite way compared to others”, concentration on the family unit; a general inconsistency of social relationships of people who work shifts, whether these be conjugal relationships, family relationships or friendships. Besides, their free time can often not be easily managed. He also pointed out the effects on health, with an even sharper perception of the risks incurred for one’s health if one had not been able to choose one’s pace of work. This information has since been confirmed by a number of surveys. In their  work at the European level, Boisard et al. (: ) reported that 

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Blanche Le Bihan and Claude Martin

almost seven out of ten employees who work at night feel that their work affects their health. “Three types of working hours are considered as being particularly harmful for health: night work, working more than  hours a day and the fact of changing working hours during the month. The most significant effects are the following: sleep (insomnia), stress, fatigue and irritability.” Studies carried out in North America and particularly in Canada (for a state of the art, see Rochette ) complete this analysis of the consequences of atypical working hours on families. Not only do they disrupt the biological clock of workers and that of their children, but they also disrupt their social life and parental roles. In addition, they cause numerous conjugal tensions, due to the difficulties of reconciling family and work. Finally, they highlight the practical division of roles between the woman and the man in the couple (domestic and parental work versus profession). Harriet Presser () in the United States and Nicole Marcil-Gratton and Céline Lebourdais () in Quebec even emphasize that there exists a connection between atypical working hours and conjugal instability (divorce or separation). According to the Québecois data, those families where both parents worked at atypical times had twice as many separations as other families. Often, atypical working hours have the direct consequence of making it necessary to set up precarious care arrangements. We found out that in countries where there is no formal care provision for atypical working hours, people have to approach their informal network frequently in order to find a solution which can after all turn out to be a one-off. At the heart of these negotiations, we initially find the couple itself sharing the roles of a parent and a worker between the father and the mother (according to complementarity or to a more or less strict division). Nevertheless, very often they also have to call on the family network: grandparents, brothers and sisters, neighbours or work colleagues. Finally if no solution is found, the only alternatives are absenteeism, applying for sick leave or leaving the children without care by adults. Hence, in her research on retail employees in France, Fagnani (: ) points out: “To solve care problems, mothers have to put in place a sophisticated—but often precarious—organisation and use a whole range of solutions: alternate between formal care arrangements (mostly nursery schools) and informal arrangements, anticipate the risk of one of the persons responsible for looking after the child letting them down; and schedule the cases when they will have to work additional hours. In the absence of solutions, the employee must either turn to absenteeism or make arrangements with colleagues.” In a survey conducted in  with a sample of , workers in the UK, extended by  in-depth interviews, La Valle et al. (: – ) listed three main types of childcare arrangements for people (couples or lone-parent households) working at atypical times: Shift parenting: “In this group the working hours of each partner are organized in a way that between them they can be available to look after the children. This is generally the result of a deliberate decision. It is seen as a benefit as it minimizes the need for non-parental childcare.” 

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Atypical Working Hours

Separate “In this second category, couples take on clearly demarcated parenting roles: and more ‘traditional’ roles, whereby one partner prioritizes the family and the other prioritizes work. The partner with the career, or the ‘breadwinner’, generally works at atypical times, either doing long hours, ‘extra’ hours or shift work. The other partner has primary or sometimes sole responsibility for looking after children, and works part-time, not seeing their job as a ‘proper’ job or career. This partner may work at atypical times.” Dual parenting: “This group is made up of couples who both work in professional jobs and consider themselves as having a ‘career’. Both partners’ ‘core hours’ are standard, with a varying number of additional (voluntary) hours, likely to be done at atypical times.” To these three main arrangements, there are to be added the situations of lone-parent families. In them, also, the pressure from atypical working hours can be shared but it is shared most often with grandparents and, sometimes, with other family members, not usually with the ex-partner. These types of care arrangements are quite close to those identified in France in working time surveys, carried out to show how important the parental presence with children is in couples where both partners work (see Lesnard ). In half of the cases, the parental presence was relatively low but synchronous, in the sense that both parents spent most of this time together with the children, with work occupying the main part of their day (dual parenting). In four other situation categories, Lesnard found the “separate parenting role” and the “shift parenting” models, in the sense that the simultaneous presence of both parents diminishes in favour of individual presence, which in total enables increased parental presence (of one parent only). In some extreme cases, Lesnard speaks about a “relay” type of organization of parental presence at home, in the sense that the parents ensure that one or the other, in alternation, is present with their children.

Variable Working Hours and Care Arrangements: Family Situations in France, Portugal and Finland From the interview data of the SOCCARE study, four families from France, four from Finland and four from Portugal, all faced with situations of work at atypical times, were selected for this analysis (see Appendices ,  and ). Two other criteria were also used in the choice of our sample: we wanted to have variation according to the family and the economic situation (see table ). The family situations studied have a high level of pressure: either the parent is alone in looking after the children or both parents have atypical working hours. From each country, we selected families with relatively high incomes, with average incomes and with low incomes, in order to analyse the largest range possible of families working at atypical times. We have also taken into account the diversity of professions concerned by this type of 

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Blanche Le Bihan and Claude Martin Table  Economic and family situation of the selected families Family situation

Dual-earner families Lone-parent families

FIN; F; F; P; P FIN; FIN; FIN; F; F; F; P; P

Economic situation

Low income Average income Average/high income

FIN; FIN; F; P FIN; F; P; P FIN; F; F; F; P

Note: FIN = Finland; F = France; P = Portugal.

timetable: from a home help ( Jeannine, F) and a saleswoman (Ulla, FIN) to a speech therapist (Olivia, F) and a surgeon (Amalia and Tiago, P). Predictability and negotiability of atypical working hours Four dimensions need to be taken into account when analysing atypical working hours: () their different nature compared to the traditional “from  a.m. to  p.m., Monday to Friday” working week; () their variability depending on the days, weeks or periods of the year; () their predictability; and finally () the possibility to negotiate them, that is, the ability of people to arrange their working hours as they please. In France, as well as in Portugal and Finland, some professions require starting work early in the morning or finishing late at night. Anne (F) and Minna (FIN) are nurses. Some weeks, they begin their working day at . a.m.; other weeks, they finish at  p.m. or work all night (at least in the case of Minna). The problem is the same for Conchita (P) and Ana (P) in Portugal: as flight attendants, they have shifting and variable working hours. Their flight schedule is never the same and they may have to work early in the morning, late in the evening, and also at night or over the weekend. All the families studied have a variable timetable depending on the days, weeks or months. In many cases, working hours change depending on the period: Ulla (FIN), who is a saleswoman, works either in the morning until  p.m. or in the afternoon until  p.m.; Amalia (P), who is a paediatric surgeon, works either from . a.m. to  p.m. or from . p.m. to . p.m. (see Appendix ). But while they change from one week or day to the next, working hours are in these cases more or less predictable. Anne (F), who is a nurse in France, has a variable schedule but she knows a long time in advance the alternation of these hours: she works four days a week from . a.m. to  p.m. or from . a.m. to  p.m., or from  p.m. to  p.m. However, Conchita (P) and Ana (P) in Portugal are only notified a short time in advance of their work schedule, depending on the trips they have to make. These more or less predictable working hours are also more or less negotiable, meaning that people can individually more or less organize their working hours depending on personal constraints. Ulla ( FIN), Anne ( F), Amalia ( P), Conchita ( P) and Ana ( P) have imposed work schedules. They 

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Atypical Working Hours Table  Predictability and negotiability of working hours of parents of the selected families Working hours

Predictable

Non-predictable

Negotiable

Olivia (speech therapist) F Bertrand (university teacher) F Kaarina (employee) FIN Jouni (manager) FIN Ulla (salesperson) FIN Anne (nurse) F Jean (teacher/doctoral student) F Jeannine ( personal assistant) F Amalia (surgeon) P Tiago (surgeon) P

Elina (freelance journalist) FIN Marie (musician) F Minna ( psychiatric nurse) FIN Pierre (musician/artistic director) F Maria (hairdresser/waitress) P José (blacksmith) P Conchita (stewardess) P Ana (stewardess) P

Non-negotiable

do not decide what hours they work and they cannot change the timetable. However, Bertrand (F), who teaches at university, and Elina (FIN), a freelance journalist, have some room for manoeuvre in organizing their timetable. By crossing the two criteria of predictability and negotiability of the atypical working hours, our sample divides into different subgroups (see table ). Negotiable atypical working hours. This type of work arrangement with variable hours has an advantage for the parent in that there is a chance to organize one’s professional timetable according to family constraints. Bertrand (F) is a university teacher. Separated from his wife, he looks after his two children, aged  and , half the week. His professional activity and the flexibility of his working hours enables him to organize his week depending on the presence of his daughters.

“We’ve divided the week into two. So their mother has the beginning of the week, every other Wednesday, and I have the end of the week and every other weekend. But that was done according to our timetables, meaning that I make myself free at the end of every week . . . I work at the uni, I’m a professor. So, I’m quite lucky in being able to arrange my timetable, not completely as I would like it, because it depends on the lectures I give as well, but I’ve certainly got more choice than some. I work on Mondays from . a.m. to . p.m. and from  p.m. to  p.m. and then, I don’t have the children, never. I work on Tuesdays from  a.m. to . p.m. and from . p.m. to  p.m. and there too I don’t have the children. I often have professional meetings in the evenings at the beginning of the week. On these days I work from home, I prepare my lessons, or on Wednesdays when I don’t have the children. If I pick up the children on Tuesday evening, I don’t work on Wednesday, and on Thursday I work from  a.m. to  p.m. and on Fridays from . a.m. to . a.m. and from . p.m. to  p.m.” (Bertrand, F) 

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In this type of professional activity, variable working hours are not an additional constraint, but a solution to the difficulties of reconciling professional life and family life. Bertrand is alone with his children half the week. For him, it is essential that this reduced parental time is spent with them. From Wednesday evening until Sunday or from Tuesday evening until Friday evening, depending on the weeks, Bertrand cares for his two daughters and delegates very few things. “When they are there, it’s true that I don’t work at all during the day, for example. I work in the evening when they’ve gone to bed . . . Given that I now only have the children half my life, I am not going to not be with them when I can. I totally want to protect them and even if I have to make certain sacrifices during the time they are there, I will do it. But you can’t call that sacrifices.” (Bertrand, F) Also separated from her partner, Elina (FIN) is in the same situation as Bertrand (F), but she cares for her children alone full-time. Her work as a freelance journalist enables her to work from home and organize her time and therefore to reconcile her professional life and her family life. She can work freely early in the morning or late at night; what is essential is to complete the task she has been given. When the children come back home after school at . p.m., Elina takes a break and spends time with them. Aged  and , the children are independent enough to look after themselves, which enables her to work again from about  p.m. to  p.m. However, unlike Bertrand, her timetable is not fixed once and for all. She can be asked at the last moment to go on a trip, for the whole day or for a few days. These trips are not always predictable, and Elina has sometimes to give up professional opportunities because she cannot find any solution for her children. Even if Elina has to cope with certain unexpected events, like Bertrand, the negotiable nature of her working hours is a determinant element in the organization of her life. The room for manoeuvre these two parents have in managing their timetable gives them the chance to organize their work according to their personal constraints and to preserve their family time. In these situations, the variability of working hours becomes an advantage for lone parents. Non-negotiable atypical working hours. However, many professions with variable working hours do not allow such flexibility. In many cases working hours follow a well-defined schedule, which can be changed only in exceptional circumstances (child sick, unexpected family event, etc.). In situations with non-negotiable working hours, the degree of predictability becomes a determinant element. In fact, the predictability of schedule changes enables parents to plan the organization of working days and childcare. Anne (F) is a nurse and her work hours change from one period to the next. However, she knows her schedule a long time in advance and can therefore anticipate her professional constraints and adapt her childcare arrangement.



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Atypical Working Hours

On the other hand, the unpredictability of atypical and strict working hours introduces a degree of additional pressure, making it impossible to anticipate childcare difficulties. The family situation becomes important in palliating these difficulties. Being alone with one’s children and not being able to count on the availability of one’s partner to care for the children makes the situation even more difficult. Minna (FIN), a Finnish psychiatric nurse, is not at all in the same situation as Anne (F), whose working hours are variable but planned several months in advance. Minna is notified at the last moment of her working hours and cannot easily anticipate the situation. She has many difficulties: being a lone mother, having precarious work with variable, non-negotiable and unpredictable working hours. “We do not have such a thing as a typical day. This week has been the first one when we have had some regularity at work. Actually, after the birth of my son, we haven’t had any routine . . . I have normally three different shifts and I haven’t had a permanent contract. This has meant that I never know when they call me for work. I can’t, for example, tell my son in the morning whether he will have to go to the day-care centre that day or not.” (Minna, FIN) The organization of the childcare arrangement How do families cope with these constraints? How do they manage to combine their professional life and their family life? All the families we met make use of formal public and private resources (day-care centres, crèches, school, childminders, home helps) and/or informal resources other than the presence of the parents themselves (asking for help from families, friends and neighbours). In our sample, the childcare arrangements (see Appendices ,  and ) can be presented as different combinations of these two types of resources. As a result, three types of care arrangements can be identified: predominantly informal arrangements, predominantly formal arrangements and mixed arrangements that combine formal and informal care. Mixed childcare arrangements. Jouni and Kaarina (FIN) both work shift hours.

Kaarina is an employee who alternates between two shifts: from  a.m. to  p.m. and from  p.m. to  p.m. Jouni is a process manager in a factory and works from  midnight to  a.m. or from  a.m. to  p.m. or from  p.m. to  midnight, during the week as well as during the weekend. They have two children, a four-year-old daughter and an eight-year-old boy. The older child is at school until  p.m. while his little sister is looked after at home by a childminder from . a.m. to  p.m. or from  a.m. to  p.m., depending on Kaarina’s and Jouni’s working hours. The difference in their working hours enables one or the other to be at home with their children and to look after them after  p.m. The arrangement is therefore a mixed one: a formal care arrangement (the childminder) during common working hours, added to parental care during atypical working hours. The example of Kaarina and Jouni corresponds to the “shift parenting” model, both devoting to their children the time they are not working. When both need to work in the evening, Kaarina is able to swap her shift with a colleague. 

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To a certain extent, the alternation of shift hours within a couple where both parents work seems to be a good thing, enabling each of them to reconcile their role as a parent with their professional life. But what about conjugal time? The common periods of presence at home are not that frequent, with one working while the other is with the children. Weekends, times traditionally devoted to the family, are organized depending on Jouni’s working hours. Olivia (F), alone with her children, is a speech therapist and her clientele is mostly composed of children. Her meeting hours are therefore after the school day, on Wednesdays and on Saturday mornings. She therefore works opposite hours to the school day of her two daughters aged  and . She employs a childminder who fetches the children from school and looks after them on Wednesdays and Saturdays. These working hours do, however, have advantages: first of all because they are negotiable—Olivia can decide her own meeting schedule and does not have any consultations after . p.m. on Mondays and Thursdays—and secondly because she does not work in the morning and can have time together with her daughters and have lunch with them. Predominantly formal childcare arrangements. There are situations where the arrangement is predominantly formal or, on the other hand, predominantly informal. The country therefore becomes a determinant factor, since the provision of services is not the same in France, Portugal and Finland. In Finland, the municipalities fund day-care centres whose opening hours are considerably longer than those of crèches in France. Some of them are open  hours a day and, if the family and work situation demands it, look after children at night. Some are also open on Saturdays and Sundays. Minna (FIN), a psychiatric nurse with a precarious work contract and alone with her children, takes her four-year-old son to the day-care centre when she has to work: it can be early in the morning or it can be the whole day long or during the night. Furthermore, as Minna works with an uncertain contract, she must be available at any moment. The flexibility of the running of the day-care centre is determinant. She just has to call to notify the staff and bring her son in. This provision of care services is adapted to the needs of families, not only in terms of working hours, but also in financial terms; the cost being proportional to income.

“We do not have any regularity. Aleksi attends day-care centre whenever I am at work and I work whenever I am called to work. It is a simple fact.” (Minna, FIN) The flexibility of the running of day-care centres is an essential element of organizing care arrangements in Finland. As we have seen for Jouni and Kaarina, whose conjugal time is very short, the difference and variability of working hours have consequences on their family life. In the particular case of Minna, large use of the day-care centre raises the problem of the time spent with her son. Sometimes six days long, her working pace is completely opposite to her son’s pace: she works at night when he sleeps 

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and rests a bit during the day before picking him up. Minna’s situation is far from satisfactory, since it reduces family time to a minimum and does not protect Minna from the fatigue linked to these difficult working conditions. “If I have a night shift, Aleksi can stay at the day-care centre until  p.m. the next day. But this is still too little for me to have a proper amount of sleep. I pick him up at  p.m. and take him back again in the evening. At the end of the week I am always really tired.” (Minna, FIN) Predominantly informal childcare arrangements. Unlike in Finland, in Portugal the provision of public formal care services is insufficient to respond to the needs of families whose parents work atypical hours. When such provision does exist, it is private and costly and, therefore, not affordable for everyone. The family income criterion becomes determinant. José and Maria (P), a blacksmith and a hairdresser, have a -month-old daughter. José has many professional constraints. He does not have a fixed schedule and is often travelling. As a hairdresser, Maria has stable working hours but she never finishes before  p.m., and she works on Saturdays as well. Furthermore, she regularly helps her mother in her restaurant, which means that she has to go back to work some evenings and regularly on Sundays. The couple’s income does not enable them to make use of formal private collective or individual services. The care arrangement is therefore mostly informal and relies on the help of those nearby (a neighbour) and the family (Maria’s mother and sister-in-law), especially because Maria’s husband, very busy with his work, is rarely at home and does not help out with domestic or parental work. Maria finds day-by-day solutions depending on the availability of other people. The organization of the care arrangement varies from one day to the next. The neighbour, who is paid under the table, looks after the little girl when she can but she cannot guarantee permanent care. It is often the case that Maria has to take her baby girl with her to the hairdressing salon or ask for help from her close family. The choice of arrangement is determined by the resources available. Maria pays her neighbour $ per month, which is already a compromise, since in the beginning it was only a one-off solution.

“In the beginning she didn’t want any money for looking after my daughter. But I thought it was important to pay her, because then no one owes anyone anything. So I said I would give her  a month, no matter how many days she looks after my daughter. But, in return, if she can, she can; if she can’t, she can’t. So, that’s how it is, some months, she can look after her for a fortnight and I pay her the same; this makes up for the months where she has her for  days. But I only pay . When my daughter goes to a private school, I will pay › or ›.” (Maria, P) Although her daughter is still a baby, Maria intends to enrol her in a crèche and she knows that she will have to make important sacrifices for this, since 

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she will have to pay $ a month. “It’s a lot, I’m going to have to make an enormous sacrifice and I’ll have to give up something else.” However, as she puts it: “It is important for Lena to have friends, to learn new things, isn’t it? And also because Lena doesn’t have any rules. At the moment, she sleeps when she wants to, she wakes up when she wants to, but this won’t be able to last.” This sacrifice is doubly justified, for the educational reasons Maria cites (a more regular pace of daily life for her child, learning rules, socializing with her own age group), but also due to the limitations in the current informal care arrangement. Maria’s care arrangement is in fact extremely precarious. She can practically never fully count on people and must compensate for this by looking after her daughter in her place of work. The instability of the care arrangement makes the situation very difficult to cope with on a daily basis for Maria. Finding a care solution for her daughter is a permanent problem, a daily mental burden. “It’s very frustrating and complicated. There are situations which mean we have to make great efforts, which cause great suffering. Sometimes I feel real suffering for my daughter. I don’t know, I feel very hurt sometimes, very, very hurt even . . . I feel guilty . . . how can I explain it . . . it’s like, well, sometimes a situation like this happens: my mother had a dinner, a large one, for a group, and I went to help, as usual, it was a Saturday. I had to go there after a long day’s work and of course I had to find a solution. I took my daughter to my sister-in-law’s . . . My sister-inlaw’s two daughters were there, and when I arrived . . . it was already  o’clock at night and I hadn’t been able to bring food for the children. It’s obvious, I couldn’t leave the restaurant, leave the clients to go out, could I? And when I got to my sister-in-law’s . . . it irritated me so much that I was not able to bring food earlier. I got there and asked what the children wanted to eat so I could go and get it. She replied that her daughters had already eaten but mine hadn’t. I was really hurt by that. I just shut up, left the house, went to get something to eat for my daughter at the restaurant and came back to get her . . . It’s really rotten. It’s the sort of thing when you go back to work which makes you want to drop everything, piss off, leave and pick her up and go home.” (Maria, P) Determinants of the childcare arrangement: income, conceptions of parental roles, work.

The income criterion is an important element for organizing childcare in all three countries. In France and in Finland, as in Portugal, insufficient income means not being able to have recourse to certain types of services. José and Maria (P) in Portugal, as well as Minna (FIN) in Finland, cannot pay for someone to look after their children at home. Jeannine (F) in France cannot even consider employing someone to go and pick up her daughter from school. On the other hand, because they have good incomes, Jouni and Kaarina (FIN) in Finland and Olivia (F) in France can pay for a childminder/babysitter to look after their children. Overall, a sufficient level of income opens up the field of possibilities, leaving parents a real choice in organizing the care arrangement. A final criterion must be mentioned, that of the perception of one’s role as a parent and, more broadly, the link between work and family life. Marie and Pierre (F) are professional musicians and parents of four children aged 

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, ,  and . They do not have a typical working week; their working hours vary, depending on administrative constraints and concerts. To reconcile their professional and their family life, Pierre and Marie have shared the tasks according to the traditional “separate parenting model”. Marie is the pivot of the house, she cares for the children while also working daily. Pierre is the artistic director of an ensemble. He deals with administrative tasks, manages the relationships with the world of music, organizes concerts, etc. He does not have precise working hours and even when he is at home, he spends his time on the telephone. The organization of their work varies from one week to the next. They may also have to leave on tour for several weeks at a time. A domestic help comes to the house from  midday to . p.m. every day, but this does not stop Marie from being there too and from caring for her children while the childminder concentrates more on household tasks. The childminder is the main carer while Pierre and Marie are away on tour, even if the children are also looked after by their grandmother. “Pierre looks after the ensemble, from morning to evening and sometimes at night, so he is not here, and when he is here, it’s an office here, the telephone rings all the time, every time he starts something he is stopped by the phone ringing . . . When there are too many concerts, I try to reduce the number to be with the children, otherwise they are cut off from their mother and their father. They don’t suffer that much from it, but nonetheless . . . Last week, Pierre was in Paris three days out of six. He came home, he left again, he was gone all day long . . . so he deals with everything to do with our professional life and I do the rest.” (Marie, F) After parental leave at the time of the birth of their third child, Marie decided to slow down her professional pace in order to make her schedule compatible with her family life. She feels that, as a mother, she should be with her children and refuses to delegate all care tasks to someone else. It is not a question of finance; the couple has today a rather high income and could delegate a lot more, but Marie wishes to care for her children in the mornings and evenings, and to be there when they come out of school at . p.m. Also at lunchtime she tries to be there, even if only for a short while. “I think that to care for my children well, I have to try to be there with them as much as possible and be able to give them everything I can pass on to them . . . I’ve also made a promise to myself, but that’s for me and for me alone. I tell myself that whatever time I go to bed after a rehearsal or a concert, I will always get up in the morning to look after my children. It’s difficult for me to recover afterwards, but I get up nonetheless and I get my children up. It’s never anyone else who gets them up, except when I’m not there. But when I am there, it’s always me; sometimes it’s a bit hard; when we work until midnight, half past midnight, when the alarm goes off at  a.m.” ( Marie, F) We found this desire to be with one’s children in the comments of other people we met, as well. Most of them try to balance their time at work and their parental time in the best possible way. 

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“When I’m resting, I try to do as many things as possible with Louis so that my work doesn’t stop me seeing my baby grow up and because I need to be with him.” (Anne, F) “I’d sort of like to stay at home. I took a parental leave. I stayed at home for half a year.” (Kaarina, FIN) “Personally, I wanted my children, I looked forward to having them, I am happy they are there. It was part of my life’s plan. I’m also more ambitious regarding my family than professional life. I could work a lot more if I didn’t have children, but I don’t like working too much. I prefer spending time with my children to the benefit in spending time looking after other people’s children in my job as a speech therapist.” (Olivia, F) The representation we have of the connection between work and family life also raises the question of the importance attached to developing one’s professional life. Olivia (F) does not give priority to her work, unlike Amalia and Tiago (P), who correspond to the “dual parenting model”, with both parents wanting a professional career. It is this importance attached to work which influences the care arrangement and the use of formal care resources.

Conclusion Several elements intervene in the organization of childcare in families with atypical working hours: work conditions and the type of atypical working hours; the extent to which working hours can be arranged or negotiated; the availability or non-availability of services; incomes; the family situation; the connection between professional and family life; the perception of one’s parental role. These different elements combine together and constitute a particular life situation, which leads to a particular childcare arrangement. It can mean getting the family involved in caring for the children; using formal care services if they exist and are not too expensive; having a child cared for at home when it is financially possible; making children participate in activities with other children; reducing working hours in order to be more with children; or, on the other hand, organizing a care arrangement which makes it possible to devote oneself to a professional career. The care arrangements are determined by the life situations of the families which give the parents a more or less important room for manoeuvre to combine their professional and family life, depending on their priorities and objectives. One of the lessons of the qualitative analysis concerns the definition of atypical working hours. What seems to make the difference with the classical definition concerns these two criteria: negotiability and predictability. Thus, in situations where working hours are both predictable and negotiable, atypical hours can be a solution to reconcile professional and family life. On the other hand, in situations where working hours are non-negotiable and unpredictable, atypical hours can make the two spheres of daily life incompatible. We also understand that even a developed provision of childcare services cannot solve everything. Hence, it is interesting to examine cases with similar 

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constraints, whatever the provision of services is, wherever they live: for example, Minna in Finland and Maria in Portugal. In the first case, the -hour day-care provision is not a solution as it does not enable Minna to spend sufficient time with her child. This begs the question of the quality of such a parental relationship. In the case of Maria, the problem is the absence of an adapted and financially affordable formal provision. She has to turn to informal solutions that have another kind of costs: precariousness and dependence on one’s network of relations. While it is difficult to draw a conclusion from these few national cases, we nevertheless suggest three main configurations, three dominant care arrangement types for dual-earner families. They are determined by all the abovementioned factors and they can be referred to as ideal-types; somewhat different from those presented previously (see La Valle et al. ). • Dual-career couples who share and delegate care. What characterizes this type of situation the best is the investment of both members of the couple in their professional activity. This investment is not only a question of economic necessity, but also of social identity. In these situations, the shared parental role is compatible with the double investment in careers. A major part of the childcare is therefore delegated to other formal and/ or informal carers. • Couples with a traditional division of roles, as a breadwinner and a caretaker, “Mr Breadwinner” and “Mrs Do-it-all”. In these situations, more or less implicitly, the role of the provider is mainly taken by the man and the woman favours the parental role, even if sometimes she takes an additional provider role and the man can take a secondary household role. A lot of pressure is therefore put on these women who work at atypical times and find themselves alone in bearing the burden. • Relay couples. In these families, both members of the couple invest strongly in their parental role and put their professional investment on hold. Working at atypical times, each parent attempts to ensure that his/ her role is complementary with the other and both try to adapt their professional timetables. The sharing is done on a relay basis. When one of the parents is not available, the other takes up the relay and vice versa. There is a risk of organizing the presence of only one parent at a time at the expense of the conjugal relationship and a real family life. Lone-parent households can also have these different types of models, but the situation is different. It is sometimes possible to organize everyday life so that both ex-partners can continue to invest in their work, adopting a relaytype arrangement where the children circulate between two households. A traditional division of roles may also be possible. But it implies that the lone parent is left quite alone to face the double constraint from a parental role and a professional life—which are sometimes incompatible.



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Blanche Le Bihan and Claude Martin Appendix  Family situations, occupations and childcare arrangements of the selected French families Family

Family situation

Occupation

Type of childcare arrangement

F Anne and Jean

Dual-earner family Middle income

 child ( years old)

Anne is a nurse with predictable timetables but difficult to negotiate. She works  days a week: either . a.m.−  p.m., . a.m.− p.m. or  p.m.− p.m.

Jean is a university teacher and finishing his doctor’s degree. He works  days a week at the university, at other times he works at home.

Mixed arrangement. The child stays with a childminder when Anne is working. Otherwise, she stays at home with the child. When she works in the evening, her husband or her mother, who lives in the same town, takes care of the child.

F Marie and Pierre

Dual-earner family High income

 children (, ,  and  years old)

Both Marie and Pierre are professional musicians. Pierre is also the manager of an ensemble. He works  days a week and has unpredictable timetables that are hard to negotiate. Marie has more flexible hours with more room for negotiation. When she does not have a concert, she works  a.m.− p.m. and  p.m.− . p.m. and then in the evening. Sometimes the couple travels on tour and stays away from home for a few weeks.

Mixed arrangement. There is a childminder at home  midday−. p.m. and, if necessary, also on Sundays. She may also take care of the children for some days when Marie and Pierre are on tour. Otherwise, Marie takes care of the children every morning and tries to pick them up for lunch from school. She picks her children up every day from school at . p.m. Familial network ( Marie’s sister and mother who live in the same town) and network of friends care sometimes for the children.



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Atypical Working Hours Appendix  Continued Family

F Jeannine

Family situation

Occupation

Type of childcare arrangement

Lone-parent  children (,  and family Low income  years old)

Jeannine is a home help ( personal assistant). She works part-time and has predictable timetables but they are difficult to negotiate. She works frequently in the morning starting at  a.m. and also in the evening.

Mixed arrangement. Jeannine’s two oldest children are at school. They don’t have other care while their mother is working. The care arrangement for the youngest child includes school, day nursery, outdoor centre and sometimes, the year-old big sister.

 children ( and  years old)

Olivia is a speech therapist. She has predictable and negotiable timetables. She works in the afternoon until  p.m., except on two days a week when she works only until . p.m. She also works on Saturdays. Her working hours vary depending on the period of the year.

Mixed arrangement. Olivia takes care of her children in the morning and picks them up from school for lunch. A home help picks the children up from school every afternoon at . p.m. and takes care of them until  p.m. On Wednesday mornings, the children go to an outdoor centre. The father of the children has a right to have them on alternate weekends.

Bertrand is a teacher who has flexible, negotiable and predictable working hours.

Informal arrangement. Bertrand has his children with him a half of the week. He can negotiate his work according to this childcare arrangement. If necessary, he asks his friends or pays a babysitter to take care of the children for a short time.

F Olivia Lone-parent family Middle income

F Bertrand

Lone-parent  children family ( and  Shared years old) custody



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Blanche Le Bihan and Claude Martin Appendix  Family situations, occupations and childcare arrangements of the selected Portuguese families Family

P Maria and José



Family situation

Dual-earner family Low income

 child ( month old)

Occupation

Maria is a hairdresser and she also helps her parents in their restaurant. She has rigid but mostly predictable working hours: on weekdays  a.m.− p.m. (as a hairdresser); on a few weekends, Saturday mornings (as a hairdresser) and evenings (in the restaurant) and Sundays (in the restaurant all day long).

José is a blacksmith who has quite unpredictable working hours with no possibility of negotiation. Sometimes he works also on Saturday. He may be absent for a few days.

Type of childcare arrangement Informal arrangement. A neighbour takes care of the child during the day, but Maria goes to fetch the child as soon as she can. Regularly Maria has to take the child to the hairdressing salon. She takes care of the child during the evening. The father is not available. During weekends, family members (grandmothers, aunt) are asked to care for the child.

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Atypical Working Hours Appendix  Continued Family

P Amalia and Tiago

Family situation

Occupation

Dual-earner  children Amalia is a family (  and  surgeon in High income years old) paediatrics in a public hospital. She has predictable timetables but no possibility for negotiation: . a.m.− p.m. or . p.m.− . p.m., plus she is on call for  hours once a week and for a weekend (Saturday or Sunday) once a month. In addition, she works part-time in a private hospital:  p.m.−. p.m. twice a week.

Tiago is a surgeon in a public hospital. He has predictable timetables but no possibility for negotiation: . a.m.− . p.m., plus . a.m.− . p.m. once a week. In addition, he works part-time in a private hospital: from  p.m. twice a week.

Type of childcare arrangement Formal arrangement during the week: private school and outdoor centre until . or  p.m. At that time, either the parents or a home help pick the children up. Every evening, the domestic helper prepares dinner and baths the children. She works from Monday to Friday –  p.m. The total cost of this arrangement is high: $ per month for the home help + $ per month for the extracurricular activities + $ for the sports, judo, computing, English. Total: $ per month.



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Blanche Le Bihan and Claude Martin Appendix  Continued Family

Family situation

Occupation

Type of childcare arrangement

P Conchita

Lone-parent family Medium income

 child ( Conchita is a stewardess who has years old) unpredictable working hours and no possibility for negotiation. (She receives alimony from her ex-husband.)

Mainly informal arrangement except the school hours ( private school: $ per month). Paternal grandparents (who live nearby) take care of the child (even during the night). Maternal grandparents and a home help care for the child during the two months’ school holiday.

P Ana

Lone-parent family Medium income

 child ( Ana is a stewardess who has years old) unpredictable working hours and no possibility for negotiation. (She receives no alimony from her ex-husband. Ana does not want him to stay with the child.)

Mainly informal arrangement: maternal grandparents. When Ana begins her work early in the morning, she leaves her child at her parents’ home the day before. When the grandparents are not available, she leaves her child with an uncle or a neighbour. When Ana is not working, she takes care of her child full-time.



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Atypical Working Hours Appendix  Family situations, occupations and childcare arrangements of the selected Finnish families Family

Family situation  children ( and  years old)

FIN Jouni and Kaarina

Dual-earner couple Middle/ high income

FIN Elina

Lone-parent  children ( and  family years old) Middle income

Occupation

Type of childcare arrangement

Jouni is a process manager in a factory who has predictable working hours but very little room for negotiation: either . midnight− . a.m., . a.m.− . p.m. or . p.m.− . midnight. He works also on weekends and during public holidays.

Mixed arrangement. The younger child is with a childminder (. a.m.− p.m. or  a.m.− p.m.). The older child is at school ( a.m−  p.m.). The parent who is not working takes care of the children. Kaarina is able to change her work shift if both parents are working during the evening. Family members ( paternal grandmother, sister), friends and neighbours give some help in childcare.

Elina is a freelance journalist. She has flexible but not always predictable working hours. She works mostly at home but often she has to make work trips for a day (sometimes for longer) and leave home very early.

Informal arrangement. While the children are at school, Elina works at home. For a oneday trip, her mother takes care of the children, having them already the day before. For a longer journey, Elina pays a student babysitter.

Kaarina is an employee in a factory who has predictable working hours but very little room for negotiation: either . a.m.− . p.m. or . p.m.− . p.m.



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Blanche Le Bihan and Claude Martin Appendix  Continued Family

Family situation

Occupation

Type of childcare arrangement

FIN Minna

Lone-parent  children family (, ,  Low income and  years old)

Minna is a psychiatric nurse who has unpredictable timetables without possibility for negotiation. She has only a fixed-term contract and may be called to work at any time (morning, afternoon or night).

Formal arrangement. When Minna is working, her youngest child stays in a day-care centre open  hours a day,  days a week. This centre is very flexible. She can call early in the morning to bring her child. When Minna works during the night, she leaves the child at day-care centre at  p.m. and picks him up at  p.m. the next day.

FIN Ulla

Lone-parent  child family ( years Low income old)

Ulla is a salesperson who has predictable timetables but no possibility for negotiation. She works in the morning until  p.m. or in the afternoon until  p.m. She works also on Saturdays and a few Sundays.

Formal arrangement. When Ulla is working, she takes her child to a day-care centre open from . a.m. to  p.m. When she works on Sundays, her child has to go to another day-care centre; about once a month the child is cared by other family members.

References Boisard, P. (), Conséquences des horaires atypiques sur la vie quotidienne des salariés. Accessed  April . Available at: http://www.sociologics.org/temporalistes/ home/texte/bisard/boisard_N_.htm Boisard, P., Cartron, D., Gollac, M. and Valeyre, A. (), Temps et travail: la durée du travail, Dublin: Fondation européenne pour l’amélioration des conditions de vie et de travail. Estrade, M.-A. and Ulrich, V. (), Une fragilisation des moins qualifiés. In

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Atypical Working Hours C. Bloch-London and J. Pélisse (eds), La réduction du temps de travail. Des politiques aux pratiques, problèmes politiques et sociaux, Paris: La Documentation Française, pp. –. Fagnani, J. (), Politique familiale, flexibilité des horaires de travail et articulation travail/famille, Droit Social, : –. Institut de la Statistique du Québec (), Standard or Non-standard Parental Work Schedules and Childcare Arrangements, Québec Longitudinal Study of Child Development (–) , , Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec. La Valle, I., Arthur, A., Millward, C., Scott, J. and Clayden, M. (), Happy Families? Atypical Work and its Influence on Family Life, Bristol: Policy Press. Lesnard, L. (), Disponibilité parentale et activités familiales, Rapport pour le Haut Conseil de la Population et de la Famille. Accessed  April . Available at: http:// www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/brp/notices/9.shtml. Marcil-Gratton, N. and Le Bourdais, C. (), La conciliation famille–travail comme facteur de stress: multiplicité des situations et diversité des besoins de soutien des familles au Québec. Paper presented at the seminar Familles en mouvance et dynamiques intergénérationnelles, Québec. Presser, H. (), Nonstandard work schedules and marital instability, Journal of Marriage and the Family, , : –. Rochette, M. (), Le travail atypique des parents et la garde d’enfants: description du phénomène et recension des expériences étrangères de garde à horaires non usuels, Direction des communications et de la gestion documentaire, Québec: Ministère de la Famille et de l’Enfance, Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec et Bibliothèque Nationale du Canada. Statham, J. and Mooney, A. (), Around the Clock: Childcare Services at Atypical Times, Bristol: Policy Press.

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Title O riginal Article December  Blackwell Oxford, SPOL © - Social Blackwell Policy UK Publishing,  Publishing & Administration Ltd. 

3 Managing Work and Care: A Difficult Challenge for Immigrant Families Karin Wall and José São José

Introduction One of the most significant changes in European societies since the s is the increase in and diversification of immigration. Contrary to expectations in the s, when the intense labour migration movement of the s began to slow down and the recruitment of new immigrants became more restrictive, migrant inflows increased again during the s and s, bringing into Western European countries not only unskilled workers to satisfy specific labour market needs, but also an increasing number of asylum-seekers, family-reunion migrants, highly qualified workers and illegal migrants (King ; Castles and Miller ; Salt ). Our main concern in this paper is with the work and family lives of immigrant families. By focusing on a very specific but crucial problem in family life—how to manage work and care responsibilities for young children—our aim is to identify the strategies adopted by immigrant families in order to organize work and family life. From a broader perspective, however, we can say that analysis of the work/life strategies of families will give us a privileged insight into the integration process of immigrant families in the receiving societies. If, as we know, immigrants face strong pressures arising from work (long working hours, atypical timetables), from economic difficulties, from racial and social discrimination and from contrasting cultural and religious values, then the reconciliation of work and family life is likely to be a sensitive point revealing the specific tensions and vulnerabilities of the position of immigrant families in the receiving societies. How do immigrant families deal with these patterns of “vulnerability” and to what extent do they hinder accessibility to the social care models of the host society? To explore these issues, our analytical framework looks at the processes of social care and work/life balance as well as those related to migration. With regard to the first, our primary focus is on social care practices, broadly defined as the assistance and surveillance provided by paid or unpaid, professional or non-professional carers (within the public or the private sphere)

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in order to help children or adults in their daily lives and activities (Daly and Lewis ). These practices are embedded in work/life patterns whereby families develop specific strategies to manage work and care responsibilities ( Drew et al. ; Crompton ; Dulk et al. ; Garey ). They may include cutting back on working hours, adapting parents’ work schedules or delegating care to professional and informal carers. “Reconciliation” and “balancing” are the concepts currently used to analyse this process. These concepts seem to imply that some form of conciliation or equilibrium between the two spheres is always achieved, and this represents an analytical drawback. In fact, one of the important issues in this paper may be to question the idea that receiving societies always develop accessibility to a “reconciliation” model in which the state, the family and the private and voluntary sectors come together to provide adequate care. Reconciliation of work and care may not always be possible and this may lead to alternative arrangements such as taking children to work or leaving them to fend for themselves. Therefore, although we shall also sometimes use these concepts in our work, in general we prefer the rougher and more neutral concept of “managing” work and family life (Hantrais ). Work/family strategies in the receiving society must also be seen in the context of migration. Reasons for migration, social integration in the receiving society and ethnic characteristics may vary considerably and this will have an impact on work and family life. Analysis of families’ migration trajectories and the nature and duration of their migration project allowed us to identify different migration patterns1 in our study of immigrant families. The main migration patterns we found are labour or worker migration (unskilled, long-term), student migration, highly qualified professional migration, asylum-seeker migration and “mixed-marriage” migration (where an immigrant woman migrates in order to marry a national from the host society). One of the key aims of our analysis will be to see if these different types of migration patterns are linked to certain types of work/care strategies. In this paper we will draw upon the results of the SOCCARE Project which sought to understand the work/family balance of different kinds of immigrant families in five countries (Finland, France, Italy, Portugal and the UK).2 One segment of the data of this project consisted of interviews with  immigrant families with young children (aged  or less) and working parents (part-time or full-time)3 living in France, Finland, Portugal and Italy; it included couples with children as well as some lone parents. From the point of view of migration, however, the national samples within this larger sample of working parents with young children represent many different types of migration patterns as well as sending countries. This makes it difficult to build in a strictly comparative perspective across the national samples. But it allows us, nevertheless, to carry out an exploratory qualitative analysis which examines the specific constraints faced by immigrant families as well as the main linkages between some contextual variables, such as migration patterns, ethnicity, or social networks, and the work/care strategies of immigrant families.4 In order to deal with the diversity of the national samples we will begin by analysing the work/care strategies within each national sample. In the 

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process we will seek to identify and explain, on the basis of a detailed description of some typical “cases”, what relationships arise between certain types of immigrant families, patterns of vulnerability and specific strategies for managing work and care. Against this background of case-types, we will then try to understand and discuss some of the main factors involved in shaping work/care strategies.

Immigrant Families in France The French sample of  families ( couples with children and three lone parents) was collected in Rennes and includes some diversity with regard to countries of origin, migration patterns and social position of immigrant families. All the immigrants are of African origin. Six couples are mixed Franco-African couples and the African partners come from Tunisia, Mali, Burkina Faso and Senegal. The other families come from three regions of Africa: the Maghreb, West Africa (Mauritania, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali) and Central Africa (The Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo). Differentiation is strongest, however, from the point of view of the migratory pattern: some came seeking political asylum, many arrived as students, others came to marry a French husband; only one came as an unskilled labour migrant. Although all of them may be considered first-generation migrants, the social position of these couples differs quite strongly: some men, mostly French nationals in mixed-couple families, are qualified professionals or managers, others are clerical workers and some are employees in the service or industrial sectors. Finally, in relation to the family division of paid work, we have a mixed profile: the dual-earner/dual-carer model (both working full-time) appears alongside many cases of the male-breadwinner/ female part-time-carer model. Work/care strategies of immigrant families The most common work/care strategy of these families is what we called the “mother-centred” strategy, where mothers cut back on their working hours and organize their work around the children’s nursery/school timetables (see table ). Many women in these families did not work at all when the children were below age  and now they have part-time jobs or training courses that enable them to be available for children after school and on Wednesdays when there is no school in France. Liliane, for example, works as a nursing auxiliary from  to  a.m. so that she can care for her -year-old at home and be available for her other school children during the day (her husband is a plumber, and they are asylum-seekers from Zaire). Many of these mothers are clearly what we might call voluntary stayat-home mothers or part-time workers. They portray mother-centredness as an option that addresses their identities as women and the care needs of children: “It’s the woman who raises her children, I think this is good for the child, the child needs a mummy more than a daddy . . . You, you are with your child . . . and it’s 

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Managing Work and Care Table  Work /care strategies of immigrant families (France) Work /care strategy

Number of cases

Managing work and care through mother-centredness: Mother-centred care Managing work and care through extensive delegation: Extensive formal care Managing work and care through negotiation within the family: Shared parental care Shared familial care Not managing work and care without child negligence: Standard formal care and self-care Extensive formal care and self-care Total

better if you yourself look after your children.” qualifications, low-income family)

      

(Amok, Mali, no professional

In some cases, however, the emphasis is on constraint rather than choice. The involuntary component is expressed through nostalgic recollections of rural African women who take their children to work, the desire to train in order to find well-paid full-time employment and many statements referring to the fact that they are looking for new jobs. Women who already had some qualifications or held down a reasonably good job in the sending country are more likely to have constrained mother-centred strategies: “And now, since October, I’ve started on a course. I’m training to be a nursing helper . . . Because my basic training is as a shorthand typist. But with that, it’s impossible to find work here. So first I improved my schooling level. Then in  I was pregnant . . . And then in  I decided to become an assistant nurse. And now, at the end of March, I will start looking for a job.” (Dielika, from Mali, worked irregularly as a waitress before pregnancy, child  years old and in a crèche since D. started her training) Managing work and care through negotiation within the family or extensive delegation are two other possible strategies. In the former strategy, work/ care balance is achieved through the negotiated, mutual adjustment of couples’ (or of family members’) working hours and care responsibilities. It may take shape in different types of care arrangements. “Shared parental care” is an arrangement that relies on the sequencing of care provided by both members of the couple whereas “shared familial care” involves several members of the family. Ursule and her husband (from Congo, both former students in France) are a good example of this strategy. They have three children of their own (aged  years,  years and  months) and a 

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stepdaughter aged . Ursule works as a night nurse and her husband, a teacher, has a daytime schedule and is at home in the evening and at night; the stepdaughter is essential to care for the children in the early morning after father has left home and before mother arrives at . a.m. This reliance on an older child is considered by the interviewees as a common strategy in African families. Some of them looked after young children when they themselves were adolescents and frequent references are made to help provided by other women living in the same household. The second strategy (extensive delegation) implies handing over care responsibilities for children to carers who look after them for long periods of time. Delegation based on informal carers (grandmother, childminder or a living-in family member) is usually low-cost and offers flexible and regular support, while delegation based on formal care services has to rely on services with very long opening hours (afternoon and homework clubs, school day care, holiday centres and so forth, usually requiring some payment). This is how Lydie and her husband, both working full-time ( a.m. to  p.m.) balance work and care for three children aged  years,  years and  months. The children are in formal care institutions from . a.m. to ./ p.m. every day of the week, including Wednesdays. The couple lives in a low-rent apartment, they are not very well off and often send money to their families in Congo. Lydie arrived in , to join her husband who came as a postgraduate student, but she was only able to apply for training and a job in  after getting her residence permit. She stayed at home for six months when her last son was born and then put him in a day-care centre. The last option—not managing work and care without child negligence— relates to situations where children are left alone at home (self-care) or are looked after by other young children (aged  or less).5 In the French immigrant families, this strategy occurs in two lone-parent families with low incomes, long working hours and no family support. Julia is a lone parent who arrived in France as an asylum seeker and has a child aged . She is in training during the day and works an evening shift in cleaning services from  to . p.m. Her little girl is in formal care until ., then comes home on her own (she has a key) and waits for her mother. Julia mentions neighbours who sometimes keep an eye on her daughter but she also says that the child usually stays on her own. Said, on the other hand, is an unskilled labour migrant and now works in a warehouse handling stores. He is divorced, his partner lives far away and his income ($) is limited, notwithstanding a heavy work timetable starting at  a.m. This makes it impossible for him to be there for his -year-old son in the morning before he goes to school, in the afternoon at . or on Wednesdays (the activity centre is considered to be too expensive). Said rings to see if everything is all right. In summary, Said’s problems in managing work and care seem to be closely linked not only to his situation as a labour migrant but also to his position as a lone parent. Difficulties are related, on the one hand, to the type of job (manual, low-paid, with long and atypical working hours) and, on the other hand, to isolation as a lone parent who receives no support from his expartner or other relatives. 

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Going beyond this description of work/care strategies implies looking at variables such as immigration history or family trajectories which might shape and explain certain types of work/care strategies. In the case of the immigrant families in Rennes, we were able to identify three distinctive patterns of migration which are strongly linked to specific ways of managing work and care for young children. Migration patterns of immigrant families In the mixed marriage migration pattern a foreign wife comes to live and build a family in France, her husband’s country of origin. Usually the couple meets in Africa, either marries there and returns together or then gets married in France after some to-ing and fro-ing between the two countries. In this migration pattern, immigration and marriage weave into each other and may be regarded as the two interlocking features that shape family life and social care. The African women who immigrated to marry a French national are family-orientated (this was the reason for migration), give high priority to caring for young children and adopt a work/care strategy which stresses the role of the mother as the main carer. This strategy is influenced not only by family values but also by the immigrant mother’s marginal position inside marriage and in relation to the labour market of the receiving country: the husband has his job, is the main breadwinner and is socially integrated, whereas the wife’s integration derives from the husband’s status, creating an initial sense of belonging to the host society but also of personal loneliness and social isolation (“having no outside” as one immigrant woman put it). Motherhood intervenes fairly early on and typically leads to a mothercentred strategy due to the wife’s weak or non-existent breadwinner role. These women are more protected from economic difficulties, from the total absence of kin networks (which exist on the husband’s side) and the downward mobility of many refugee couples but they are constrained to a certain gender role inside the family which reinforces a traditional gender socialization. However, as the children get older, many of the women seek to alter their position and adopt new ways of combining employment and mothering. From this point of view, they are eager to take up the opportunities (for training, employment, care provision) which the receiving society, France in this case, offers them. Migration patterns in which one or both members of the couples immigrated as students shape different work/care strategies. In couples where both have studied in France, the members of the couple are not only fairly well integrated culturally and socially but also have more similar positions/ qualifications with regard to the labour market and the breadwinner role. The meanings and forms of work/care management thus shift toward strategies that are much closer to common childcare arrangements of the receiving society: taking turns to be more available for care (negotiation), both working full-time and devolving care to many types of formal institutions (extensive delegation), buying in childminders to fill in the gaps. In some situations these are combined with a solution used by working women in the sending societies—a family member, such as a sister or a cousin—who lives in the household and lends a hand in care and household tasks. 

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Asylum-seeker families, as unskilled labour migrants, seem to have more problems in organizing work and care. It is important to underline two main features related to this pattern of migration. First, migration in these families happens nearly always at a later stage in the family life course. Unlike the students, who are usually single or in the first years of married life, these couples are forced to emigrate when they already have several children and are not so young. Family life as well as professional life may be brutally interrupted or sacrificed: as a result, part of the family, namely some of the children, are often left behind and stable jobs and careers are suddenly abandoned. Moreover, work/care strategies, which often relied on extensive kin support as well as domestic help, must be restructured. Secondly, during the first years after immigration, there are strong economic constraints due to long periods of waiting for legalization, followed by entry into low-paid, unqualified jobs. Those who had previous qualifications may have to struggle to train and work at the same time, a problem that puts extra strain on the amount of time available for care. If they are lone parents (see Julia, above) they may have to juggle training, work and care at the same time. Legalization, housing, work and training to get a better job—in other words the elementary steps toward establishing a “normal” life in a new society—will be family priorities. In such a situation, care arrangements have to adapt to these priorities rather than the other way round and children may have to contribute to this effort by looking after their younger brothers and sisters, remaining in the sending country or staying alone with no one to care for them. The first years after emigration are obviously the most difficult for refugee families. Families who have been in France for more than ten years may still complain of the difference in living conditions before and after migration. But they have gradually become integrated in the labour market and have a more stable economic and work/care situation.

Immigrant Families in Finland The Finnish sample of immigrant families with young children was collected in the regions of Tampere and Helsinki and it included two main countries of origin: China and Estonia. In this paper, however, we shall only look at the Chinese families. All the immigrants in these  families are firstgeneration migrants and there are only families of couples with children. Most of them are skilled-worker families who migrated in order to train (PhD) and/or in response to employment/career opportunities in the skilled sectors of the labour market (highly qualified professional migration). Only a few came as unskilled immigrant workers. Work/care strategies and migration patterns of Chinese immigrant families The work/care strategies of the Chinese families are strongly centred on the dual-earner model, with both partners working full-time and extensive delegation of childcare based on inexpensive formal services which care for children all day (see table ). Curiously, the one and only case of mother

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Managing Work and Care Table  Work /care strategies of Chinese immigrant families (Finland) Work /care strategy Managing work and care through mother-centredness: Mother-centred care Managing work and care through extensive delegation: Extensive formal care Childminder Not managing work and care without child negligence: Formal care (school, no extras) and self-care Total

Number of cases     

centred care is related, as in many of the immigrant families in Rennes, to mixed-marriage migration. The other work/care strategies are linked to two main types of migration: short-term highly qualified professional migration and labour migration. Short-term professional migration involves families with high educational qualifications (both members of the couple, often engineers or physicists, strongly committed to their careers) who came to Finland to work or to work and study for a few years. These families do not usually have many problems with residence permits, income and housing, but their social and cultural integration in Finnish society is limited and not considered as a priority. English is the language they need for postgraduate studies and for work, Finnish is hardly spoken and most of their friends are Chinese and live nearby, especially if the family lives in the student-housing area by the university. In this context, care is organized around the resources which are most at hand and guarantee the children’s international integration: Englishlanguage day-care centre and school (which have fairly long opening hours, from  a.m. to . p.m., and may cost up to $ per month), fetching and taking by the father or the mother and some occasional support from other Chinese families if work finishes later than usual. Knowledge of other care arrangements and local services is limited and interviewees emphasize that they have little information at their disposal (for example, on babysitters and on childminders, a solution which some of them would prefer for children below age ). However, when families have been in Finland for a slightly longer period, this profile may undergo a few changes. Lin (a software engineer) and Ching (a research fellow) have been in Finland since  when they came to do their PhDs. They live in a rented apartment in a block of flats, speak a little Finnish and have decided to send their son, now aged , to a Finnish school. They hesitated about this decision for two reasons. First, although they feel they have settled in Finland, they are still thinking about going back to China, where English would be more useful; second, they are worried because of the Finnish school timetable (ending at  p.m.) as they feel their 

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son is too young to stay alone in the afternoon; they have applied for an afternoon club ($ per month) and are waiting for an answer. A second profile seems to be more closely associated with unskilled labour migration. Only three worker migrant families were interviewed in Finland and the trajectories of the immigrant women are rather different. Two interviewees emigrated as single persons and the other came to join her husband who had found work as a cook in Finland (they set up a restaurant of their own some time later). Nevertheless, the families seem to portray some common vulnerabilities that contrast sharply with the highly qualified families already described. Chinese worker migrants with work permits seem to have immigrated quite easily in the late s and early s when there were labour shortages in Finland. As in other Chinese communities all over the world, many came to work in Chinese restaurants or families and then moved on to other jobs or tried to set up on their own. Having a restaurant, a café or a shop of your own implies long and atypical working hours. On the other hand, being a Chinese unqualified employed worker is not easy either, as it usually means working in catering or cleaning services and earning low salaries. These, then, are the main constraints faced by these families: long working hours in unqualified jobs or in self-employment, low income and fear of losing the job when working for others (one interviewee talked at length about how, in a previous job, she felt that she couldn’t miss work even if the children were ill for fear of being fired). The work ethic is thus very strong and family life must adapt to work life rather than the opposite. As a result, the work/care strategies in these families are strongly connected to the care norm of “managing on your own”. This means that care responsibilities must be managed as far as possible inside the nuclear family even if this implies getting young children to stay at home on their own or to look after other children, or taking children to work, if necessary. Hua is a typical example. She arrived in Finland in  with a permit to work as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant. During that first year Hua lived in lodgings provided by her employer and worked  hours a week; she had no idea it was illegal to work so many hours. Hua married a Finn, has two children aged  and  and now works in the kitchen of a local elementary school. Her husband has a shop that is not doing well; he also has a drinking problem and Hua has already considered a separation. Family income is low ($,). In terms of care, one child is at school and the other in day care ($ per month). The elder child, a girl, goes to school until  or  p.m., then stays alone at home in the afternoon; very often she also goes to fetch her brother from day care and gives him tea (formal care + self-care; see table ). At present, Hua is pleased with her job. As she works for the local authorities, she knows she has her rights and feels secure. Although she feels it is difficult to miss work as there are only three people in the school kitchen, she has no fear of being fired and is happy to be allowed to take the children to work when there is no school or if they are recovering from an illness: “I have often taken the children along with me to work. They are bigger now, but they are often ill. Around a year ago I think it was about twice a month, sometimes 

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a week, that I took a child along with me to work.” (Hua, a kitchen worker with low income, over ten years in Finland, married to a Finn, two children aged  and ) Contrary to the qualified Chinese immigrant families, these worker families are permanently settled in the host country and seek integration: they manage quite well in Finnish, they have more contact with Finnish people in their daily lives and the children go to Finnish day care and schools. However, long working hours, low salaries and strong pressure not to lose jobs seem to shape work/care strategies where children, rather than the parents and their jobs, are the adaptive element in work/life patterns. This sometimes leads to child negligence, but not necessarily. Hua does not have reliable help from her husband. However, Wan, another Chinese mother who runs her own coffee shop where she bakes bread at dawn and cooks both Finnish and Chinese food, relies on her husband (who has normal working hours) to take and fetch their young child from full-time day care ($ per month). Care gaps are more likely to arise when children begin school and have short or interrupted school hours. Lack of informal kinship networks to fill in these gaps, more difficult access to afternoon clubs (compared to day care for children below age ) and some social acceptance, in the host country, of leaving primary school-aged children alone in the afternoon, are the factors which appear to contribute most to the emergence of self-care, that is, leaving children alone without care.

Immigrant Families in Portugal Portugal, along with Spain, Italy, Ireland and Finland, falls into a group of European countries that has registered a strong increase in immigration since the s. Unskilled worker migration from the African colonies, mainly from the Cape Verde islands, began in the s to compensate for labour shortages caused by emigration (mainly to France and Germany) and the colonial war. However, it was in the late s and in the s and the s, after the Revolution () and decolonization, that immigration from the former African colonies (Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé) intensified (Pires ). Today African immigrants account for almost half the foreign population in Portugal and the majority of them are from the Cape Verde islands. The Portuguese sample of families was collected in the city of Lisbon, where most African immigrants are concentrated, and includes  Cape Verdean families (fourteen couples with young children and seven lone parents). Most of the interviews were carried out in socially deprived areas— in new suburbs of social rehousing as well as in an older “slum” area where brick houses have replaced former wooden shacks. A few interviews took place in other suburbs of the city where some families have rented or are buying flats. The sample is therefore homogeneous in terms of the sending country but includes some internal diversity from the point of view of family forms, duration of stay and integration in the receiving society. 

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General characteristics of Cape Verdean immigrant families Looking at the general characteristics of these immigrant families and their life histories, three striking features may be emphasized. First, the intensity of the migration phenomenon in the sending country. The life histories of the immigrant interviewees all tell us about the continuous circulation of men, women, young people and children. In the second half of the last century, destinations became more varied: the Cape Verdeans emigrated not only to Portugal and to other Portuguese African colonies but also to the United States, to Holland, Italy and Spain. A second feature is related to the organization of family life, which contrasts sharply with what we might call the “European” family. Shaped by the historical and social contexts of slavery, African roots, migration and the struggle for survival, family life is more centred on the mother–child unit, on cohabitation and lone parenthood rather than marriage, and on considerable independence and sexual freedom of both women and men. Fertility, motherhood and fatherhood (rather than parenthood), and intergenerational support are basic family values but they are channelled through bonds and types of households which slip away from the nuclear family of couples with or without children. As a result, family transitions follow specific and diverse patterns that revolve around lone parenthood. Having children and independent motherhood are strongly valued, even by second-generation young women who are now less in favour of having many children. As one single mother put it: “It’s like this, we are not like the Portuguese. We, the mothers have their children, right? By norm it’s the mother who has the child and who takes care of the child. Of course, this means that I am alone in responsibility, anything that happens.” (Daniela, , born in Portugal, secondary education incomplete, two children aged  and  from the same partner, cohabited for one year between the two births) As a result, the small sample of immigrant families collected in Lisbon contains family forms and trajectories which are quite varied and also experienced as ethnically different: many are lone parents (seven) and among the families of couples with children, there are more cohabiting (eight) than married couples, and several are blended families with children from different fathers or partnerships. Integration in the labour market is the third aspect that must be highlighted. Cape Verdean immigrants have traditionally worked in two main sectors: the building and public works sector (the men) and the cleaning and catering services sector (the women). Both have long working hours, with the building sector starting very early in the morning, often working overtime and at weekends, and on sites outside Lisbon which imply staying away from home for weeks or months. The cleaning sector, on the other hand, also has long or atypical working hours and, compared to the male wage in the building sector, very low salaries (rarely going beyond the national minimum wage). It is important to underline the fact that African women are often confined to a certain sector of the labour market, to firms that clean offices and public 

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buildings at dawn and in the evenings. These women have greater difficulty in obtaining the better-paid jobs in private homes or jobs as waitresses or shop attendants (taken up by Portuguese women or white, Brazilian or Eastern European immigrants). In the Portuguese sample, all the women except one are working full-time, nearly all in cleaning or catering services. Only one mother, eight months pregnant and with another child aged , has temporarily reduced her working schedule to part-time work (cleaning services in the morning, child in the care of a childminder). These are some general features of Cape Verdean immigrant families that had to be mentioned. Cape Verdean immigrants are also strongly contrasted with the local population groups from a racial point of view but they are less so in terms of religion or language. If we look more closely at the sample, however, it is also important to emphasize some internal differentiation from the point of view of the migration trajectory. Some interviewees are firstgeneration migrants and others are what we may call second-generation migrants: they came as young children with one or both parents and a few were born in the host country. This does not always mean that the social integration of second-generation families is very different. However, it sometimes implies a slightly higher educational level, a stronger family support network and having no plans to return to Cape Verde. In a few cases it also means acquiring some professional training and getting jobs with normal hours, outside the building/ cleaning sectors. Also, although the majority of families are worker migrant families, the sample has two cases of student migration and one case of what we might call employee migration (migration to Portugal, before decolonization, of an administrative employee, now a civil servant in a bank). Taking into account these differences, we were able to identify three main patterns of migration which influence families’ strategies for managing work and care for young children. Work/care strategies of first-generation unskilled worker immigrant families First-generation unskilled worker migration is related to a long-term migration project which emphasizes access to paid employment, to food and better living conditions and, savings permitting, the building of a new house in Cape Verde to which to return after retirement. Some immigrants arrived in the late s, at the time of “the great famine” in Cape Verde, others in the s or s. Networks usually helped to find work and/or temporary accommodation inside the slum. Usually the man came first and the woman and the children came later; but some years usually went by before enough money was saved to pay for the travel expenses of those left in the sending country. José and Domingas (aged  and , cohabiting couple, both illiterate) are a typical example of immigration in the late s. In Cape Verde, Domingas worked seasonally as a farm labourer, picking coconuts and cocoa, and later as a maid looking after small children. She started working when she was eight and never learnt to read and write. She went to live with José and his family when she was  and had her first child (one of five) aged  in Cape 

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Karin Wall and José São José Table  Work /care strategies of Cape Verdean immigrant families (Portugal) Work /care strategy

Managing work and care through extensive delegation: Extensive formal care Grandparental care Extensive formal care and older child care Paid childminder Paid childminder with some negotiation within the family Not managing work and care without child negligence: Formal care (day care/school, no extras) and older child care and self-care Formal extensive care and self-care Formal care (school, no extras) and self-care Total

Number of cases         

Verde. José emigrated soon after, was lodged by a relative in the slum, and started working in the building sector. A few years later, after “nailing together” a shack, he sent for his partner and child and, later, for his mother and brother. The wooden shack was gradually transformed into a brick house by José, but the family is still waiting for social rehousing. First-generation immigration in the s is not very different from this model. António, a bricklayer (earning $) had already been working in Portugal for a few years when he met Dulce in Cape Verde during his holidays. Like Domingas, Dulce (now aged , one year of schooling, cohabiting) also stayed in the sending country for a few years, had her first two children there and then joined her man. She arrived in  but left the two children with her mother in Cape Verde, so that she could work harder. António had left the slum area by then and rented a small council flat nearby, with one bedroom (and some dampness). This is where they still live today, with four children, including the two elder children, who came in , and the other two born in Lisbon. This means that the four children (now aged , ,  and ) share the bedroom. Dulce first got a job through Cape Verdean friends cleaning in a factory. As it was very hard work she moved to a cleaning services firm where she now works in two shifts (from  a.m. to  p.m. and from  to  p.m., earning $). It is difficult to manage work and care, but Dulce has always relied on her older son to look after the other children in the morning; at  a.m. he takes them to school and day care (private non-profit, $ for two children). During the day, this son is quite independent: for example, for several years now, he has been going home at lunchtime to cook his lunch. Dulce fetches the other children in the afternoon but then leaves them alone for a few hours as she leaves for work at  p.m. and her older son has school until . p.m. (formal care + older child care + child negligence; see table ). Dulce and António would like to go back to Cape Verde one day and they have already started building a house there. 

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The work/care strategies in this family highlight the main problems faced by first-generation migrants with young children. Incomes are low, housing conditions are bad, working hours are long and atypical, and formal care services, even though they are fairly cheap, do not cover the varied and long care needs of children. Low-cost extensive delegation, older child care and child negligence are therefore the main strategies used. If there is a grandmother who joined the family (an exceptional situation for first-generation migrants, only one case), then informal extensive delegation is a solution. However, in the absence of this solution, the gaps in care (early in the morning; when primary school ends; late afternoon; working overtime at weekends) will be managed with the means at hand: primary school children look after babies and learn how to cook, young adolescents look after several children, children stay on their own. In some families, such as Dulce’s family, the parents manage to cover almost all the care needs with the help of an older child. Even when the children are all younger, it is still the oldest child who, early on, will begin to take on childcare responsibilities. For example, Anita, Maria’s -year-old daughter, has school and after-school club during the day, but in the morning, between . and ., she takes care of her -year-old sister, gives her breakfast and dresses her (formal extensive care + child negligence; see table ). Maria works a cleaning shift from . to  a.m. and her partner works in the building sector and leaves for work at . a.m. Before Anita started going to school, the family used to pay a babysitter to be there in the morning and then take the two children to day care ($ per month, when day care already cost $ per child). As this was very expensive, they decided to “try” leaving Anita on her own with her sister in the early morning and on Saturday mornings when the parents work overtime. Anita does not like staying alone; she can’t sleep when the parents have left so she turns on the TV. Maria and her husband have brothers and sisters living in Lisbon but they all work long hours, so time to help care for children is not available. As another interviewee put it: “No one is available here, everyone has to work . . . So the Cape Verdeans, we cannot reconcile the education of young children with two homelands. Not me personally, I have managed, but I am a drop of water in the ocean. But the Cape Verdean immigrant loses her child at the age of ten and many lose them many years before. They really lose them. The children are used to being alone, they run around, they finish school and get home hours later, they don’t do their homework.” (Guida, school helper with normal working hours, , secondary educational level, arrived in Portugal aged  in ) Work/care strategies of lone-mother immigrant families When the first-generation migrant is a single mother, the pattern of social exclusion becomes more pronounced. Rosário, aged , is an example of this. Rosário was a -year-old child when she was left with an aunt in Cape Verde. Her parents separated and both emigrated abroad and remarried; since then, she has only seen her mother once, when she was aged . In 

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Cape Verde Rosário completed four years of primary schooling and then worked irregularly as a daily in restaurants and in private houses. She had her first child at the age of  but never lived with the father of her child. It was against this background that Rosário decided to emigrate in , hoping to improve her life and earn more money. She came on her own, leaving her -year-old daughter with her aunt, and with no relatives in Portugal who might help her. However, she had contacts to find work and went to be a maid in a private house in return for lodgings and food. After six months she went to work in another private home, but this time for a salary. Some time later she met a new partner, and had a second child. The couple lived with his parents first and then got a small rented flat of their own. However, after two years they separated and Rosário could not afford to go on paying for the flat. She was taken in for three months by a friend from work (also a lone parent) and then rented a room in another immigrant’s house in the slum area. Rosário is so ashamed of her room in the slum that she has not told her work colleagues where she lives. Currently she works in a cleaning services company from  a.m. to  p.m. and earns $. With this salary and a small amount of family benefit, she has to pay her rent ($), a local childminder for her daughter ($), bus tickets, food and clothes, and try to send some money to her daughter in Cape Verde. Most of the time she cannot make ends meet and runs out of money for food. She does not receive any assistance from her former partner and she has not seen her older daughter, now aged , for six years. Another of her worries is the fact that the childminder is unreliable and sometimes leaves the small children alone with an -year-old daughter. Rosário feels that she has been living in hell since her separation. Work/care strategies of second-generation worker immigrant families Second-generation worker families and those who came as very young children were often brought up in the type of care situations that we have just described. They lived in shacks, income was low, care responsibilities and household tasks were distributed between the parents and the older children, and pressure to start working, in order to boost family income, was strong. Their individual and family/work trajectories, nevertheless, are not always the same. Some never finished compulsory schooling (that was six years until the late s, nine years since then), started working when they were  or  and had children very early on. A few started working but managed to work and go to school at the same time, others went back to school and occupational training later on. Family support is another important factor in the work/life strategies of these second-generation families. Lone parents, and some couples with children, will often have support from close family members (parents or just a mother, brothers and sisters). Adolescent single mothers, if they do not leave home to cohabit with their partner, will stay on in an extended family household, where brothers and sisters and a grandmother will be available to help care for young children. This does not mean that child negligence does not 

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occur (one case, a primary school child who does not have an after-school club at the school in the new suburb where the family lives). But work/care strategies in second-generation families are more systematically associated with grandparental support and with paid extensive delegation that covers the needs for childcare, mainly due to parents’ more social working hours. If we look at the work/care strategies of some second-generation families, we find the following typical situations. (a) Grandparental care. Albina was born in Portugal (her father arrived in the late s, her mother some years later) and only has  years’ primary school education. She is  years old, lives with her partner who is , and has two daughters, one aged  and the other  (born when Albina was  and still living at home). Like their parents before them, Albina works in the cleaning sector (she’s a daily, from  a.m. to  p.m., Monday to Friday) and her husband works in the building sector (Monday to Saturday). Her mother cares for the youngest child during the day and gives support in other situations, as she is retired and living in the same building. The older daughter goes to school on her own but has lunch with grandmother (who also “keeps an eye on her” after school). The family used to live in the slum area but was moved to two low-rent flats in a social rehousing quarter. Another typical situation of grandparental care is linked to cases of single adolescent lone mothers who go on living at home. Francisca ( years old) is the daughter of a separated lone mother with four children and is herself a single lone mother with a baby of  months. She found schoolwork difficult, failed repeatedly and only completed the sixth grade. She began cleaning as a young adolescent and has had a work contract in cleaning services for two years now, earning $ ( is now the legal age for working). She works from  a.m. to  p.m. during the week and from  a.m. to  p.m. on Saturdays. Her mother (at home, with health problems) cares for the baby and another grandson ( years old)—the son of Francisca’s sister () who is also a single mother living at home and working in the same firm as her sister. Francisca rarely sees her former boyfriend and she is disappointed that he never comes to see their baby. Francisca has a dream: she would like to emigrate to Luxembourg. ( b) Extensive formal care. Dalila’s parents arrived in the s, at the time of the great famine in Cape Verde. Dalila is  and works as a media library coordinator in an activity centre for young people ( a.m. to  p.m., earning $). She started working in cleaning services when she was  to help her parents ( children). However, as she was a good student, she decided to go to school in the evening and managed to complete secondary school. She had a first partnership that only lasted a few months but has lived for six years with her present partner (aged , metal-worker, a first-generation migrant who has four other children in Cape Verde). The couple lives with the eldest stepdaughter, aged , who arrived a short time ago to work in Portugal. Dalila’s -year-old son is in day care (private non-profit, open from . a.m. to . p.m., $ per month) and it is Dalila who takes him and 

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fetches him. Her parents live near her workplace and cared for the child until he was a year old; however, as her mother has health problems, Dalila decided to put the child in day care fairly early on. (c) Paid childminder (with some negotiation inside the family). Jamila () and Dajaré () are a cohabiting couple with a six-month-old baby. They both arrived in Portugal as young children. Jamila was the eldest of four boys so he left school at  and started working; a year later he went back to school at night and while working still managed to finish basic schooling (nine years). He was employed in the army for four years and then trained as an “activities coordinator”; at present he is under instruction on another training course on educational intervention ( a.m. to  p.m.) and will start working again in a few months. Dajaré (secondary school complete) has a more complicated timetable with two alternating shifts ( a.m. to  p.m. for two days, from  p.m. till midnight next two days, weekends included) in a McDonald’s food chain restaurant; she has quite a responsible position and earns $. Both Jamila and Dajaré have parents who could look after the baby but they live far away. Their son is cared for by a childminder during the week ($) and by Jamila in the evening and at weekends when Dajaré is working. He had no sisters so as a child he learnt how to do household work and care for his younger brothers. Work/care strategies of student immigrant families A last profile is associated with student migration (as well as a case of “employee migration” where the immigrant family managed to send the second generation to university). The work/family life of these migrants contrasts sharply with the patterns of vulnerability we have examined so far. Independent motherhood is still strongly emphasized but the difficulties of atypical working hours and very low salaries no longer influence the work/ care strategies. Dores is a good example. She came to Portugal with a scholarship to go to university. She got pregnant two years later, had her child as a single mother, started working part-time giving private lessons and managed to finish her degree. She had a second child from another partner  years later. At the time of the interview she was living with her two children and working full-time selling advertising space (earning $,; she also gets maintenance from the father of her eldest child, a medical student she met at university). The youngest child goes to a private not-for-profit primary school ( a.m. to  p.m., $); he is taken by his mother in the morning and usually fetched by his sister in the evening (extensive varied care; see table ). Dores has no close family members to give her support and experiences some social isolation. In summary, Cape Verdean immigrant families portray specific patterns of vulnerability which influence work/care strategies. Unskilled worker migration, associated in this case with strong ethnic contrasts (racial and familial) and social exclusion (segregation in terms of housing and the labour market), shapes work/life patterns in which parents work full-time with difficult schedules and low salaries. Extensive delegation, both formal (low-cost, 

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private non-profit) and informal, is the main care solution but it does not always cover all the care needs; in other cases, its cost is too high and leads to situations of extreme poverty. To deal with care gaps, families rely on older child care when this is possible but they also ask young children below age  to stay alone or to look after a younger child. These strategies reproduce work/life patterns from previous, rural or migratory, contexts or experiences and as such they are recognized as “normal” solutions, which does not mean that families do not feel constrained and concerned. Families also complain about social isolation, especially first-generation ones. Family support for childcare rarely exists in first-generation families and, while immigrant networks are important for finding work or lending an occasional helping hand (with house repairs, for example), time for regular care is a rare resource in all families and social networks cannot deal with this need. Finally, family life, more centred in Cape Verdean families on lone motherhood, is another factor that intensifies the pattern of vulnerability. Women in unskilled jobs tend to earn less than men do but they often have atypical working hours or shift work. Unskilled first-generation lone-mother families thus emerge as the most vulnerable type of immigrant family: they are not entitled to any special benefit,6 they rarely receive maintenance from the fathers,7 family networks are absent and they work in low-paid jobs with long working hours.

Immigrant Families in Italy General characteristics of Moroccan immigrant families The sample of  Moroccan families with young children was collected in three different regions of Italy: Veneto, Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany. Like the Cape Verdean immigrants, they came to the host country looking for work and better living conditions (labour migration) and their jobs are generally low-skilled and low-paid in the industrial and service sectors. Nevertheless, there are some important differences. First, Moroccan immigration is more recent, with most interviewees arriving in the late s and during the s (first-generation8). Moroccan immigrants, both women and men, also have higher educational qualifications than the Cape Verdeans and more geographical mobility. Many migrated to other European countries before coming to Italy while others moved from one region of Italy to another in search of better work and living conditions. Although this does not alter the basic characteristics of integration in the host society (such as housing problems, illegal status during the first years of migration, jobs with long or atypical working hours), it makes for a more varied integration in the labour market: some self-employment, factory work (sometimes skilled) as well as jobs in the catering and cleaning services, the latter both in private houses and institutions. It also leads to less residential segregation. Some families live in small urban “ghettos” but others are dispersed and living in different urban or rural areas where they may receive quite a lot of support from local services and Italian families. Another important difference is related to the family dynamics of Moroccan migrants. In contrast to the Cape Verdean families, family life is organized 

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around marriage and the married couple with children ( families in the sample and only  divorced/separated mothers), and there are no cohabiting couples or single lone mothers.9 On the other hand, religious and family norms underline women’s domestic roles, their dependence on the male breadwinner, and the religious precept that a woman “should be at home”. Cultural pressure for stay-at-home mothers is therefore quite strong, and this is reflected in different ways in the interviews: there are references to husbands who do not or did not allow their wives to work, there are words that underline the mother’s unique care and educational roles, and there are male interviewees who refer to their wives as “housewives” even when they work part-time. However, counter-pressures are also strong: the wife’s participation in the labour market is regarded as essential for family income and the migration project, and the example of working women, not only in the host society but also in urban Morocco, is often referred to as a positive tendency. Overall, then, we can say that the attitudes to gender roles are undergoing important changes and often emphasize a more flexible interpretation of traditional norms. As one interviewee put it: “It’s difficult to follow the rules of religion, for example that I should never leave my house . . . Everybody has to work, we need a lot of money to live on.” (Nadia, , secondary schooling, domestic employee working full-time, five years in receiving country, practising Muslim) In short, the Moroccan families with young children feature some significant cultural contrasts (religious, linguistic) in relation to the population of the host society but they seem to be slightly more integrated socially than the Cape Verdean immigrant families: segregation in the housing and labour markets is less pronounced, racial contrasts are less strong, higher educational qualifications do not give access to qualified jobs but they facilitate language acquisition, helping children with schoolwork and dealing with institutions in the host society. Finally, family life centred on marriage and the couple makes it easier to avoid the severe forms of vulnerability associated with lone motherhood in the Cape Verdean families. Work/care strategies of Moroccan immigrant families If we now examine the work/life balance of the Moroccan worker migrant families and try to understand how it is shaped by this specific pattern of ethnicity, we find that families’ work/care strategies are both similar and different to those of the Cape Verdean worker migrant families. As nearly all the families are first-generation labour migrant families, we shall analyse the families as a whole and refer to the few families that do not fall into this migration pattern at the end (there is only one second-generation family and there are two cases of what we might label “lone women’s self-assertive” migration pattern; see note , below). Moroccan families manage work and care for young children through two main types of work/care strategies: mother-centredness and extensive delegation (see table ). The women who rely on a mother-centred strategy work 

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Managing Work and Care Table  Work /care strategies of Moroccan immigrant families (Italy) Work /care strategy Managing work and care through mother-centredness: Mother-centred care Managing work and care through extensive delegation: Grandparental care Extensive formal care Extensive varied care (formal + informal low-cost) Managing work and care through superposition of care upon work: Formal care (no extras) and workplace Managing work and care through negotiation within the family: Shared parental care Not managing work and care without child negligence: Formal care (school, no extras) and self-care Total

Number of cases        

part-time in the catering, caring or cleaning services, nearly always in private homes where they can negotiate short or irregular working hours which fit in with their children’s nursery and primary school timetables.10 Safir is a typical example. She is , married and has two children, one aged three and the other seven. As in most couples, her husband immigrated first, in , and worked in Turin before settling in Tuscany. He is a waiter in a pizzeria and has a complicated timetable with a morning and a night shift ( a.m. to  p.m.,  p.m. to  midnight, including weekends). He married Safir (his first cousin, living in Morocco) in  and she joined him a year later with the eldest daughter. Safir stayed at home for several years caring for the two children. However, now she works in a private home caring for an elderly lady: from  a.m. to  midday every morning and two afternoons a week when her eldest daughter has classes until  p.m. (state primary school, small fee for canteen service at lunchtime). The younger child stays in the crèche from  a.m. to  p.m. (no fee, due to the family’s low income11). Safir is pleased to be working, not only because she earns some money and gets on well with the family she works for but also because she felt very lonely and had difficulties learning Italian during the years she stayed at home (she learned by watching TV). The family’s main problem now is housing. They have moved several times but their house is small (two rooms) and damp; they have applied for a council house but have been told that this will be difficult to obtain. Safir has a compulsory school educational level and her husband completed secondary school; they have no other family members living in Italy and very few personal friends. Part-time work thus emerges as a solution that allows women to earn some money without delegating care and household responsibilities extensively. Some women see it as the only possible option for adjusting work and care responsibilities: 

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“A woman should do these small jobs here, maybe because, how shall I put it, she’s forced to do it, what can you do when there are children—you can’t abandon your child from  in the morning until  at night, can you? So the mamma just does little part-time jobs.” (Chakiry, , eight years in Italy, two children, working part-time) For those who stayed at home for several years when they arrived in Italy, it is also important to be able to break the social isolation they felt: “There was nobody to lend me a hand, nobody ringing at the door, nobody, nobody, it really hurt, hurt, I can’t tell you. And so now, with the children bigger and the nursery, I go to work.” (Sumia, , secondary education, six years in Italy, two children aged  and ; working in cleaning services since last year; would like to work full-time in a factory) Combining part-time work and care for young children is not always an easy solution to build up. Many women only manage to find work in the mornings and some have to wait a long time before finding such a job. One mother with higher qualifications (secondary school and a diploma in cultural mediation, given by a local training agency) would like to work every morning as her -year-old daughter goes to nursery school but she has only found a few hours of work per week. Lastly, in some cases, the part-time work that is available only coincides partially with the normal opening hours of formal care services. In these cases, if the mother wants to work, a mothercentred strategy is no longer possible. This is Rashida’s problem ( years old, five years in Italy). She does two mornings of cleaning in a private house and she cleans in the evening, from . to . p.m., for a cooperative of cleaning services to which she belongs (earning $ per month). Her -year-old daughter is in a nursery from  a.m. to  p.m., so in the evenings Rashida has to take the child to her workplace (superposition of work on care; see table ). Occasionally, when her husband (a factory furnace worker, working three different shifts that change every week) is on a morning shift ( a.m. to  p.m.), she will leave the child at home. Rashida would like to have a different job but, in spite of her vocational computer diploma, this is what she has been able to find: “I would like to find a stable job as a domestic help. But the Italians do not trust foreigners so it is not easy to find . . . luckily I can take my daughter to work.” (Rashida,  years old, five years in Italy, a daughter aged , married to a factory worker) She would be ashamed to do this type of work in Morocco but working is important to her—she worked in Morocco as a single woman before migrating and in Italy only stayed at home when she was unable to place her daughter in a public crèche. Saida (aged , six years in Italy, one daughter aged ) has a similar problem to Rashida. She also has a part-time job with atypical hours working in a restaurant, in the evening from . to . p.m. and in the morning 

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during the weekend. However, as her husband has a daytime job (from . a.m. to  p.m., in a furniture factory), Saida has been able to negotiate a shared parental arrangement (see table ), with the father taking care of the child while she is at work. Saida would prefer to find a job in the morning, when her daughter is at the crèche (to be with other children), but this is the only work she has found and she insists that she does not want to be at home all the time. Saida has vocational training as a secretary and took an Italian language course for immigrants when she arrived. Extensive delegation, on the contrary, is a strategy that is linked to fulltime work for mothers. Some of the women have fairly standard full-time jobs. For example, cleaning in private homes seven hours per day. But most have long or atypical working schedules in the catering or industrial sectors. In either case, however, due to the rigid and relatively early closing hours of public nurseries and schools in Italy, families usually have to rely on informal low-cost care after nursery or school hours. Only two mothers (see Nadia, above) have access to low-cost nurseries that are open from  a.m. until . p.m., thus enabling them to work full-time and fetch their children after work (extensive formal care; see table ). The others have to rely on extra informal care to supplement formal care services. Grandparental care is a strategy used by first-generation families who managed to bring over a close relative to help with household tasks or care of a baby. Grandmothers (sometimes grandfathers as well) will stay on in an extended family household and take on care responsibilities as well as many domestic tasks. Amina’s family is a typical example. Amina (aged ) was a low-paid factory worker in Casablanca when she decided to immigrate in the late s. She met her husband in  in southern Italy and they later moved to the Veneto region. Her mother (aged ) carries out most of the household tasks and cares for the -year-old baby at home as well as her other grandchildren, aged  and , after school finishes. Amina has a tailoring job in a clothes factory. She works  hours a week ( a.m. to  midday and  to  p.m.) and earns $. Her mother has been living with them since ; in the summer she goes back to Morocco for three months and takes the grandchildren with her. If grandparental care is not available, it is difficult to obtain other informal unpaid support. Like the Cape Verdean immigrants, Moroccan interviewees say that social networks in the Moroccan community are important but that they do not compensate for the lack of close kin networks which provide help with childcare in the sending country. Although some families get occasional support from Moroccan women who do not work, on a day-to-day basis families feel they have to manage on their own: “Everybody avoids asking for help to take care of children except in exceptional situations and for short periods of time.” (Koudar, , nine years in Italy, part-time work from  a.m. to  p.m. caring for an elderly person, two children aged  and ) Dual-earner couples where both work full-time thus have to make do with other informal resources at hand (extensive varied care; see table ). For 

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example, in one family there is a paid childminder to look after a -year-old between  and  p.m. (the couple have a shop); in another there is an older (-year-old) child who fetches his -year-old sister from school (both parents work in a factory). Young children also get sent back to Morocco, for the holidays or for longer periods when they are not yet in primary school. Considering the difficulties that these dual-earner families have in order to organize work and care for young children, it is not surprising to find some problems of child negligence.12 In the Moroccan families it emerges in a couple with a -year-old child where both have somewhat atypical working hours. Hadou (, nine years in Italy, secondary education) does cleaning in a hotel from . a.m. to . p.m. during the week and either on Saturday or Sunday mornings, while Said (, eleven years in Italy, diploma in literature) works alternate shifts in a factory during the week and on Saturday mornings. Their son sometimes stays alone for a few hours after school and on Saturdays and he also stays alone in the holidays when there is no school. This is the situation which worries Hadou most as they have no relatives, friends or neighbours to help provide care during the holidays; she thinks there should be more free after-school and holiday clubs to help working couples with young children. Lastly, it is important to mention that the only second-generation family relies, quite typically, on grandparental support to help provide care for a -year-old child before and after nursery opening hours. Mounia (, vocational training) is a worker ( a.m. to  p.m., $) and her husband works in a bakery ( midnight to  a.m., $,). Mounia’s parents and sisters live nearby so her mother fetches the child in the morning and takes her to nursery school at  a.m., a sister fetches her back again at  p.m. and leaves her with grandmother until Mounia arrives from work. Mounia would prefer not to work but states that she works to boost family income and to be independent: her husband left her once for months, so it is important for her to know that she can cope on her own. Although Mounia does not wear a veil, she is a practising Muslim and regrets the fact that Muslim workers are not allowed to pray during the stated hours. Concerning the few lone-parent families in this sample, they do not reveal the pattern of extreme vulnerability we described in some other countries for lone-parent labour migrants. This is mainly due to the fact that they are not typical worker migrants (even if integration and legalization are not always easy for them) and have more resources: some professional qualifications, reasonable income and a few good contacts in the host society (with social services or Italian friends). Malica, a secondary school teacher, came to Italy to get away from a complicated relationship and Sara because she wanted to live with her Moroccan boyfriend. In Morocco, Sara was a bookkeeper in an accountant’s office and when she arrived in Italy, she worked illegally in restaurants. When she eventually got her stay permit three years later she worked for a year in a factory with difficult working hours. However, after her child’s birth, she managed to get a job in a printing workshop through an Italian friend ( a.m. to . p.m., $). The couple separated a few months after the birth of the child. Sara was able to find a place for the child in a crèche which is open until . p.m. all year round ($ per month); 

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she can also rely occasionally on a sister who is a housewife and lives  km away as well as on a friend who lives nearby. Factors affecting work/care strategies of Moroccan immigrant families In summary, work/care strategies in the Moroccan immigrant families are affected by several factors. Like the worker migrant families in other countries, they have to deal with the absence of close kin, with the long and often atypical working hours of unskilled jobs in the industrial and service sector, as well as with the rather rigid and difficult opening and closing hours of crèches, nurseries and primary schools. Unlike the Cape Verdean families, they also have to take into account the Islamic norms which underline a male breadwinner model. In an effort to adapt to this context and to compromise with the economic demands of migration as well as the norms regarding gender roles, some women look for part-time work and develop mother-centred work/care strategies. Subjectively and objectively this accommodates different demands and constraints and allows women to “leave the house” without seeming to leave it for very long. In other families, however, the family’s wish to improve its living conditions, women’s previous work experiences and the fact that they are living in Italy (i.e. in a migratory context where both members of the couple contribute to the success of the migration project, and far from the sending society where the traditional norms were learned) seem to encourage work/care strategies in which both parents work fulltime and delegate the care of young children to formal and informal carers. Strategies based on extensive delegation are difficult to organize and can often only be set up if formal services, which close early in Italy, are complemented by extra informal solutions such as older child care, a childminder or grandparental support. When these are not available, families may take children to work, send them back to the sending country temporarily or leave them alone at home. In overall terms, especially when compared to the Cape Verdean families, Moroccan worker families seem to be more vulnerable to problems related to women’s isolation and lack of autonomy but less exposed to situations of child negligence. This may be partially explained by the nuclear structure of the Moroccan immigrant family, which usually ensures a male breadwinner and women’s part-time work. But it must also be seen in the context of Cape Verdeans’ strong social and educational deprivation. For example, Moroccan women have some access to reasonably paid part-time work in private homes as well as more skilled work in factories, whereas Cape Verdean women are more concentrated in full-time cleaning services with atypical hours and very low salaries. Extreme poverty during childhood in the sending or in the host country is also more pronounced in the Cape Verdean families. School dropout and early entry into the labour market make it difficult to avoid negative repercussions for the next generation. Compulsory schooling is accomplished with difficulty and educational mobility, based on secondary school or higher professional or educational qualifications, is hardly considered. This reflects on care and educational strategies, with Moroccan women being openly more conscious of the importance of trying to follow up children’s schoolwork 

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(even if they have difficulties with Italian) as well as ensuring the children’s participation in different multicultural activities. In short, when we compare first-generation Cape Verdean and Moroccan immigrant families, we find some common patterns of vulnerability. But we also find many specific characteristics, linked to family, educational and cultural differences that make for some specificity within this general pattern of labour migration.

Conclusion Patterns of vulnerability and work/care strategies vary greatly according to the migration pattern of the immigrant families. Highly qualified professional migrant families are subject to pressure in terms of long working hours and careers but they seem to be the least vulnerable in terms of childcare. They are usually dual career families that rely on extensive paid delegation which may take the form of care services of the receiving country or facilities provided for foreign children near their workplace (usually private and highcost), sometimes supplemented by paid informal care. Unskilled worker migrant families seem to be at the opposite end of the scale. Pressures to work (migration project, low income) and pressures from work—such as atypical or long hours and pressure not to miss work—are the main constraints on family/work life and care strategies for children. Given the income from their jobs, these families must avail themselves of low-cost formal care arrangements with long hours of care, either public or third-sector care facilities or informal care. Although most labour migrant communities have important social networks which provide support in some situations, interviews show that these informal networks fail to provide support for childcare. This is because time is a rare resource in all labour migrant families and because very close kin, the main provider of childcare in families (Coenen-Huther et al. ; Wall et al. ), is usually absent or unavailable. As a result, work/care strategies often have to rely on a mixture of individual solutions at hand, such as workplace care, formal care supplemented by older child care or low-cost childminders, and leaving children alone, usually before and after school hours or on Saturdays when parents are working. Across the four receiving countries and the different countries of origin, the work/care strategies reveal that these difficulties in managing work and care emerge in all the countries where labour migrant families were interviewed. The findings also show that national family policies and the characteristics of the national immigrant groups may vary considerably and lead to a different emphasis being placed on mother-centred care, on formal extensive delegation, on negotiation inside the family or on leaving children alone. This complexity must be remembered and taken into account (see, for example, the contrasts between Moroccan and Cape Verdean families’ work/ care strategies). Nevertheless, our main finding is that the overall general trend, in unskilled worker migrant families, is for the latter to be largely excluded from the usual “reconciliation care model” in which normal working hours, formal care services and the family (close kin) offer a balanced interweaving of formal and informal childcare. In fact, this reconciliation care model is 

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strongly cross-cut by patterns of class and racial/ethnic status. Due to lack of close kin, occupational segregation and the characteristics of their jobs, labour migrant families have an unequal access to non-parental childcare. These families belong to working sectors that are insufficiently protected by the welfare state (see Presser ). Mixed marriage migration, student migration and asylum-seeker migration present patterns of vulnerability that are less striking in comparison with the labour migrant families. Mixed-marriage migration is related to a specific gender contract in which a foreign wife comes to live and build a family in her husband’s country of origin. Mother-centred care prevails and is often linked to problems of isolation as well as difficulties of integration in the labour market when the stay-at-home mother decides to work after raising young children at home for several years. Student migration of single persons, usually followed by inter-ethnic marriage and permanent settling in the receiving country, is, by contrast, more strongly associated with a family division of paid work based on the dualearner model (both full-time) and a work/life balance emphasizing formal extensive delegation of care. Finally, it was observed that asylum-seeker migration in France presents patterns of vulnerability, especially during the first years after arrival, that are often similar to those of worker migrant families. However, asylum seekers receive considerable support in the receiving country in terms of social housing, social benefits and training courses. These measures act as a buffer so that, in comparison with the worker migrant families, these families will more easily achieve a stable work/life pattern in the receiving society. Higher qualifications, where they exist, are also important, as they allow for more resources in establishing contacts and searching for alternatives. Two final comments are important to summarize some of the issues raised by this exploratory study on immigrant families’ work/care strategies. The first relates to the factors affecting immigrant families’ work/care strategies. The composition and size of the samples in each country make it impossible to carry out a country-based comparison but they allow us to pinpoint some of the main factors. We have already seen that work/care strategies are strongly influenced by the migration patterns of families. However, within the different types of immigration, some other factors have an impact and introduce some diversification. It is important to mention at least five. Family structure (couples versus lone parents) is an important variable but only in the more vulnerable types of immigration such as first-generation unskilled worker and asylum-seeker migration: it is here that lone parents with young children are more exposed to social exclusion and to child negligence. Work and educational trajectories, before and after immigration, also have an impact. For example, many of the more recent worker migrants from Africa have higher educational qualifications (secondary schooling or vocational training) than the former generation of African labour migrants in Europe: this makes for some changes in attitudes to gender roles (and women’s work in particular), more flexibility and geographical mobility in the search for jobs and housing and therefore less residential segregation. From the point 

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of view of work/care strategies, this seems to be encouraging work/family patterns more centred on women’s full-time work and extensive delegation. A third factor is related to the patterns of ethnicity. Strong racial and cultural contrasts, especially in the context of illegal and worker migration, seem to reinforce residential as well as occupational segregation. When this strong ethnicity is associated with specific family forms, as in the Cape Verdean immigrant families, difficulties in managing work and care for children increase. A fourth factor concerns the absence or presence of close kin networks. Findings show that when they exist, either in first-generation families who have managed to bring the grandparents into the host country or in secondgeneration families, grandparental care and support is an important option to help families in their care responsibilities. Last, the problem of gender. Not surprisingly, since it is at the core of the organization of work/life patterns in families, gender inequality emerged as an important factor in shaping work/care strategies. In one type of immigration, which we labelled mixed-marriage migration, gender inequality is the most significant determining factor of work/care strategies: women who migrated through marriage are likely to adopt a male breadwinner pattern and to manage work and care through mother-centredness. Also in the Moroccan immigrant families, a community where culture and religion emphasize women’s domestic and caring roles, gender inequality in family roles emerges as an important factor. It encourages some preference for mother-centredness as a work/care strategy but it is not the only influence at work: previous work experiences, negative feelings of isolation at home due to lack of primary networks, as well as the family’s migration project to improve housing and living conditions—all these other factors appear to exert pressure in a different direction and to be encouraging work/family patterns based on women’s work outside the home. Finally, it is important to note that gender inequality in the labour market is also an important factor in work/care strategy formation. Labour migrant women working full-time are concentrated in low-paid jobs like the men, but they tend to receive lower salaries. For example, Cape Verdean women in cleaning services earn the national minimum wage whereas the unskilled male workers in the building sector earn well above the minimum wage. Apart from other effects, the main problem from the point of view of work/ care strategies is that labour migrant lone mothers in low-paid jobs have extremely low resources. This makes it difficult for them to buy even low-cost care services and it often leads to work/care strategies based on workplace care, unreliable informal care or leaving children on their own (self-care). The second comment relates to some policy implications of these findings. First, it is important to underline the need to take into account the diversity of immigrant families. Within this broad category, there are many different worlds: different migration projects and trajectories, diverse family patterns and work/life strategies, variable resources to cope with the difficulties of managing work and care. However, if we focus on the most vulnerable immigrant families—unskilled worker migrant families as well as lone parents within this category—findings seem to point to the still weak regulatory 

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function of the different welfare states in the protection of these families who have low-paid, often atypical, jobs and care responsibilities for young children. In terms of childcare, it is important to analyse the type of facilities provided by public or publicly subsidized childcare and schools. These are often inflexible, have gaps in their opening hours or close early, even in countries such as France and Finland where formal childcare has been a dominant care arrangement for several decades. Labour migrant families usually need low-cost as well as responsive care services which take into account their income as well as their family-unfriendly working hours. Another policy implication is related to the problem of close kin networks. Although the social networks of economic migrant communities cannot respond to families’ childcare needs, a few families are able to bring close kin to help care for young children. Interviews show that this latter solution is not always easy to implement and it will therefore probably depend strongly in the future on family reunification policies that facilitate the entry of close relatives in ascending line. Finally, another major challenge in terms of social policy lies in gender inequalities in terms of care pressure inside the family and in terms of the labour market. Gender inequality in migrant families with low-paid jobs is not easy to tackle. It involves looking at women’s training and educational opportunities, their access to the labour market (and to legalized work) when they arrive in the receiving society, the wages and working hours in the employment sectors in which they work as well as the support mechanisms with regard to childcare. Furthermore, attention needs to be focused on policy development with regard to working lone mothers, in particular in countries like Portugal and Italy, where lone parents do not receive extra attention and support.

Notes . Migration patterns may be described and identified on the basis of some of the following dimensions: meanings of/reasons for migration, migration trajectory, migration project, duration of stay or generation (first/second) in the receiving country, position in the social structure of the host society. . A longer version of this paper, including an analysis of all five countries, may be found at: http://www.ics.ul.pt/publicacoes/workingpapers/index.htm. . The sample also includes a few families where the mother is in training or studying for a PhD. . Analysis was carried out on the basis of  fully transcribed interviews (including some Finnish interviews translated into English), synopses of all interviews and four national reports (Martin et al. ; Trifiletti et al. ; Wall et al. ; Zechner ). For references on immigration, specific migrant communities and social care in each country, see these national reports. . Self-care in this paper thus refers to situations where young children aged  or below age  are left on their own for certain periods of time. . In Portugal, lone parents have some extra tax reductions but no special allowances. This means that lone parents are expected to work and have a high rate of employment (in , some  per cent of lone mothers were in employment). . By law all parents in Portugal have to provide maintenance for their children (this is independent of parental responsibility). However, the establishment of



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. .

.

. .

maintenance payments will only have to be decided in court if the parents were married and then divorced. In cases of cohabitation or lone parenthood, this only happens if one of them takes the matter to court (a step which, in the families interviewed, was only taken by a highly qualified lone mother, see “Dores” above). There is only one second-generation family: the interviewee was  when she arrived with her mother in the s to join the father of the family. The two lone parents in the sample are women who separated from their husbands in the receiving country and we may consider them as atypical in terms of their migration and life-course patterns. One lone mother was a middle-class secondary teacher in Morocco; she decided to immigrate in order to avoid a difficult relationship she had initiated and came looking for a fresh start in life. She married a Moroccan travelling salesman, had two children and separated some years later. The other lone mother immigrated to meet up and live with her Moroccan fiancé, without her family knowing. Both these lone mothers were qualified professionals in the sending society and they seem to represent a different kind of migration pattern, more centred on the migration of qualified young women who want to assert their independence and their own way of living. However, as we only have two cases, it is difficult to identify and propose a clear-cut migration pattern. Nurseries usually close at  p.m., and primary schools at lunchtime two days a week and at  p.m. on the other days. However, there are also some variations. For example, in the Emilia-Romagna region, some women have access to nurseries that stay open until . p.m. He earns $ and she earns $. Safir’s salary is not declared so social services only take her husband’s wage into account. In the Italian interviews, it was not always possible for the interviewers to check all the gaps in the care arrangements. For example, we do not always know exactly what happens when primary schoolchildren have their two free afternoons or in situations where both members of the couple work on Saturday morning. We therefore think it is likely that the problem of after-school care for young children arises more frequently than would appear from the work/care strategies described in table .

References Castles, S. and Miller, M. J. (), The Age of Migration—International Population Movements in the Modern World, nd edn, London: Macmillan. Coenen-Huther, J., Kellerhals, J., and von Allmen, M. (), Les réseaux de solidarité dans la famille, Lausanne: Réalités Sociales. Crompton, R. (ed.) (), Restructuring Gender Relations and Employment, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Daly, M. and Lewis, J. (), Introduction: conceptualising social care in the context of welfare state restructuring. In J. Lewis (ed.), Gender, Social Care and Welfare State Restructuring in Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. –. Drew, E., Emerek, R. and Mahon, E. (eds) (), Women, Work and Family in Europe, London: Routledge. Dulk, L. den, Doorne-Huiskes, A. van, and Schippers, J. (eds) (), Work-Family Arrangements in Europe, Amsterdam: Thela Thesis. Garey, A. (), Weaving Work and Motherhood, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Hantrais, L. (), Managing Professional and Family Life: A Comparative Study of British and French Women, Aldershot: Dartmouth. King, R. (ed.) (), Mass Migration in Europe: The Legacy and the Future, London: Belhaven Press.

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Managing Work and Care Mahon, R. (), Child care: toward what kind of “Social Europe”? Social Politics, , : –. Martin, C., Debroise, A., and Le Bihan, B. (), Care Arrangements in Immigrant Families. National Report: France, SOCCARE Project Report .. Accessed  July . Available at: http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/sospol/soccare/reports.htm. Pires, R. P. (), Imigração. In F. Bethencourt and K. Chaudhuri (eds), História da Expansão Portuguesa, vol. , Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores, pp. –. Presser, H. B. (), Shift work and child care among dual-earner American parents, Journal of Marriage and the Family, , : –. Salt, J. (), Current Trends in International Migration in Europe, Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Trifiletti, R., Pratesi, A., and Simoni, S. (), Care Arrangements in Immigrant Families. National Report: Italy, SOCCARE Project Report .. Accessed  July . Available at: http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/sospol/soccare/reports.htm. Wall, K., Aboim, S., Cunha, V. and Vasconcelos, P. (), Families and support networks in Portugal: the reproduction of inequality, Journal of European Social Policy, , : –. Wall, K., São José, J. and Correia, S. (), Care Arrangements in Immigrant Families. National Report: Portugal, SOCCARE Project Report .. Accessed  July . Available at: http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/sospol/soccare/reports.htm. Wall, K. and São José, J. (), Immigrant Families, Work and Social Care, SOCCARE Project Report . Accessed  July . Available at: http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/ sospol/soccare/reports.htm. Zechner, M. (), Care Arrangements in Immigrant Families. National Report: Finland, SOCCARE Project Report .. Accessed  July . Available at: http://www.uta.fi/ laitokset/sospol/soccare/reports.htm.

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Title O riginal Article December  Blackwell Oxford, SPOL © - Social Blackwell Policy UK Publishing,  Publishing & Administration Ltd. 

4 Combining Work and Family in Two Welfare State Contexts: A Discourse Analytical Perspective Katja Repo

Introduction One of the most significant changes advanced industrial societies faced during the latter part of the twentieth century was the shift from single-earner to dual-earner families. In Europe, this was mainly due to the growth of female employment, especially that of women with small children (Brannen ; Blossfeld and Drobnic ). As a result, today more than half of families with children in Britain and Finland live in a situation where both parents are involved in allocating time between paid work and family responsibilities (Sauli ; ONS ). Moen () has noted that the full-time work of both parents often means a lack of time for the family as well as for the individuals themselves. The interplay between work and family can also cause stress, strain and overload for both parents. However, in dual-career families, it is often the mothers who struggle the most to find time and energy for both family and work (Hochschild and Machung ; Morris ). All this implies that the parents in dual-earner families are often preoccupied with dividing time between two different areas of life and with solving many practical questions, such as how to organize the care of their children while at work, or how to share care responsibilities between the parents. In doing this, the practices the families rely on have both an institutional and a cultural framework. For example, the availability of formal childcare services and informal care, and the nature of work, as well as family and motherhood ideologies— these all create both opportunities and constraints. These opportunities and constraints influence the choices parents make. As Hantrais and Letablier () emphasize, individual strategies for matching paid and unpaid work and women’s ability to cope with different responsibilities vary according to cultural contexts and political climate. Besides this, it is evident that working parents also reason the choices they make, negotiate solutions, and evaluate situations and resources. By doing this, the parents participate in constructing the social world they live in. In other words, the way they perceive and interpret

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the social world can be seen to be socially and institutionally structured (Blain ). This paper compares the way in which British and Finnish mothers of dual-career families construct cultural meanings on the interplay between work and family. The analysis set forth is based on the interviews with mothers of dual-earner families conducted in Britain and in Finland in  by the SOCCARE Project. From the original data the paper analyses those  interviews in which childcare issues are discussed and where the parents are the most career-oriented, i.e., where both parents have a career and work long hours. The data in question consist of seven Finnish and seven British interviews. They contain information about the childcare arrangements of the families, the sharing of care responsibilities between the parents, and their evaluations of the family–work interplay. The interviews have been produced in two different cultural and social policy frameworks, that is, in two different welfare regimes with different breadwinner ideologies (see Langan and Ostner ; J. Lewis , ). As I have already indicated, we may suppose that different welfare states with different traditions of social services or breadwinning ideologies also create different contexts in which to combine work and care. The paper describes and analyses the most essential discourses the British and Finnish mothers use in talking about their work and family interplay. The question addressed is also one that concerns the presence or visibility of larger welfare state frameworks at the level of the everyday discourse of mothers living in them. The paper begins with a discussion of the interplay between work and family in relation to the construction of meanings. This is followed by a brief description of the liberal and the Scandinavian welfare regimes with regard to the issue of combining work and family. Then a description of discourse analysis is provided in order to lead into the analysis of the interviews. The discourse analysis of the interviews forms the main body of the paper. Only the discourses pertinent to matters distinguishing and connecting the two welfare regimes will be discussed. In the concluding section, the results of the comparison within and between these discourses are drawn together and their consequences for the more general comparison of the two welfare regimes are outlined.

Social Construction of Reality and Ideological Work According to studies on the work and care interplay (Hays ; Hattery ), individual mothers often negotiate, reason and try to make sense of their current position in relation to paid work. By doing this, they can be seen to construct the social world they are living in and also to perform ideological work. Here ideological work refers to the way in which mothers make use of broader thought systems (such as available discourses about motherhood) in order to add coherence to their lives (Berger ; Hays ). For example, when Hays () interviewed American mothers, she found that while working mothers were likely to argue that there are a lot of good reasons for mothers to work in the paid labour force, the stay-at-home mothers insisted that there are a lot of good reasons to stay at home with 

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children. Despite differences in their relation to paid work, both groups reasoned their choices by relying on the same ideology of intensive mothering. This ideology of intensive mothering was so influential that it was widely recognized and used by both groups of women, even if they used it to argue for and justify opposed life situations. In a similar vein, Duncan and Edwards (: ) have claimed that lone mothers’ decision to work or not to work can be seen as a social and moral choice. These choices are in turn based on “socially negotiated and socially patterned ‘gendered moral rationalities’ ” about good mothering and how this latter can be combined with work. However, this kind of ideological work is always contextual. As Pfau-Effinger () has stressed, the practices of motherhood, like mothers’ orientation to work, cannot be explained without taking into account the culture, institutions and social actors within the framework of broader gender arrangements. Arguably, then, these ideologies and their pervasiveness differ from one culture to another. That is, all mothers of dual-career families participate in this ideological work, and in this way also construct the social world they live in. They reason and make sense of their lives by reflecting culturally available ideologies. There are, however, different cultural premises for this construction of reality and ideological work. As S. Lewis (: ) has emphasized, “work and family systems operate within, influence and are influenced by wider social systems, which incorporate cultural norms, state institutions and public policies”. On the basis of this, we may argue that because the nature of mothering and the distribution of caring work changes according to the cultural and historical context (Windebank ), the mothers of dual-career families themselves reason their lives always in the context of different welfare state systems and ideologies.

Welfare State Contexts and Childcare The state is given a different role in relation to work and family in different Western countries. The Scandinavian welfare model is best known for its emphasis on public services and solutions. It has, for example, actively “de-familialized” welfare responsibilities and created greater individual independence. The availability of public care services to families has had an influence especially on women’s life choices by enabling them to have both children and careers (Esping-Andersen ). Scandinavian social democratic welfare states can be seen to be “committed to a heavy social service burden” (Esping-Andersen : ). This burden is due to the underlying principle of universalism: all citizens have a right to social services. With regard to this, Anttonen and Sipilä () have made a distinction between different social service regimes. In their classification, Finland is given as an example of the Nordic model of public services. In this model, services are widely available for children and for the elderly. However, even within the Finnish service provision, this principle of universalism has been put into practice incompletely. Universalism has been put fully into effect in childcare but only to a degree in the care of the elderly (Anttonen ; Kröger et al. ). 

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In Finland, childcare services can be said to be universally available, for since  children’s day care has been defined as a social right for parents of children under school age. All such children are thus legally guaranteed a place in municipal day care, and local authorities have, in their turn, a legal obligation to provide these services to the families who choose to apply for them (Kröger et al. ). In practice, municipal day care operates in two distinctive ways: children can either attend a day-care centre or a municipal childminder can take care of them. The public day-care provision has been planned on the basis of a dual-earner family and adjusted to labour market structures where part-time work is not typical. This type of municipal day-care provision has, thus, been of great importance for the access of women to the labour market (Kröger et al. ). The municipal day-care provision has also taken into account the care needed in cases in which parents work during the evenings, nights or weekends. The universal right to municipal childcare can make the childcare arrangements of dual-career families easier, as well on a psychological as on a practical level. In reality, most working people take advantage of this right and the municipal childcare provision can be regarded as the main form of care, especially for the under-school-age children of dual-breadwinner families (see Sauli : ). As an alternative to this public provision, Finnish parents may choose welfare state benefits that support either the use of private childcare facilities or informal parental care. Thus, these payments enlarge the choices available to parents and can be argued to represent a new form of universalism (Anttonen ; Kröger et al. ). However, afternoon care provision for young schoolchildren in Finland does not contain elements of universalism. This provision is based on discretion: local authorities can organize afternoon care, if they see a need for it. All applicants are not guaranteed a place. For their part, liberal welfare states like the UK and the USA emphasize the principle of individual freedom and promote market solutions. This model has employed a residual public policy by targeting benefits only at the most needy (Esping-Andersen ). Childcare is mainly produced via market provision (see Windebank ; Uttal ). For example, in the UK, childcare is traditionally viewed as a responsibility of individual families (S. Lewis ). Until recently, public childcare provision has been selective by its nature: it has been primarily for children deemed to be at risk and it has largely been income-dependent (Baldock : ). In contrast, the majority of formal childcare has been provided within the private market sector where parents must pay the full market price for the care of their children (Baldock : ; Windebank : ). The tradition of childcare policies in Britain has thus seen childcare as a matter for the family rather than for the state. This has meant that the vast majority of childcare is managed within the family, often by the adaptation of women’s working hours or within the community or extended family (Windebank : – ). As Baldock () has stated, British parents often adjust their lives to available childcare resources and order their life accordingly. 

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Some new policies were, however, adopted in Britain during the s. For example, the aim of the National Childcare Strategy () has been to broaden the availability of childcare, mostly private, for all children between birth and age  and at the same time to support the parents by allowing tax credits for money spent in paying for the services (Baldock : ). Nevertheless, Windebank (: ) has argued that the Blair governments have approached the question of childcare from the narrow point of view of poverty alleviation, with the emphasis on single parents and low-income families, rather than as a universal right. These differences in the ideas about public and private responsibilities in the two countries in question can be related to the underlying assumptions about the breadwinning responsibilities of women and men. According to S. Lewis (), in the UK, the assumption that men are the main breadwinners and that an ideal mother provides full-time mothering for young children is connected to the availability of childcare services and to the guilt mothers may feel. If one assumes that there is always someone at home to provide care, the need for a universal publicly funded childcare provision does not arise. Similarly, if one assumes that good mothers care full-time for young children, there is a conflict between work and family life. Lewis argues that ideological ambivalence about family roles and the social construction of families as a private matter have meant that work–family discourses in the UK have traditionally been dominated by private imperatives. This kind of conflict between family and work has been absent from some other cultural contexts, where mothers’ employment is something of a norm and, as such, is also seen to be for the benefit of the children (S. Lewis ). When family is seen as a public responsibility, combining work and family also becomes a matter of political interest (ibid.). Anttonen (, ) has pointed out that in Finland political debate on childcare policies has led to a situation where different forms of childcare are nowadays publicly supported and funded. Pfau-Effinger () has also suggested that Finnish mothers do not experience as strong a pull between work and family as mothers do in societies where the male breadwinner ideology is stronger, such as the UK.

Discourse Analytical Perspective Parker (: ) has defined discourse as “a system of statements which constructs an object”. Similarly, for Foucault (: ), discourses are “practices which form the object of which they speak”. Discourses can thus be understood as sets of meanings, terms, ideas and concepts that produce a particular version of events or a way of interpreting the world. Different discourses can raise different issues and have different implications for what we should do. In an important way, discourses produce both what can be said as well as what is not discussed about a particular thing or event by making some questions possible and leaving others unasked (see Cameron ; Potter and Wetherell ; Parker ; Burr ). Through discourses we name and make sense of the social world and relationships we live in. However, all discourses are not equal: institutional 

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and social structures can make some discourses more influential, natural or legitimate than others (Duncan and Edwards : –). In their book on lone mothers, Duncan and Edwards (: –, ) have argued that, for example, meanings of lone motherhood are based on the realities of the daily lives of such mothers. They view their situations through national media and policy contexts as well as through the material and social contexts of the neighbourhoods in which they live. Social policy regime can be seen to provide one such context for the lives of lone mothers. According to discourse analysis, the construction and reconstruction of discourses is thus always situational and produced in a particular social practice. This means that the analysis of cultural meanings should also take into consideration the contexts that produced those meanings. In this paper, the mothers of dual-career families are seen as participating in the construction of the world they live in. They are also seen as performing ideological work in the context of a broader welfare state regime. In what follows, the interplay between work and family will be analysed from a discourse analytical perspective taking into account its contextual nature.

Discourses Found in the Data Although British and Finnish societies and welfare states differ substantially, especially in relation to childcare services and breadwinning ideologies, the general discourses the interviewed mothers relied on and produced in making sense of the everyday practices of the work and family interplay were often similar. Firstly, mothers assessed these everyday practices from the point of view of shared parenthood. As earlier studies (Hochschild and Machung ; McMahon ) have pointed out, claims to parental sharing and commitments to gender equality are common among middle-class professionals. This was also the case in this study: the mothers of dual-career families constructed their daily lives in relation to the idea of gender and parental equality. Secondly, mothers constructed the everyday practices of their dual-career families using the framework of parallel realities. They saw that they have constantly to take into account two different rationales in organizing their lives: the needs of children and family, and their own responsibilities as paid workers. They described their everyday life as a complex structure that includes elements of flexibility, conflicts, balancing, overlapping, negotiation, overload, stress and so on. In essence, this notion of parallel realities indicates that the very same individual could construct the interplay between work and care simultaneously as balancing and conflicting, or rewarding and stressing, and that life was full of potential crises and emergencies. The interplay between work and family was described as a phenomenon that needed constant weaving to keep the different pieces together. That is, the discourse is irreducibly contradictory, and understood as such by the interviewees. Thirdly, British and Finnish mothers of the dual-career families relied on the discourse of care as a value in itself. They saw care as an important task: something that should be valued and recognized as such in society at large. 

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At this general level, the British and Finnish mothers shared a great deal. They assessed their daily lives from similar premises, which is already a noteworthy finding. Being a mother in a dual-career family can be said to cross-cut the lines between different welfare state systems by producing some shared meanings. Although we may argue that family and paid work can have different meanings for different women in different social contexts, since social circumstances can be said to change identities and meanings (McMahon ), similar life situations—like being a mother in a dual-career family—may also produce similar constructions of daily life, cutting across welfare state lines. On the other hand, there were also differences in British and Finnish mothers’ talk. I will now describe the above-mentioned three discourses in detail and seek to delineate these differences of contextualization and their connection to welfare state models. Discourse of shared parenthood The mothers of the dual-career families in these particular data constructed their daily life by using the framework of shared parenthood. This framework implies that care responsibilities should be shared by the parents. Vuori (: ) has stated that “the discourse of shared parenting denies the absolute division between the female and male nurturing roles and suggests that men also should take more responsibility for the care of very young children and their nurture”. She also sees that this kind of reasoning often presents itself as “a self-evident social reform program” (: ). In this study, all  interviewees—irrespective of their nationality—referred to this idea of sharing. One can argue that the idea of parental sharing is so strong a discourse in modern Western societies that all mothers in these specific data recognized it when talking about the interplay between work and family. Having said this, the mothers of dual-career families in Finland and the UK often interpreted or contextualized differently this notion of sharing. One important difference between nationalities was that, in the British interviews, sharing was more strongly related to a sort of a feminist “reform programme”, or mothers were seen as “fighting for” more equality in calling for an increase in sharing. In relation to this, British mothers often mentioned that when men participated in childcare, their participation received more, and more positive attention. For example, a British mother of four stated: “Some things are unspoken because I’m the sort of person who sees something needs doing I just do it. And then after I think, ‘Why am I doing this?’ If it’s a thing that it needs a lot of juggling, then Dave and I have to talk about it as we have to work out who is going to be there and when. And I’m afraid that, especially since I’ve had this job, I have got harder and just lying back and saying ‘okay, I will’. I have tried to push more on to him. Because I feel ‘why should it always be me?’ ” (UKMC)1 It was thus more common among the British interviewees to relate the parental sharing to women’s unequal position with respect to the amount of 

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childcare and domestic work. For example, splitting or sharing responsibilities could be expressed in relation to an unequal share of work done by women and men. As a British mother of two (UKMC) stated: “we share, but not equally.” Similarly, the notion of splitting did not automatically imply equality in sharing. When asked what happens in emergencies, e.g., when a child breaks his or her leg, a British mother of one answered: “ Yes, a real emergency, if she was really poorly and she had to be at home, then we would negotiate it. We would split it, probably three-quarters me, a quarter him.” (UKMC) Only in the British data was there a case where sharing was described as completely missing. A British mother of a -year-old saw herself as a “single mother”, because of a lack of parental sharing. What makes this case important especially from a discourse analytical perspective is that, by saying so, the mother simultaneously considers sharing as an important element in being a couple and a parent. “Well, I consider myself, particularly over the last six months, as a single mother in a way, because my husband commutes to London every day. He leaves the house at . and comes back at the earliest at  o’clock so he doesn’t really do anything.” (UKMC) In contrast to their British peers, Finnish mothers did not consider parental sharing such a feminist issue. Instead, they most often connected sharing to everyday practices. Besides this, there was an interesting feature in the Finnish interviews: sharing was constructed by also taking the male perspective into account. In other words, some Finnish mothers were concerned about their husbands being more involved in childcare than themselves or doing more than their equal share (FINMC; FINMC). A Finnish mother of two expressed this kind of worry: “Well, we could say that perhaps over the past six months, it’s been my husband who’s made more of those compromises, I must say, because I’ve had the kind of job assignments that I’ve simply had to get them over with. But I wouldn’t like things to be that way always, I’d be ready to reduce work in my turn and invest in family. It can’t be so that just one of us is working like mad. And besides, it’s not so easy for men.” (FINMC) Thus, the interviewed mothers could use the notion of shared parenthood either with reference to an ideal situation they would have liked to live in or to actual practices the family in question had adopted. Although most interviewees used the notion of shared parenthood in relation to actual practices in both national groups, this was more often the case in the Finnish interviews. These differences in interpretations of shared parenthood can be partly understood by the ideological features of British and Finnish welfare states. The British welfare state is often described as being based on a 

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strong male breadwinner ideology. In the British interviews this could be seen in the fact that the interviewees would have wanted more equality for women in the context of work and family interplay. Finland, on the other hand, is usually cited as an example of an egalitarian welfare state and a state where equality between the sexes is broad ( Julkunen ). The working mother has been more of a norm in Finland than in the UK, and thus the sharing of caring work has been strongly on the political agenda. For Finnish women sharing was not as clearly a feminist issue as it was for the British interviewees. This does not mean that we could conclude that gender roles in Finland are culturally interchangeable. It seems that insofar as work and family are concerned the traditional gender roles continue to have cultural legitimacy. This can be seen especially in the fact that some interviewed mothers expressed concerns about their partners’ share being too large. Discourse of parallel realities Morgan (: ) has emphasized that family life is never just family life: it is always connected to and continuous with other areas of life. There are thus overlaps between different spheres of life and those overlaps are often more important than separate entities such as work and family. Glenn (: ) has also argued that when conceptualizing mothering, one has to take into account that mothering exists not only within but also outside the household and the family and, most importantly, at the boundary between them. In other words, mothering often requires a work of mediation between the private and the public sphere. The interviewed mothers constantly made sense of their lives as something that is situated at the boundary of two different logics of reality. Mothers were familiar with constant hurry, mediating, planning, scheduling, organizing and negotiating between partners. As a British mother of one (UKMC) stated, “it’s a lot about being organized and communicating ”. At the level of discourse, they constructed their lives as a complex and contradictory structure that contained different realities. A Finnish mother of two saw her life as a puzzle: “Of course, when you do have a family, it means that you always have to piece together the whole puzzle and put all the pieces of the puzzle in there, so it isn’t only up to me what I do.” (FINMC) Ferree () has, in her turn, stressed that women often face contradictions: the principles of capitalist production, which is oriented towards the production of market value, conflict with the principles of family work, which is oriented towards meeting the needs of family members. These contradictions produce much of the ambivalence women experience in combining work and family. In other words, women often find themselves mediating structural contradictions between the different systems within which they operate (McMahon : –). A Finnish mother of two connected this kind of mediating to self-discipline. 

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“It’s actually a matter of self-discipline, you know, the kind of thing that you make a decision that you have clearly defined working hours, and even if they aren’t always necessarily from eight to four, we will anyway try to give the evening to the family and home.” ( FINMC) Another example is a British mother of one, who acknowledged the abovementioned underlying contradictions but stated that she has personally been able to balance them out. “You know some mothers, I used to hear, you know when you go back to work you feel like you’re not doing a good job in either one of them. I don’t feel like that, I think I’m doing a pretty good job in both of them. And that I’m not burning the candle at both ends. I feel like it’s well balanced.” (UKMC) The mothers in both national groups connected this complex structure of their daily lives to potential crises and emergencies. That is, life was seen as being full of potential care risks that could be actualized at any given time. In relation to this unforeseeable nature of life, a Finnish mother of two stated the following: I: “Yes. Well, we’ve sort of already talked about your mutual timetables, so what happens if you cannot keep them or problems appear in them?” R: “It’s a total disaster. This family of ours is and functions like in a situation that it has a plan when everything goes just like it is planned. And immediately when it happens that a child is sick or an unexpected work-related journey turns up or something unplanned happens, then the house of cards collapses and then we negotiate and try to come up with all kinds of solutions.” (FINMC) This discourse of parallel realities was often also used together with the notion of flexibility. Both British and Finnish mothers stated that the two different logics of life, “keeping the pieces together”, required some sort of flexibility. This flexibility was seen as offered by and connected to working hours or modes of work as well as to formal and informal care sources or sharing between parents. There were, however, differences in the way British and Finnish mothers contextualized such flexibility. In the Finnish interviews, as a whole, flexibility appeared as more multidimensional than it did in the British interviews. For example, a Finnish mother of two working as a manager (FINMC) related flexibility in the context of emergencies to formal care arrangements, informal care resources and flexible working hours as well as to sharing between partners. Among British women it was more common to rely on just one or two sources of flexibility. Most often they referred to work as the most important or primary source of flexibility enabling them to combine work and care. As Windebank () has argued, British mothers commonly solve the work and care conflict by adapting their own working hours. This was often the case 

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also within the interview data of this study. A British mother of a -year-old stated the following: I: “So are things better than you expected, you said they were about what you expected?” R: “Yes pretty much, you do hear stories though about people feeling guilty, or trapped between two different demands, things like that. The kind of job [having flexible working hours] I have enables me not to experience that.” (UKMC) In a similar vein, a British mother of three school-age children stated: “I think the only way that things work at the moment is because my job allows me to be very flexible. I think if I was in a strict  to  office I would have a lot of problems because there are a lot of employers who will not tolerate people taking time out or off for childcare.” (UKMC) Thus, British mothers emphasized their own capacity to be flexible and this flexibility was often made possible by their flexible working hours. In addition to this, parental sharing and informal help were mentioned as means to solve conflicts between care and work. Concerning the role of her mother in care emergencies, a British mother of three stated: “My Mum has just come in like an angel, without her it would be very, very difficult, I think it would be impossible because we require, and for instance, as an example, next week, no it’s this week, this Wednesday. I go into London, and I have to stay overnight because I’m teaching first thing in the morning. Tom is taking his class to London and won’t be back until . You just couldn’t get anyone to take childcare from  in the morning until  at night, unless you’ve got a Mum.” (UKMC) Flexible working hours were an essential source of flexibility for Finnish mothers as well: these enabled them to solve sudden care crises. Similarly, Finnish mothers also frequently mentioned parental sharing or informal care as a means to work out care emergencies. However, what made Finnish mothers’ accounts different from the British ones was that in the Finnish interviews, demands about flexibility were not as strongly seen as a matter of the mother’s flexibility. Instead, the demand for flexibility was also a matter pertaining to formal care arrangements. In essence, in the Finnish context, flexibility was not seen so strongly as an individual issue. A Finnish mother of two stated that the flexibility offered by a municipal childminder is an essential element of their daily life. “I mean that there’s been a lot of flexibility, so that we’ve been able to arrange most of our days on the road simply with our childminder.” (FINMC) Another Finnish mother of two stressed that day-care provision should offer more flexible opening hours. 

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I: “Could you imagine some services from society or some forms of support, which could be a help for the care problems of a family with children?” R: “Surely the flexible opening hours in day care would be like that, particularly during evenings. Surely it also has an effect that the stores are open longer and, more generally, that services are offered to people also after the normal office hours . . . That kind of flexibility I sure do miss from the side of society.” (FINMC) Overall, British and Finnish mothers of dual-career families seemed to share the idea that their lives were full of potential care crises and needed constant weaving (see also Garey ). This complex structure of the work and care interplay was seen as something that required some flexibility. There were differences in contextualizing this flexibility in the two national groups. One could argue that the British mothers assessed the sources of flexibility in their care arrangements as a more personal issue than the Finnish mothers: they emphasized their own capacity to be flexible. Instead, the Finnish mothers pointed also to formal care provision as a source of flexibility. For British mothers, flexibility provided by their own work was often given a priority. For the Finnish mothers, flexibility appeared as a more multidimensional phenomenon. This could be seen as implying that Finnish mothers have more choices in solving care emergencies and weaving work and family together. Discourse of care as a value in itself Both British and Finnish mothers of dual-career families saw care as something of great importance. They shared the notion that care is a value in itself: it should be supported, paid for properly and valued in and by the society. Similarly, McMahon (: ) has pointed out that working women share the idea that caring for others and for their own families in particular is important and valuable. She argues that “as this work is often neither socially visible nor publicly valued, managing the intersection of family life and paid work is particularly difficult”. Mothers in both groups also expressed the view that care is an important element of life and that it should be valued as such. However, British and Finnish mothers again assessed this idea in a different way. It was only within the British interviews that the value of care and caring work was constructed as a large political issue involving the financial inequality of citizens. As a British mother of three (UKMC) stated: “largely it [support to combine work and care] is individualistic, and you are either lucky or you are not.” Affordability and availability of care for everyone was thus a common theme in the British interviews. A British mother of one stated: “I think I am expecting too much, I just want an after-school club affordable for everybody and available to everybody, with enough places for the children. I think more investment should be made in people and premises.” (UKMC) 

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British mothers saw that care should have more visibility and value in society at large and that this would also lead to broadened equality among mothers, to progress in care workers’ position, as well as to an advance in the quality of care. A British mother of three argued that care workers should be paid a proper salary. “I mean the pay is terrible, our childminder asked for £. an hour for the first child and another £. for the second, we refused to pay her so little but the work is so badly paid. The culture around it doesn’t value it. If it was paid and valued, but unfortunately we have to pay as individuals and often people can’t afford it. It’s a hard job.” (UKMC) A mother of one stressed that establishing the formal care provision should be done in tandem with increasing the value of care work. “I think there is no ideal system of care, because women, it’s usually low-paid women with no other job options and educational skills who are childminders and they get paid very poorly for work that’s difficult and important. So even if you have all these schemes where, you know, the government creates more crèches, etc., unless those jobs are esteemed more highly and unless those jobs are better paid. It’s a kind of ghettoization of certain women who do those jobs. So certain women, even if they like doing, in a sense, they get the raw end of the stick. Whereas higher-class women benefit because they can purchase the labour of other women who are not as privileged.” (UKMC) For Finnish mothers, on the other hand, the care of children was not as strongly a political issue concerning inequality in society as a whole. On the contrary, care was seen as a right. As a Finnish mother of two (FINMC) stressed: “I have always taken it into account that I live in a society where there are publicly funded services.” In relation to this, care was seen as professional work. For example, a Finnish mother of two said that she supported public childcare provision because of the professional qualifications of the personnel. “Those [municipal] day-care centres are in my view so professional that like, there you learn and study and there are lots of kids and they learn a lot of things there. So that I’m really a supporter of that system.” (FINMC) Another Finnish mother expected a care worker who was to work at her home to have some professional qualifications. “I decided that now, when I have five children to leave to a nanny, and two of them are infants, one should have both work experience and education . . . and then I’ll arrange proper interviews, an hour minimum per person, or an hour and a half, and ask about everything and they should have school certificates and . . .” ( FINMC) Care issues were thus often also assessed with reference to education. However, while the British interviews contained demands to professionalize and 

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regulate care work, the Finnish interviews often took it for granted that care workers are professionals. On the basis of the above analysis, one can argue that both British and Finnish mothers saw the value of care as an important factor that needs to be considered when talking about the work and family interplay. Within the British interviews, it was more strongly argued that the existing construction of care needed a general reconstruction on the ideological level. On the other hand, in the Finnish interviews, care was constructed as a right that needed to be enlarged but the general make-up of care itself was not strongly challenged. These differences in interpreting the value of care can again be understood by socio-political factors. In Finland, municipal care for small children has been a social right for the parents. Thus, the parents’ demands for better afternoon club provision, for home help for the families with children, and for better benefits for those parents who care for their children at home, can be seen as an attempt to enlarge this right also to other areas of care. In Britain, the care of children has traditionally been seen as a personal question and thus, within the British interviews, there were demands for more public recognition of care issues.

Conclusion By analysing the interviews of British and Finnish mothers this paper has argued that, on the general discursive level, the mothers of dual-career families in the two countries share a lot. Despite the many structural and ideological differences between the British and the Finnish welfare states, mothers living in them often constructed their daily lives by using similar discursive frameworks. Firstly, mothers connected the arrangement of their work and family interplay to the idea of gender and parental equality. Secondly, they evaluated the everyday practices of their dual-career families within the framework of parallel realities. Thirdly, the interviewed mothers saw care as a significant issue, as something that should be valued and recognized as such in society at large. In essence, these were the discourses that cross-cut welfare state boundaries. Duncan and Edwards (: –) have argued that institutional and social structures can make some discourses more influential, natural or legitimate than others. In relation to this, it can be argued that in Western societies, there are also discourses that are strong enough to be acknowledged and responded to despite structural and ideological differences. For example, on the basis of the preceding analysis, it could be argued that the discourse of shared parenthood has achieved so strong an ideological position in Britain and Finland that both groups of mothers evaluated their daily practices in relation to this idea. The same could be said of care as a value in itself. Care can be seen as something that is receiving increasing attention and concern in Western societies. A similar life situation—being a mother in a dual-career family in a Western capitalist society—may also produce similar constructions of daily life such as the idea about parallel realities. This is to say that both British and Finnish mothers of 

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dual-career families can be seen as social actors who constantly mediate between different spheres of life that cannot be clearly distinguished from each other. At the same time, however, there are also differences in the way these meaning systems are contextualized and interpreted. This level of contextualization and interpretation is then a stage where welfare state structures and gender constructs step in. Questions of public and private responsibilities, gender ideologies and general constructions of care have been seen as features that distinguish British and Finnish welfare models. Childcare has been constructed more as a private concern in Britain, whereas in Finland it has been supported by the state. Britain has a stronger tradition of male breadwinning than Finland does and childcare work has a more professional status in Finland than in Britain. These broad differences between welfare states can be read from our interviews, especially in places where the mothers are contextualizing the shared meanings mentioned above. Parental sharing was more of a feminist or an ideological issue for the British women than for the Finnish ones. The British mothers assessed flexibility in the work and care interplay as a more personal issue than the Finnish mothers did. Within the British interviews, it was also commonly argued that the existing construction of care needed reconstruction, whereas in the Finnish interviews, the general make-up of care itself was not strongly challenged. On the basis of these findings, we can claim that, from the discourse perspective, we may at the same time both support and challenge the general make-up of welfare models. When we put emphasis on individual constructions of reality, we find more shared meanings than broad classifications would make us expect. At the same time, however, these broader welfare state contexts are present in the mothers’ talk. It is through discourse analysis that the interviewed mothers can be seen as social actors who actively comment on, reflect and criticize the welfare state contexts they are living in.

Note . In quotations from the interviews, UK refers to a British interview, FIN to a Finnish one, and MC to interviews with multi-career families. The number refers to the number of the quoted multi-career interview.

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Combining Work and Family Old and the State: Social Care Systems in Five Industrial Nations, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. –. Berger, B. (), Survival of a Counterculture, Berkeley: University of California Press. Blain, J. (), Discourses of agency and domestic labor: family discourse and gendered practice in dual-earner families, Journal of Family Issues, , : –. Blossfeld, H.-P. and Drobnic, S. (), Theoretical perspectives on couples’ careers. In H.-P. Blossfeld and S. Drobnic (eds), Careers of Couples in Contemporary Societies: From Male Breadwinner to Dual Earner Families, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. –. Brannen, J. (), Employment and the family lives: equalities and inequalities. In E. Drew, R. Emerek and E. Mahon (eds), Women, Work and Family in Europe, London: Routledge, pp. –. Burr, V. (), An Introduction to Social Constructionism, London: Routledge. Cameron, D. (), Feminism and Linguistic Theory, London: Macmillan. Crompton, R. and Harris, F. (), Employment, careers, and families: the significance of choice and constraints in women’s lives. In R. Crompton (ed.), Restructuring Gender Relations and Employment: The Decline of the Male Breadwinner, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. –. Duncan, S. and Edwards, R. (), Lone Mothers, Paid Work and Gendered Moral Rationalities, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. Esping-Andersen, G. (), The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press. Esping-Andersen, G. (), Towards the good society, once again? In G. EspingAndersen, D. Gallie, A. Hemerijck and J. Myles (eds), Why We Need a New Welfare State, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. –. Ferree, M. M. (), Family and job for working-class women: gender and class systems seen from below. In N. Gerstel and H. E. Gross (eds), Families and Work, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. –. Foucault, M. (), The Archeology of Knowledge, London: Tavistock. Garey, A. I. (), Weaving Work and Motherhood, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Glenn, E. N. (), Social construction of mothering: a thematic overview. In E. N. Glenn, G. Chang and L. R. Forcey (eds), Mothering: Ideology, Experience and Agency, New York: Routledge, pp. –. Hantrais, L. and Letablier, M.-T. (), Families and Family Policies in Europe, London: Longman. Hattery, A. (), Women, Work and Family: Balancing and Weaving, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Hays, S. (), The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Hochschild, A. (), The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work, New York: Owl Books. Hochschild, A. and Machung, A. (), The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home, London: Piatkus. Julkunen, R. (), Sosiaalipolitiikkamalli, sukupuoli ja hoivatyö [The model of social policy, gender and care]. In O. Riihinen (ed.), Sosiaalipolitiikka  [Social Policy ], Porvoo: WSOY, pp. –. Kröger, T., Anttonen, A. and Sipilä, J. (), Social care in Finland: stronger and weaker forms of universalism. In A. Anttonen, J. Baldock and J. Sipilä (eds), The Young, the Old and the State: Social Care Systems in Five Industrial Nations, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. –. Langan, M. and Ostner, I. (), Gender and welfare: towards a comparative framework. In G. Room (ed.), Towards a European Welfare State, Bristol: SAUS, pp. –.

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Katja Repo Lewis, J. (), Gender and the development of welfare regimes, Journal of European Social Policy, , : –. Lewis, J. (), Gender and welfare regimes: further thoughts, Social Politics, , : –. Lewis, J. (), Gender and welfare regimes. In G. Lewis, S. Gewirtz and J. Clarke (eds), Rethinking Social Policy, London: Sage, pp. –. Lewis, S. (), An international perspective on work–family issues. In S. Parasuraman and J. H. Greenhaus (eds), Integrating Work and Family: Challenges and Choices for a Changing World, London: Quorum Books, pp. –. McMahon, M. (), Engendering Motherhood: Identity and Self-transformation in Women’s Lives, New York: Guilford Press. Moen, P. (), Women’s Two Roles: A Contemporary Dilemma, New York: Auburn House. Morgan, D. H. J. (), Risk and family practices: accounting for change and fluidity in family life. In E. B. Silva and C. Smart (eds), The New Family? London: Sage, pp. –. Morris, L. (), The Workings of Household: A US–UK Comparison, Cambridge: Polity Press. ONS (), Social Trends , London: Office for National Statistics. Parker, I. (), Discourse Dynamics: Critical Analysis for Social and Individual Psychology, London: Routledge. Pfau-Effinger, B. (), The modernization of family and motherhood in Western Europe. In R. Crompton (ed.), Restructuring Gender Relations and Employment: The Decline of the Male Breadwinner, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. –. Potter, J. and Wetherell, M. (), Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour, London: Sage. Sauli, H. (), Perheet ja työ [Families and work]. In Työ, aika ja elämänvaiheet [Work, Time and Stages of Life], Helsinki: Tilastokeskus, pp. –. Uttal, L. (), Making Care Work: Employed Mothers in the New Childcare Market, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Vuori, J. (), Äidit, isät ja ammattilaiset: Sukupuoli, toisto ja muunnelmat asiantuntijoiden kirjoituksissa [Mothers, Fathers and Professionals: Gender, Repetition and Variety in Expert Texts], Tampere: Tampere University Press. Windebank, J. (), To what extent can social policy challenge the dominant ideology of mothering? A cross-national comparison of Sweden, France and Britain, Journal of European Social Policy, , : –. Windebank, J. (), Dual-earner couples in Britain and France: gender divisions of domestic labour and parenting work in different welfare states, Work, Employment and Society, , : –.

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Title O riginal Article December  Blackwell Oxford, SPOL © - Social Blackwell Policy UK Publishing,  &Publishing Administration Ltd. Ltd. 

5 Family Commitments under Negotiation: Dual Carers in Finland and Italy Minna Zechner

Introduction The question I will address in this paper is how caring and work commitments are negotiated and fitted together in a situation where caring takes place at two different fronts: for the previous and the next generations. Moreover I will compare two-front care cases in two cultural settings, those of Finland and Italy. My main question is how employment, care of the elderly and childcare are negotiated by women who tackle all of these three commitments simultaneously. Special emphasis is laid here on the care of elderly family members because there seems to be more room for negotiation in that field than within the care of children. The law in both countries puts people in different positions regarding their responsibilities over children and over elderly relatives. Furthermore, in both countries there are vast differences in the provision of services and benefits for these two groups of care receivers. Therefore, Finnish and Italian welfare states provide quite different contexts for negotiation about care. In a multigenerational world where several generations are alive simultaneously, the exchanges of help and resources between generations are complex in many ways. The generation in the middle may end up in a bridge position, having two or more generations with a claim on their material and emotional resources (Wærness : – ). This middle generation has also been referred to as a “sandwich generation” (see Schlesinger ; Roots ). While the childbearing age keeps rising at the same time as the population is ageing, adult people more often find themselves in situations where they have small children to raise at the same time as their elderly relatives already need help in daily activities. In Finland, the female labour participation rate has always been relatively high—in  it was  per cent while in Italy the corresponding figure was  per cent (Statistics Finland ). In Italy, the participation rate has nevertheless been rising since the early s, mainly among married women. Women born between  and  are the first cohort of Italian women whose economic activity rates no longer decline

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sharply during the childbearing and childrearing years (Addabbo : ). These developments, together with the ageing of the population, lead to rising numbers of women with two-front care situations. The concept of care used in this study is wide as it includes any assistance and help that is given by the participants of this study to young and elderly persons. The paper is based on eight SOCCARE interviews with Finnish dual carers (Arja, Elvi, Kaarina, Laina, Leena, Jenni, Pirkko and Reetta) and six interviews with Italian dual carers (Chiara, Donatella, Ilaria, Monica, Paola, Sabrina), all of whom were also employed at the date of the interview. Interviews were conducted in  and  in northern Italy and southern Finland, using the same interview structure. Participants in the study are called here dual carers or two-front carers. For some of them, the dual caring situation was already over at the point of the interview, due to the death of the elderly relative. However, some of them were still in the situation. Next, I will describe what kind of comparative research this paper is based on and how the analysis of the data was done. Then the data and the results of the analysis are presented through a care life story of one particular carer. The stories of the other dual carers are attached to, and contrasted with, this primary story. At the same time, certain societal issues related to the specific situation of dual carers are brought up and discussed.

Methodological and Conceptual Choices Informal care has been largely ignored in comparative research (Kröger : ). Methodologically, my study is located in a relatively unexplored field of comparative qualitative research where comparisons are made between different normative systems within certain societal settings. In my study, I pay special attention to family obligations in the two cultural contexts. The study includes  participants, who are all managing employment, childcare and care of an elderly person at the same time. My aim is to see not only the idiosyncrasies of the different dual caring situations, but also how the carers act in their local frameworks (Mabbet and Bolderson : ). I am using here life stories that take into account past as well as present experiences, existing circumstances as well as future aspirations, which all in turn influence the shape of (informal) care. As Schunk (: ) has put it: “elder care studies must capture the transitions and key points of decisionmaking over time”. Caring is actively negotiated and renegotiated, and carers as well as care receivers are active participants in affecting circumstances (Chamberlayne and King : ). The life stories are used to interpret overt and underlying meanings and family dynamics (Bertaux and Kohli : ; Chamberlayne and King : ). Here, the case study approach is used: a few cases are utilized to investigate a set of social relationships in which a person becomes a dual carer (Bertaux and Kohli : ). Thematic life stories or, more specifically, care life stories span a long period of time. It is therefore important to look at the beginnings as well as the processes of dual caring situations. Such situations emerge either when elderly relatives of parents of young children become ill or frail, or when a 

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child is born to a person who cares for an elderly relative. Both routes to dual caring are found in the sample. Commitments to care are negotiated and people shape actively the course of their own caring relationships. Commitments are not in any case static, but they are continuously renegotiated and renewed as relationships and circumstances change over time (Ungerson : ; Finch : ). Having choices, even if constrained by other choices or circumstances, makes these commitments binding (Finch and Mason : ). Thus the concept of commitment fits care relationships better than the concepts of obligation, duty and responsibility. Life stories make visible how care commitments have developed over time. Obligations to care are brought up through attachment. Thus, it is not only positive emotions that create commitments to care but also the frequency and the duration of contacts which create a basis for these commitments. This explains the special status that family and kin have in association with care. Family negotiations about commitments draw upon a history of relationships and commitments in a particular family and they entail also future commitments (Finch : ; Finch and Mason : ). This is the reason why it is so important to bring past and present experiences together when trying to understand the complexity of commitments to care. Chamberlayne and King (:  – ) have noted that “in biographical interpretative methods, however, individual meanings deriving from individual biographies do stand at the centre of analysis”. In addition, they say that “conscious and unconscious personal meanings and family dynamics bear a double significance, for while they are highly specific to individual caring situations and carer strategies, they are also cultural artefacts, arising from particular social and cultural contexts”. The interview data have been analysed first by rearranging them chronologically into care life stories. The second stage was to search for the key points of decision-making and the stages where negotiations about care arrangements were apparent in each story. Such occasions of negotiation are essential in the sense that they stir up the status quo and thus often lead to new arrangements. In these situations people weigh their given situations against a set of moral guidelines. They look at the situation as a whole and reflect on their doings and lives while trying to decide what is the best way to proceed (Williams : ). The meaningful events of care life stories in this sample turned out to be the following: birth, death, becoming frail, start of employment, end of employment, moving, accidents, getting help, and not getting help. In addition, the issue of money seems to be one that demands special attention and that is filled with conflicts and complicated negotiations. The third stage of the analysis concentrated on the negotiations: the parties involved, what the negotiations were about and what was the agreed way forward. The final step of the analysis was to compare the negotiations performed in each country. This was done in order to seek similarities and differences while not losing the national context. The main focus of this paper is on the situations and choices of the Finnish dual carers, while the Italian cases are contrasted with them. It has been argued that in every type of welfare regime, informal carers provide the majority of care, especially for the elderly (Tester : ; Anttonen and 

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Sipilä : ). Despite this, there are obvious differences between Nordic and Mediterranean Europe, not only in the service systems but also in how social care is produced in practice. Italy is therefore a good contrast for Finland. On the basis of the existing research literature, there is good reason to expect that in Italy almost all of the care required is managed by the family while in Finland the public services play an essential role (see, for example, Millar and Warman ; European Commission ). Therefore, it is assumed that the Italian participants will prioritize the family over employment, whereas the Finnish participants will prioritize employment over family.

Negotiations of Finnish and Italian Dual Carers Arja’s story: the beginning I will now turn to one of the Finnish dual carers and to the (care) life story she told me. The reason to choose her story as the skeleton for this paper is that it contains almost all of the above-mentioned elements that bring into being changes and negotiations in the process of caring for children and, in particular, an elderly person. Arja is a -year-old full-time manageress of a canteen. She has a -year-old daughter and is married to a -year-old man who has two teenage children from his previous marriage. These children reside with Arja and her husband every other weekend. Arja’s mother is  and lives in another municipality  km from Arja. The care life story starts with disputes related to money. Arja’s father died in  and the division of the inheritance did not go smoothly, but resulted in a breach between Arja’s brother and her two sisters. Arja’s mother gets a traditional lifeannuity1 at the home farm, which is run by Arja’s brother. Five years after her husband’s death, the mother starts to complain that she is mistreated by the daughterin-law, who limits her activities and diet. Since Arja is the only one of the three sisters who is on talking terms with the brother, and visits the mother regularly, she is the first one to know of this. Arja decides to act and helps her mother to move into a flat built for elderly people but where no services are provided. In Finland and Italy, elderly people often move for care reasons in opposite directions (moving here means a long-term move and not, for example a short-term hospitalization). The Finnish elders move from their home either to a flat with fewer obstacles to mobility or to a service house/nursing home/ hospital that provides long-term care. Also, some elders in Italy move to a nursing home, but mainly their direction of movement is from living alone to living with relatives, usually with children. Another possibility in Italy is that members of the younger generation move closer to the aged person or that a paid (usually immigrant) helper moves to the home of the elderly person. In both countries the reasoning behind moving is to make the life of the elderly person easier. Nursing homes in Italy are mainly targeted at elderly people who do not have relatives available to help. As the family is legally responsible for taking care of its elderly members, the financial 

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resources of the extended family are taken into account in setting the meanstested user charge for institutional care (Convery and Cioni : ). As a result, the use of publicly provided institutional care services is expensive and stigmatizing in Italy. Moving to an institution can be a relief to the carer, as Kaarina, another dual carer from Finland, puts it: “But elderly people should understand that at that point when they no longer are able to, when their legs start failing them, at that point we should be able to suggest, in a nice manner, that they could move away from home.” Moving can be a liberating act for a carer, as pictured by Elvi: “Yes, sometimes I get really angry and irritated, and then I think that if I were ten years younger, I’d leave this shit and move to the other side of Finland alone.” Money matters Back to Arja and her mother, who does not succeed very well in settling into her new home. She gets depressed and loses her ability to manage her daily life. Since Arja was the one to help her mother to move out of the farm, it is she who also takes on the helping tasks, including cleaning, shopping, cooking and bathing. The very close relationship that Arja has had with her parents as the youngest child weighs in the carer selection. Arja’s other two sisters want the mother to be helped by formal services, but Arja says she knows her mother would not accept this, and refuses. From this, the sisters draw the wrong conclusion, that Arja is being paid to help the mother, who has already handed over her financial affairs to be managed by Arja. Arja finds this accusation very insulting and becomes very careful in dealing with her mother’s money so as not to evoke any further distrust. This example shows how sensitive an issue money is in the Finnish data. There were several other carers who found handling somebody else’s money very difficult. Similar cases were not found at all in the Italian families. Here, money circulates more freely as parents buy or help to buy houses for their adult children. The direction of transfers is mainly from the older generation to the younger ones (Convery and Cioni : ; Trifiletti et al. : ). Family is the unit of income and resources where everyone contributes according to his/her potential (Saraceno : ). In Italian families, it was most often men who dealt with money. Both countries have a substantial pension system. However, the Italian system is adverse to women as they have participated in paid labour less commonly than men. As a result, many women gain small, or no, personal occupational pensions. Furthermore, in recent years there have been cuts in survivors’ benefits, where women are the major beneficiaries (Novinskey : ). Also, in Finland there are substantial gender differences in pensioners’ income since many women have to rely mainly on a flat-rate national pension while men commonly have earnings-related occupational pensions. To decrease this gender difference, a survivors’ benefit has been introduced for widows and children. However, in  a woman’s personal pension in Finland was on average only  per cent of a man’s pension (Tuominen et al. :  – ). 

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Informal and formal care Soon after moving to her new home, Arja’s mother gets her first infarct but she recovers and continues to live in her home, assisted by Arja. The distance between them is  km, which Arja has to drive, fearing another infarct, whenever her mother does not answer the phone. At some point Arja manages to get the municipal home help service to check on her mother daily. Since the home help personnel do not perform any tasks, the mother agrees to this and Arja gets a channel to receive information about her mother’s status. In , after her mother has had two more infarcts, she starts to receive daily meals-on-wheels and a home nurse starts to pay her a weekly visit. It is important to stress that an elderly person can use her/his power to choose the way s/he wants to be helped. Her/his decisions may add to the exhaustion of the carer. It is typical of the Finnish elderly in the sample that the additional help the carer gets for her relative being cared at home comes from public or private social care services. Thus, in the negotiations concerning the care of the elderly, social workers, home help managers and service providers are often involved. If the elderly person is in hospital after some acute illness or accident, s/he is often directed to the hospital social worker, who then estimates the need for help and may apply for some services. AlaNikkola (: ) claims that patients coming from hospitals have easier access to both home-based and institutional care services. According to the participants, elderly people also find such prescribed services more difficult to refuse than the ones that have been arranged by an informal carer, most often a relative. The Italian counterparts more commonly negotiate among the members of the extended family and with paid helpers, who are often immigrants. In both countries there are aged people in need of help who refuse to take any external help. New circumstances Almost nine years after Arja’s mother moved to her flat, Arja becomes pregnant. She fears that having a small child and a frail mother to care for simultaneously would be too much to bear. She attempts to limit her role by suggesting the hire of a cleaning lady for her mother. The mother refuses and Arja keeps on doing the cleaning work even after the baby is born. When a carer of an elderly person is going to have a child, it shakes up the existing state of affairs. In both countries there are examples of elderly relatives who fear that the caring daughter or daughter-in-law will not have time for them after the child is born. In many cases this fear turns out to have had some basis. Due to lack of time, the carer did often decrease her involvement with the elderly person. However, the elderly people in the sample usually got attached to the new member of the family and sometimes they helped to care for the child. Pirkko, for example, remembers how her mother’s lap was always available for children even if she was in a bad way after chemotherapy treatments. Later on, when children grow older, new 

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rivalries sometimes emerge when the child may reproach the mother for spending too much time with the elderly person. Sometimes, however, the birth of a child may give rise to quite different circumstances: when the carer is on maternity, or parental or childcare leave, she may have more time and more flexible timetables to concentrate on the care of the elderly person. When performing tasks for the older generation, young children are easier to take along than older ones, who already have their own aspirations regarding the use of time. However, this phenomenon was identified only in the Finnish sample. Two-thirds of the children under  years are cared for by their mothers at home (Kartovaara : ). This is possible with the income provided by a child home-care allowance.2 In the Italian sample, mothers with young children did not appear more available to care for an elderly person, probably because the one-year parental leave, intended to be universal, mainly applies to employees in the public sector. In Finland, maternal, parental and childcare leaves are universal in effect and they are widely used by mothers. With Arja’s mother, the situation remains more or less stable for two years, which is the time Arja stays at home with her daughter. Arja’s husband insists that she must return to work earlier since the mortgage they took for a new house is substantial. Arja refuses and instead ekes out the low income that she gets from the home care allowance by doing babysitting for a neighbour. When the daughter is  years old, Arja returns to work, having the same position but in a new location. Her daughter gets a day-care place with a municipal childminder nearby. Around the same time Arja’s mother has yet another infarct but recovers from it and returns to live in her flat where she has started feeling at home. The infarct induces some damage in her brain, causing memory lapses, speaking difficulties and progressive dementia. Late one winter night, she wanders off from her flat and is found only in the morning in the snow. This is such a severe accident that, for fear that it could reoccur, she is moved into a nursing home, where she still lives. Arja manages her money affairs and visits her regularly. Childcare negotiations The last part of Arja’s story contains many points where negotiation and readjustment were needed. First, there are the care arrangements related to the child. The Finnish mothers in the sample did not spend much time pondering the childcare possibilities. Families have a right to a child day-care place and the services are mostly widely available. Parents have to choose between municipal and private care and between day-care centres and childminders. Some day-care centres have a special emphasis, like languages, environmental issues or a certain ideology but they are reliable and publicly controlled. The opening hours fit in with office hours, and some evening and overnight care is also provided. The biggest gap is in the care for young schoolchildren. Italian mothers spent more of the interview time describing the variety of childcare arrangements and the reasons for specific choices. Various measures are also needed for escorting the children between home, day care and school. This is a matter that was hardly mentioned by the Finnish participants. 

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In Italy, the lack of accessible childcare facilities, especially for children under , was obvious. For this age group, grandparents are the main source of help. There are public crèches for children aged – , but their coverage is limited. Places in these crèches are targeted primarily at lone-parent and low-income families. Private provision helps satisfy the demand, but there the fees are high. At the age of , children in Italy start to attend nursery school and this eases the childcare problems, as the coverage is extensive and opening hours fit better with at least office working hours. However, when the school career of Italian children starts, the care problems reappear: as in Finland, schoolchildren have short days and long holidays (see Trifiletti et al. ; Della Sala ). Negotiations over the care of elderly persons Another issue besides childcare that produced a need for readjustment in Arja’s care life story was the worsening state of her mother’s illness, together with the unfortunate event of her wandering in the cold. Accidents and the worsening health of the elderly person shape the course of care arrangements. In Finland, elderly people often become known to social workers through hospitalization and thus enter into formal service provision. In order to get oneself into the public service system, the changes that illness or accident have brought about must be drastic enough. In the Italian data, such a course of events could not be seen even if accidents and stays in hospitals were recorded. Services and help are in Italy actively sought and negotiated by the carer with both the elderly and the service provider, be it formal or black-market. Black-market care provision was not present at all in the Finnish data. If the carer becomes temporarily ill, help to manage the situation comes from relatives and friends in both countries. The same applies when the children of the carer are ill. The only exception was Pirkko, who could count on home help in such instances. The reason for this was that at the social services it was known and appreciated that Pirkko was a dual carer, so that she was given a chance to keep on working and caring for her mother while her children were ill. Social services support the work of informal carers in Finland, but in reality negotiations with the formal service sector did not always proceed harmoniously. Several participants had had heated conversations, especially with health-care professionals, and they had repeated feelings of not getting what the elderly person was entitled to. Laina’s father was living in a service housing facility when he got a very high fever for several days. After some days he was taken to the health-care centre where he was, according to Laina, kept without any treatment and returned home in the evening with the fever still high. The same thing happened several days in a row until the personnel of the service house threatened to take legal action against the health care centre on the grounds of lack of care, because the service house offered no services at night. Thus it was not safe for him to stay there while he was in such bad shape. This finally opened the doors to a hospital and Laina’s father became an inpatient. The Italian participants did not have such stories to tell, even if many elderly people had serious illnesses and 

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accidents and, as a result, hospital stays. In both countries, there were complaints to the formal social care sector about the bureaucracy and the difficulties in finding information and in gaining access to the benefits. Work-related negotiations The third key issue of negotiation in the last part of Arja’s story is her work. When she was returning to work after parental leave, she started in the same position but in a new location. Arja needed to adjust to the beginning of work and to the new location and, even more, she had to adjust her care arrangements: the child started in day care and the mother had her problems. It is possible that after the infarct and the accident (wandering out in the cold), her mother’s moving to a nursing home was hastened by the fact that Arja was going to start working again. At social services it was known that she would be less available. Starting or ending employment or changing working hours very often stir up the overall arrangements of care. A temporary end to paid work outside the home has most often to do with children. After the birth of a child, Italian participants stayed at home either only for a few months or for several years. The reason for staying at home for such a short period is the fivemonth earnings-related ( per cent of earnings) maternity leave which is followed by a nine-month parental leave with a lower benefit ( per cent of earnings) (Flaquer : ). The reason for staying at home for several years to bring up the children is the Italian housewife tradition that runs parallel with the trend of increasing numbers of working mothers. For example, Ilaria stopped working when she had her daughters, and when they went to nursery school she started to do voluntary work. She continued the voluntary work for  years until she was offered part-time employment in the same voluntary organization. Finnish mothers in the sample stay at home usually for a year, which is the approximate time for earnings-related (average  per cent of earnings) maternity and parental leave. Kaarina was the sole Finnish carer to give up work completely when having her baby. She returned to paid work gradually when her son was . By chance, at exactly that time her mother-in-law started to have health problems and Kaarina is still, after  years, caring for her elderly relatives. She is also still fitting her employment around her caring commitments. Another Finnish carer, Laina, gave up her work after a superior had criticized her for taking too much work time to organize care for her father. These two women are fortunate as they have husbands who earn enough to support them and the children. It is widely assumed both in Finland and in Italy that two salaries are needed to support a family. Part-time work is an uncommon and often unwanted alternative in the Finnish labour market (making up only  per cent of total employment;  per cent of part-timers would prefer full-time employment). It is most common for women ( per cent of part-time employees are female) but unlike in many other European countries, in Finland a lack of childcare is not the main reason for working part-time. Instead, studying and the unavailability of full-time work are the reasons for taking part-time work (Savola : ). 

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In Italy, part-time work is equally unusual (making up only  per cent of total employment,  per cent women), at least in the official labour market that is visible in the statistics. However, part-time work was observable in my Italian sample in the form of domestic helpers and paid carers hired by the participants to help in caring for their elderly relatives. This type of work was often done by immigrants and paid for under the table. Motivation to take one of the part-time jobs in the official labour market has more commonly to do with childcare in Italy than in Finland (European Foundation ). These data as well as previous studies show that a proportion of Italian women with small children would prefer working shorter hours (Addabbo : ). This was also the case with Chiara and Sabrina, who would have preferred part-time work, but a fear of losing the job entirely prevented them even from asking for a part-time arrangement. Experiments in working hours in the Finnish municipal sector show a similar pattern: mothers of small children would prefer shorter working hours (Anttila and Tyrväinen : ). In my Finnish data, however, this pattern was not visible. Flaquer claims that southern European labour unions are male-dominated and thus the reconciliation of work and family life is not high on their agendas (: ). Finland does have explicit measures for combining family life with employment, but as a result of its segregated labour markets the costs of these measures are spread unevenly. Labour unions and employers in femaledominated sectors are campaigning against this situation. Negotiations between family members One significant event that creates a need for negotiation and change is death. In several interviews the participants connected the death of an elderly spouse to the beginning of an illness or worsening functional capacities of the remaining elderly relative. When two elderly persons live together, the primary source of help is the spouse (Qureshi and Simons : ; Finch : ; Gothóni : ; Lehto et al. : ). When the spouse dies, the widow loses the most important source of help and hence turns to other sources. Loss of a partner may also cause depression that in turn lowers the functional capacities and spirits of the person. These kinds of instances were present in the samples from both countries. However, gendered expectations, especially for aged men, in relation to household tasks are strikingly different in Finland and in Italy. Ilaria’s father lost his wife and son in car accidents. These two losses, eight years apart, were interpreted by Ilaria and her siblings as a signal that they needed to provide care for their father. He was invited to come and live with his daughters but at first he refused. Finally, he accepted Ilaria’s offer. Ilaria defines her -year-old father as totally independent as he continues working and having active hobbies like mountain climbing. Similarly, Monica has helped her father-in-law with household chores since he was widowed. In Finland the course of events is quite different. When Elvi’s mother could not manage to cook any more, her father learned how to do it. The same happened with Leena’s widowed father, who now manages his own washing, cooking and going to bed despite the fact that he is using a wheelchair. 

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The loss of an elderly partner does not always lead to a need for help. On the contrary, for the carer it can end a care relationship and ease the workload. However, none of the respondents wished for the death of the elderly person they cared for. Pirkko felt relieved after her mother died and long after her death, hearing the sound of an ambulance, she was happy to know that it was not her mother after yet another infarct. Arja, on the other hand, fears the death of her mother, not only because of the loss but also because it will once again bring up the issue of money and the quarrels related to it. The Italian participants did not have intensive care relationships that had ended before the interviews.

Conclusions This small-scale comparison reveals many situations where the structural (welfare state) circumstances create differing actions and responses by the dual carers. Some clearly cultural differences also become evident. In the stories of the Finnish participants, the social services have a much more visible role. In Italy the elderly with incapacities mainly move closer to relatives—or relatives move closer to the elderly—but in Finland the elderly move to institutions, service houses or flats with easier living conditions. Also the support that the carer gets comes from different sources: in Italy from the informal sector and the black market and in Finland from the public sector and, to a lesser extent, the private sector. As a consequence, the parties involved in the negotiations are different in the two countries. The Italian participants negotiate mainly with the elderly, the kin and the immigrant helpers, while the Finnish participants negotiate with the elderly, the kin and the employees of social and health-care services. Hospitalization after an accident or an illness seems to be a shortcut to the social services for the elderly in Finland. In the interviews, the social services personnel are portrayed as allies of the carer, but the health care personnel are seen as something to fight against in order to get what the elderly person needs and has the right to. In the Italian data, hospitalization did not bring about such consequences. Negotiations with the public sector also mean that the issues of rights and legal entitlements come into question whereas, when negotiating mainly with family members and informally employed helpers, they do not appear. A lack of rights creates instability and feelings of isolation, making people feel that there is nothing to fall back on. Handling somebody else’s money creates difficulties and suspicions of misuse only in the Finnish cases. However, in one sense, monetary matters are identical in the two countries: the financial costs of care (that are not carried by the municipalities) are covered by the elderly people themselves. Since both countries have an extensive pension system, elderly people are able to cover these expenses, even though female pensioners are in a less advantageous position in both countries. Social security benefits are also a welfare state provision that matters very much for the two-front carers. Family benefits, mainly geared to families with children, help the Finnish dual carers. Maternity and parental leave, and to some extent child home-care allowances, afford them at least some kind of 

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income (together with job security) and, thus, time to care also for their elderly relatives. The Italian participants do not have this advantage as most of them had only very short periods of leave after having a child. This was probably a reason why some of them—unlike their Finnish counterparts— would have preferred working part-time. However, part-time work is not an answer to the demands of care if related compensations and care benefits are not introduced. Without these compensations, increasing part-time work would add to the feminization of care and poverty. Overall, the role of employment was fairly fixed in these care life stories. Few participants changed their work arrangements for care reasons. If they did, it was for the children, to have more time for them. Care of the elderly seems to be something that should be carried on alongside employment. This comparison demonstrates how different welfare states and cultural contexts are manifested in the actions of individuals. One can always argue that differences in the role of the family derive from cultural and normative diversity. I would rather argue that these care life stories contain several similar elements and reveal an astonishingly similar way of reasoning in the given circumstances, especially in relation to the care of the elderly. It is the welfare state with its provisions and non-provisions that brings out the differences.

Acknowledgements The writing of this paper has been supported by the H. Weijola Foundation and the Alli Paasikivi Foundation. Notes . A traditional life-annuity is used mainly in farming households with retired parents. One child continues the family farm, providing a reasonable income for the parents for the rest of their lives. Accommodation is usually provided at the farm as well. . Parents in Finland are eligible for child home-care allowance until their youngest child turns three, and if the child is not in municipal childcare. In , the flatrate benefit was $./month/first child under three. Other children under 3 get $./month, and other children under  (that is, under school age) get $./ month. The benefit is taxable. In addition, if family income is low, it can receive a maximum supplement of $./month. Furthermore, some local authorities pay additional local supplements.

References Addabbo, T. (), Part-time work in Italy. In H.-P. Blossfeld and C. Hakim (eds), Between Equalization and Marginalization: Women Working Part-time in Europe and the United States of America, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. –. Ala-Nikkola, M. (), Sairaalassa, kotona vai vanhainkodissa? [In a Hospital, at Home or in a Nursing Home?], Acta Universitatis Tamperensis , Tampere: University of Tampere. Anttila, T. and Tyrväinen P. (), Kuntasektorin työaikakokeilut: tavoitteet, toteutus ja tulokset [Experiments with Working Hours in the Municipal Sector: Targets, Implementation and Results], Helsinki: Työministeriö.

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Family Commitments under Negotiation Anttonen, A. and Sipilä, J. (), Suomalaista sosiaalipolitiikkaa [Finnish Social Policy], Tampere: Vastapaino. Bertaux, D. and Kohli, M. (), The life story approach: a continental view, Annual Review of Sociology, : –. Chamberlayne, P. and King, A. (), Biographical approaches in comparative work: the “Cultures of Care” project. In L. Hantrais and S. Mangen (eds), CrossNational Research Methods in the Social Sciences, London: Pinter, pp. –. Chamberlayne, P. and King, A. (), Cultures of Care: Biographies of Carers in Britain and the Two Germanies, Bristol: Policy Press. Convery, J. and Cioni, E. (), Italy. In T. Blackman, S. Brodhurst and J. Convery (eds), Social Care and Social Exclusion: A Comparative Study of Older People’s Care in Europe, Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. –. Della Sala, V. (), “Modernization” and welfare-state restructuring in Italy: the impact on child care. In S. Michel and R. Mahon (eds), Child Care Policy at the Crossroads: Gender and Welfare State Restructuring, New York: Routledge, pp. –. European Commission (), Social Protection for Dependency in Old Age in  EU Member States and Norway, Brussels: European Commission. Finch, J. (), Family Obligations and Social Change, Cambridge: Polity Press. Finch, J. and Mason, J. (), Negotiating Family Responsibilities, London: Routledge. Flaquer, L. (), Family Policy and Welfare States in Southern Europe, Working Paper núm , Barcelona: Institut de Ciències Politiques i Socials. Accessed  April . Available at: http://www.diba.es/icps/uk/presentacio/presentacio.htm. Gothóni, T. (), Omaiset—loppuunpalaneita ihmisiä vai käyttämätön voimavara? [Relatives— Burnout People or an Unused Resource?], Helsinki: Sosiaali-ja terveysministeriö. Kartovaara, L. (), Suomalainen lapsi [A Finnish Child], Helsinki: Tilastokeskus. Kröger, T. (), Comparative Research on Social Care: The State of the Art, Brussels: European Commission. Lehto, J., Aalto, A.-R., Päivärinta, E. and Järvinen, A. (), Mistä apu ikääntyneille? Tuloksia yhdeksän kunnan -vuotta täyttäneille tehdystä kyselystä. [Where Does Help Come from for Aged People? Results from a Questionnaire Administered to Persons over  in Nine Municipalities], Helsinki: Stakes. Mabbet, D. and Bolderson, H. (), Theories and methods in comparative social policy. In J. Clasen (ed.), Comparative Social Policy: Concepts, Theories and Methods, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. –. Millar, J. and Warman, A. (), Family Obligations in Europe, London: Family Policy Studies Centre. Novinskey, C. M. (), Women, Employment and Family Life: A Comparative Study on Spanish and Italian Reconciliation Policies. Paper given at ESPAnet Conference, Copenhagen, – November. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (), Part-time Work in Europe. Accessed  April . Available at: http://www.eurofound.ie/. Qureshi, H. and Simons, K. (), Resources within families: caring for elderly people. In J. Brannen and G. Wilson (eds), Give and Take in Families: Studies in Resource Distribution, London: Allen and Unwin, pp. –. Roots, C. S. (), The Sandwich Generation: Adult Children Caring for Aging Parents, New York: Garland Publishing. Saraceno, C. (), The ambivalent familism of the Italian welfare state, Social Politics, , : –. Savola, L. (), Naiset Suomen työmarkkinoilla -luvulla [Women in the Finnish Labour Market in the ], Helsinki: Tilastokeskus. Schlesinger, B. (), The sandwich generation as a growing cross-cultural family pattern: a review. Paper given at the nd International CFR Seminar, Genders, Generations and Families, Murikka, – June.

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Minna Zechner Schunk, M. (), Constructing models of the welfare mix: care options of frail elders. In L. Hantrais and S. Mangen (eds), Cross-National Research Methods in the Social Sciences, London: Pinter, pp. –. Statistics Finland (), Employment. Accessed  December . Available at: http://www.stat.fi. Tester, S. (), Community Care for Older People: A Comparative Perspective, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Trifiletti, R. (), Restructuring social care in Italy. In J. Lewis (ed.), Gender, Social Care and Welfare State Restructuring in Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. –. Trifiletti, R., Pratesi, A. and Simoni, S. (), Care Arrangements in Dual-Career Families. National Report: Italy, SOCCARE Project Report .. Accessed  December . Available at: http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/sospol/soccare/reports.htm. Tuominen, E., Niemelä, H., Nyman, H., Ruhanen, E. and Elo, K. (), Eläkkeensaajat ja eläketulot. In Eläkeläisten toimeentulo -luvulla [Pensioners’ Income in the s], Helsinki: Eläketurvakeskus, pp. –. Ungerson, C. (), Policy Is Personal: Sex, Gender and Informal Care, London: Tavistock. Wærness, K. (), Informal and formal care in old age: what is wrong with the new ideology in Scandinavia today? In C. Ungerson (ed.), Gender and Caring: Work and Welfare in Britain and in Scandinavia, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp. –. Williams, F. (), Changing Families—Changing Values? Paper given at the launch of Parents’ Week in the National Family and Parenting Institute, London. Accessed  August . Available at: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cava/.

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Title O riginal Article December  Blackwell Oxford, SPOL © - Social Blackwell Policy UK Publishing,  Publishing & Administration Ltd. 

6 Work and Care Strategies of European Families: Similarities or National Differences? Trine P. Larsen

Introduction The male breadwinner/female housewife model is declining across Europe as a result of rising female employment rates, changing family structures and increasing demands for a flexible and inclusive labour market (EspingAndersen : ; Leira : ). As more women, including mothers, have entered paid work, the structures of daily care arrangements are finding new forms and may even indicate a gradual convergence between European families (Leira : –). This paper examines the fine detail of European families’ daily childcare arrangements and the ways in which these are impacted by working schedules, gender roles, availability of care facilities, earnings, age of children and parents’ educational background. It argues that national differences may not be as marked as often indicated by countrybased surveys. This is due to the fact that families in similar work and care situations face the same problems of balancing two full-time jobs and care responsibilities. It might therefore be expected that there are structural similarities in patterns of families’ care arrangements, transcending national traditions. In the following, a brief overview of the main characteristics of European welfare settlements, as well as of the work and care patterns across Europe, is presented before I move on to discuss briefly contemporary theories on families’ work–life balance. Finland, Portugal, Italy and the UK represent four distinct welfare settlements with different breadwinner models. The methodology and the data for the comparative analysis are then presented. After that, the daily care arrangements of the selected families are examined. Characteristics of Welfare States and Work–Care Patterns across Europe The main characteristics of the welfare states in Britain, Finland, Italy and Portugal are, according to Esping-Andersen’s regime classification, that

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Trine P. Larsen Figure  Labour market participation of women and men aged – in Finland, Italy, Portugal and the UK (%)

Sources: Eurostat (a: tables A, A); OECD (: tables ., .); OECD (). Note: Fathers and mothers mean here parents aged  –  looking after children under .

Britain belongs to the liberal regime, as the provision of care services is left to the market, and family benefits are targeted at the poorest and most vulnerable children; Finland, with its high levels of public care and universal family services, represents the Scandinavian regime type; while Italy and Portugal, with their very weak welfare services and strong family networks, belong to the corporatist model, but can also be seen as representing a fourth, Southern European model, where services are provided mainly by the family (Esping-Andersen : ; Perrons :  – ; Ghysels : ). When Esping-Andersen’s four welfare regimes are combined with empirical data on the levels of female labour market participation, it becomes evident that Finland, Portugal, Italy and Britain represent four distinct welfare regimes with different constellations of the breadwinner model. Men’s employment rates are hardly affected by childcare responsibilities anywhere, but periods of having and raising children impact everywhere on women’s participation in paid work (see figure ). However, there are large differences in this impact across the four countries. Mothers in Portugal and Finland often work full-time despite the differences in the coverage levels of care services between these two countries, while British mothers tend to work part-time. In Italy, a large group of women leave the labour market for periods of childrearing. Despite the different service levels and employment trends of women in the four countries, recent surveys imply some similarities across Europe. Women’s labour market participation has risen remarkably over the last 

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three decades. In , some . per cent of women in the EU were in paid work, marking an increase of more than  percentage points since  (OECD , ). At the same time, the traditional male breadwinner model has declined in European households and it has been to a varying degree replaced by a dual-earner model with two partners who are working regardless of their status as parents (Eurostat a: ). Women’s working patterns have changed, and recent attitude data show a desire for a more equal division of childcare and household chores among European citizens. Nevertheless, recent surveys indicate that the main responsibility for care continues to fall on women (European Value Study : , ; Eurostat b: –). Women are twice as likely as men to be involved in informal childcare and it is primarily women who reduce their workload or even leave the labour market during periods of childrearing (Eurostat a: tables A, A). Indeed, with respect to the care patterns of European families, these data indicate some overall similarities across Europe. When focusing on the care patterns of particular kinds of European families who share similar work and care situations, the similarities may be even more marked. The following section presents a theoretical framework for assessing the similarities among the British, Portuguese, Italian and Finnish families. After that, I will examine the daily care arrangements of the selected families.

Contemporary Theories on Families’ Work–Life Balance Strategies Most contemporary research on dual-earner families tends to involve large quantitative, country-based analyses. They often describe welfare state provision in relation to women’s access to the labour market and concentrate on national diversities rather than on similarities in dual-earners’ care arrangements (see, for instance, Lewis ; Drobnic and Blossfeld ; Leira ). Moreover, as the main emphasis of existing research on dual-earners is often to explain families’ division of paid and unpaid work, the range of theoretical contributions derived from this research only indirectly refers to the structure of childcare arrangements. In this context, childcare is often seen as a component of household chores rather than as a separate activity (Cohen : ; Sundström and Duvander : ). Furthermore, the majority of theories relevant to childcare give only a partial picture of the care arrangements, as the concept has been arranged into dichotomies between public and private, professional versus nonprofessional, as well as paid and unpaid work. It is therefore sensible to use a broad definition of childcare that transcends these dichotomies and that makes a distinction between childcare and other household chores. Childcare is here defined as the “assistance that is provided in order to help children with the activities of their daily lives. It can be provided as either paid or unpaid work by professionals or non-professionals, and it can take place within the public and/or private sphere”. Formal service provisions from the public, the commercial and the voluntary organizations, along with informal care support provided by family members, relatives and other close persons, are included within this definition of childcare (Kröger : ). 

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Trine P. Larsen

Families’ childcare arrangements can be understood in terms of the intersection of social practices, the cultural system and the social policy system (see, for instance, Lane : –; Perrons :  –; Pfau-Effinger : ; Drobnic and Blossfeld : ). The latter concerns the different national welfare state provisions and programmes relevant to family care; the cultural system refers to the social and legal norms and traditions of gender roles within the societies; while social practices include the actual distribution of care burdens within families’ daily life. Depending on the influence of social practices, the gender system and the social policy system, care arrangements can vary considerably from one family to another (Trifiletti et al. : ). It is the model of care derived from social practices which is at the centre of attention in this paper. The focus is on how families negotiate their respective work–life balance strategies rather than on the cultural system and national welfare state services. Families’ work–life balance strategies refer to the relationship between work and life outside work. It is a highly contested concept, as work and life outside work have different meanings depending on interpretation (Guest : ). Work–life balance strategies are here seen as the choices families make on a day-to-day basis to “reconcile paid work commitments with the responsibilities of parenting and childrearing” (Kay : ). Indeed, different factors impact families’ work–life balance strategies. Most commentators agree that families’ daily work and care arrangements are influenced by the provision of welfare services, the norms and traditions of the society regarding gender roles, individual perceptions and attitudes towards work and care, the age of the children, parents’ educational background, earnings and working schedule (Hochschild and Machung : –; Brines :  –; Crompton and Harris a: ; Pfau-Effinger :  – ; Blossfeld and Drobnic :  –; Windebank : ). These explanatory factors have mostly been used to highlight differences rather than similarities between dual-earner households (see, for instance, Brines ; Crompton ; Drobnic and Blossfeld ). However, in the following analysis these factors will be used to identify similarities among a selected group of dual-earner families from four countries.

The Methodology and Data Set Used This analysis of European families in similar work and care situations is based on interviews with dual-earner families, mainly mothers, conducted in Finland, Portugal, Italy and the UK during the period – by the SOCCARE Project. In contrast to most contemporary research on dual-earner families, this analysis does not use the nationality of these families as the selection criterion. Instead, their working hours and childcare responsibilities are used as the common denominators. This means that the data do not include an equal number of families from each country. The main reason for such a choice is that selecting families on the basis of their nationality would mean that I implicitly assumed that families differ according to their nationality. By using the couples’ working hours and childcare responsibilities as the selection criteria such assumptions are eliminated. The number of weekly working hours of both partners is set at – hours per week, the 

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most common working pattern for European employees (Eurostat : ). Furthermore, only families caring for at least one child under the age of  were included, excluding families with care responsibilities only for older children and/or elderly relatives. Out of the SOCCARE data set of  interviews with working multicareer or migrant couples,  families matched the selection criteria. Ten of them came from a different ethnic background than the country they lived in. Most of the selected couples worked between  and  hours, while only eight individuals, mainly women, worked fewer hours. These families typically included one child or two children with an age range from  months to  years. However, two families had three children, and one family cared for five children. The selected families include seven Italian, ten Finnish, five British and five Portuguese.

Daily Care Arrangements of the Families In their daily care arrangements, most of the families tend to rely on a combination of formal care supplemented by informal care provided by relatives or friends (see table ). Only one Italian family relies entirely on informal care while nine families (three from Finland, one from Portugal, two from Italy and three from Britain) manage to cover their daily care needs by relying solely on formal care. Also, in emergency situations, such as a child being ill over longer periods of time and during summer vacations, these families manage without help from friends or relatives, except for one Finnish (FINMC; see note to table ) and a British (UKMC) family. In such situations, these two families resemble the other families in relying on a combination of informal and formal care. Indeed, this implies that there is a similar need among most families to use both the formal care services and informal care to supplement each other (table ). Another common characteristic for these families is that trying to combine work and care is a real puzzle for many of them. It is often subject to much planning and negotiation between the partners. As a result, many of these care arrangements are fragile and unstable: the care provided by the parents varies from week to week depending on their work schedules, and if sudden changes happen, e.g. a child gets ill or a parent’s working schedule changes, a reorganization of the current care arrangement is needed. An example is a Finnish family, where the mother reports: “You have to constantly fit timetables together. If you do not manage to do that, one of the parents has to cancel a work trip or change the date of a meeting or something. We constantly have some small-scale negotiations going on and for that we have a calendar on the wall at home where we sign up our forthcoming duties so that the other can fit her or his comings and goings around it. If my husband is away from home on a certain day, I cannot be. Usually everything works out and I manage to organize my work in a way that also suits my husband’s schedule.” (FINMC) The result of the fragile and unstable care arrangements is a high stress level in many families. In addition, many respondents complain that they do 

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Trine P. Larsen Table  Families’ use of childcare providers according to nationality Formal Total public + formal private + informal care

Informal care only

Formal public care only

Formal private care only

Formal public + formal private care

Formal public + informal care

Formal private + informal care

Finnish Italian Portuguese British

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

Total

















not have enough time for themselves, that they cannot spend enough time with their children and/or that their partners are not involving themselves enough in the daily childcare tasks. Some very common remarks in the interviews are that: “I am tired.” (FINMC) “I cannot handle this any more.” (UKMC) “I feel guilty for the long hours the child spends in the crèche.” (FINMF) “Combining work and the care of three children is a hard job.” “I would like to have some time of my own.”

(ITMC)

(FINMC)

“Parents must give them [the children] time. It is this time which I would like my husband to give more of.” (PMC) It is not only the parents who complain about their current work–life balance situations; some interviewees also report that their children complain about the effects. “I was too often away from home. Our daughter almost started to shun me and was just daddy’s girl.” (FINMC) “When I used to work longer hours, the nanny took care of him and when I came back the child shouted ‘what do you come for, go back to work!’ ” (ITMC) These statements imply that many of the interviewees are not as happy with their current situation as indicated by the results of a recent survey regarding 

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employees’ satisfaction with their work–life balance (Kauppinen : ). However, a smaller number of families in the sample seem to be satisfied with their balance, as they have been able to achieve relatively stable care arrangements (FINMC; FINMC; ITMC; ITMC; PMF; PMF; PMF; PMF). Indeed, the analysis showed some common constraints among the families with respect to reconciling work and family life. The extent to which this also means that families organize their daily care arrangement in similar ways is examined below. This is done by focusing on the ways families get ready in the morning, bring and fetch the children and share childcare tasks during weekends, evenings and emergency situations (e.g. a sick child or school vacations). Three care patterns can be identified with respect to families’ ways of coordinating their day-to-day care arrangements. One pattern is that parents help each other by dividing the childcare either into specific periods or into specific chores. A second pattern is that a third person, either a grandparent or a nanny, comes to help in getting the children ready in the morning. In this second pattern, there are two variations: one where the couple tends to share the care tasks equally and another where one parent is responsible for childcare. The third care pattern consists of one parent, mainly the mother, being solely responsible for the care tasks. Several families share their care tasks (table ). Some national and other variations can be seen. Many parents tend to share some care tasks while other tasks are left solely to one parent, mainly the mother. Indeed, there seems to be a more equal care division among the couples during evenings, weekends and in emergency situations than in their coordination of mornings and transportation tasks. This implies some similarities in families’ childcare patterns across the countries. However, variations also exist within the different categories of sharing patterns. Some families appear to have more in common with families living in other countries than with other families living in their home country. Although  families tend to share the care responsibilities during their mornings, three families ( FINMC; ITMC; UKMC) coordinate their mornings by dividing the childcare into specific periods; in the other families one parent is responsible for certain tasks while their partner is responsible for other chores. An example of a typical morning timetable for the majority of these families is: “The respondent [the mother] wakes up at .. Then, while she is having a bath, her boyfriend dresses the child and makes the bed. After this, while the respondent’s boyfriend dresses, the respondent prepares breakfast.” (PMF) A large group of families (including three from Finland, three from Italy, three from Portugal and one from the UK) rely on a care pattern where it is primarily the mother who gets the children ready in the morning. A usual morning for these families is that: “ The mother leaves home between  and . a.m. Before that she wakes up the daughters and makes breakfast for the family.” (FINMC) 

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Trine P. Larsen Table  Daily and emergency care arrangements of the selected families Mornings

Transportation tasks

Evenings and weekends

Sharing the care tasks equally between parents

FINMC FINMC FINMC FINMC FINMF FINMF ITMC ITMC PMF UKMC UKMC UKMF UKMF

FINMC FINMC FINMC FINMF FINMF FINMF ITMC PMC PMF UKMC UKMF UKMF

FINMC FINMC FINMC FINMC FINMC FINMF FINMF ITMC ITMC ITMC ITMC ITMC PMC PMF PMF UKMC UKMC UKMC UKMF UKMF

FINMF ITMC PMF UKMC UKMF

Sharing the care tasks equally between parents with help from a third person

FINMC* ITMC

FINMC* ITMC ITMC ITMC PMC

FINMC FINMF PMC

FINMC FINMC FINMC FINMC FINMC FINMF FINMF ITMC ITMC ITMC ITMC ITMC PMC PMF UKMC UKMF

One parent responsible for the care tasks with help from a third person

ITMF

ITMF PMF UKMC



Emergencies

FINMC** FINMC PMF

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Work and Care Strategies of European Families Table 2 Continued Mornings

Transportation tasks

Evenings and weekends

Emergencies

One parent responsible for the care tasks

FINMC FINMC FINMF ITMC ITMC** ITMF PMC PMC PMF PMF UKMC

FINMC FINMC FINMC ITMC ITMF PMF UKMC

FINMC ITMF ITMF PMF

ITMF ITMF UKMC**

Total

27

27

27

27

Note: MC stands for multi-career families. These families originate from the countries they live in. MF stands for migrant families. * In this family, it is only the nanny who is responsible for the transportation tasks. ** In these families, the father is the one responsible for getting the children ready in the morning.

The three couples (FINMC, ITMC, ITMF) who rely on help from a third person during their mornings, tend to divide the care responsibilities differently. One of the two Italian families (ITMC) shares the care tasks by taking alternate turns. In the Finnish family, it is often the nanny who gets the children ready in the morning, and in the case of the other Italian family (ITMF), the grandmother helps the mother in the morning. Despite the differences, many families from different countries share a similar care arrangement in terms of how parents coordinate their mornings. For example, a Finnish family (FINMC) seems to have more in common with a Portuguese family (PMF) and a British family (UKMC) than with most of the other Finnish families: in all of these three families it is the mother who prepares breakfast for the whole family and gets the children ready for school. Similarly, the morning arrangement of an Italian family (ITMC), having one parent responsible for certain tasks and the other for other chores, differs from the other Italian families but is similar to the pattern of a Portuguese (PMF), a Finnish (FINMC) and a British family (UKMC). A third example is the parents of a Finnish (FINMC), a British (UKMC) and an Italian family (ITMC) who all tend to organize their mornings the same way by being main carers on alternate days. Similar to the families’ morning arrangements, their arrangements of transporting the children to and from the different care facilities have some 

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common features. It is primarily the parents themselves who are responsible for these transportation tasks although eight families (mainly Italian) rely to varying degrees on a third person (see table ). The most common transporting arrangement is based on an equal sharing of the tasks. In three families (FINMC, UKMC and UKMF), parents fetch and carry the children together, while nine couples divide the tasks by taking alternate turns. A typical transportation arrangement for most of these families is that of a Portuguese family: “Her husband takes them [the children] to school. They stay all day at school and around  o’clock, the respondent [the mother] picks up the children at school and goes home.” (PMC) However, some cases (FINMC, PMC, UKMC) differ from this care pattern, as one parent takes one child to school while the other parent brings the other child/ren to a different school. Although many couples tend to share the transport tasks, seven families rely on an arrangement where only one parent, often the mother, is responsible. A typical arrangement is that: “ The mother and the son leave home at about  a.m. and the mother first takes the son to the family day-care centre and then goes to work. The workday of the mother normally ends at . p.m. and she drives to pick up her son from the day-care at . p.m.” (FINMC) Indeed, a resemblance can be seen among the families, and in many cases couples have a lot in common with families from other countries. As a result, families in this sample tend to a varying degree to organize their day-to-day arrangements in similar ways although they come from different national backgrounds and their division of childcare responsibilities varies during the day. The variations may to a large extent be due to different factors such as gender roles, the couples’ earnings and educational background, the age of the children, the parents’ working schedule, and their reliance on care facilities.

Gender Division of Childcare Among the selected families, the interviewees perceived the sharing of the care tasks equally in  families. In  families, the mother was seen as the dominant carer: she was the main organizer of the care arrangement, although her partner participated in the daily childcare tasks. In six families, the male partner hardly participated in the care of the child/ren, leaving childcare responsibilities entirely to the mother. Five Finnish, three British and two Italian respondents perceived the sharing of care as equal (see table ). Among this group of couples, three families were from a different ethnic background from that of the country they lived. In contemporary research, Finland is usually seen as a dual-earner society where women are primarily seen as workers rather than as mothers and 

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Work and Care Strategies of European Families Table  Gender division of childcare tasks within the family according to nationality Equal sharing

Mother dominant

Mother solo

Total

Finnish

FINMC FINMC FINMC FINMF FINMF

FINMC FINMC FINMC FINMF

FINMC



British

UKMC UKMC UKMF

UKMF

UKMC



PMC PMF

PMC PMF PMF





Portuguese

Italian

ITMC ITMC

ITMC ITMF ITMC ITMC

ITMF

Total









housewives. The over-representation of Finnish families in the equal sharing category seems to support the strong influence of national cultures on families’ work and care situations. However, among the Finnish couples sharing the care responsibilities equally, only three families are of Finnish origin, implying that the impact of national culture may not induce different sharing patterns to the degree often anticipated. The mother dominant category consists of four Italian, four Finnish, one British and two Portuguese couples, among which there are four migrant families. Furthermore, in the mother solo category, there are three Portuguese families together with one British, one Italian and one Finnish family; among them are three families from a different ethnic background. Many Finnish and British families also share the morning chores and the transportation tasks equally, while Italian and Portuguese couples often share the transportation tasks but the task of getting children ready in the morning is primarily left to the mother (table ). These differences are along the traditional lines. However, the relatively high proportions of British and Italian as well as migrant couples sharing the care responsibilities equally differ from the classic way of categorizing European families. The UK, Italy and Portugal have historically been classified as having a strong male breadwinner model where women are generally perceived as wives and mothers rather than workers (Lewis : ; Perrons : ; Ellingsæter : ; Wall 

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et al. : –). In addition, we have already seen that most families from all countries share childcare during evenings and weekends (table ). A similar tendency to share the care responsibilities equally in emergency situations was seen in as many as  families. This implies that the traditional way of classifying families according to gender roles proves misleading when focusing on families in similar work and care situations. Nationality does not seem to induce different solutions. Instead, families in similar work and care situations seem to divide the care tasks in rather similar ways. However, when focusing on other household chores, a closer connection to traditional gender roles can be seen. It is very often the mother who takes a leading role in household tasks such as cleaning, cooking, ironing, shopping and washing across the sample, although some families have a domestic employee to help with these tasks. Indeed, this seems to support Theodore Cohen’s argument that fathers often play an essential role in the childcare but their involvement in other domestic chores is limited (Cohen : ). Such a differentiation between household chores and childcare responsibilities was evident in most of the selected families. Only a few couples (PMF, ITMC, UKMF) shared such tasks equally, implying that families in similar work and care situations organize their household chores in very similar ways and that national traditions do not induce different solutions in this respect. In addition, the traditional way of classifying families according to gender roles has often proved misleading. Contemporary research has shown that other factors—such as parents’ individual perceptions and attitudes towards care, their educational attainment, earnings and working schedules, along with the age of children and the availability of childcare facilities— influence the gender division and thereby parents’ work–life balance strategies (Hochschild and Machung ; Crompton and Harris a: ; Drobnic and Blossfeld ).

Individual Perceptions and Attitudes towards Care Some commentators like Jan Windebank () and Birgit Pfau-Effinger () argue that individual perceptions and attitudes towards work influence the structure of a care arrangement in various ways. Windebank argues, for instance, that some women prevent their men from participating in the nurturing of the child because they do not believe the father is capable of taking care of the child (Windebank : ). Such attitudes were reflected within few families. An example is the case of PMC, where the interviewee reports that she is protective with the children, even when the other person who stays with them is the father. Another factor affecting the structure of the care arrangement can be men’s and women’s orientations towards work and care responsibilities. Some women and men tend to be more oriented towards work and a professional career whereas other men and women prioritize parenthood and the family, working fewer hours a week (Pfau-Effinger : ). Many families in our sample reported that they had a very child-oriented life as 

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Work and Care Strategies of European Families

they valued family life higher than work, but some had a different view, work being a higher priority. In many families this meant that those parents who were more engaged with their career development devoted less time to their children while parents with a more family-oriented view spent more time with their children. For example, a Finnish mother said that the main reason for her to reduce her working hours was: “ To have more time with children and less hurry. I would like to be available when my daughters return home from school.” (FINMC) Another example is an Italian couple, where a father reported: “It [the job] is necessary to enjoy family life and social relations too . . . It [the job] was really important before [having children], but now, it still counts a lot, but much less.” (ITMC) In this particular family, the father took an active part in the care arrangement while in other families, men who favour their work tend, according to their wives, to spend less time with the children. In addition, the families’ choice of care facilities is also closely linked to their attitudes towards care. An example is a Finnish family (FINMC) who employed a nanny because they believed that children are best cared for in the home and because they also preferred to be independent from the obligations that informal care often creates. Similarly, some families relying purely on formal care have chosen this care arrangement as they prefer being independent (ITMC, UKMC, UKMF). This demonstrates that individual attitudes and perceptions of care also impact on families’ choice of care form as well as their gender roles. Thus, in some cases, the classic way of dividing families according to gender differences can be misleading.

Educational Attainment of Parents According to the neoclassical economic tradition, economic factors determine families’ division of paid and unpaid work, and thereby the structure of the care arrangement (Brines : ; Drobnic and Blossfeld : ). However, the impact of earnings on the families’ care arrangement is difficult to assess, as most selected couples have an average income. Parents’ educational attainment is another factor that recent research has found to have an impact on the division of domestic labour. A more egalitarian division can be traced in families where both parents have a high educational level, while a more traditional division of domestic labour can be seen in less educated couples (Crompton and Harris a, b; Blossfeld and Drobnic : ). All the couples who shared the care responsibilities equally had high educational attainments, while there were only three such families belonging to the mother solo category (see table ). In addition, it can be seen that five families within the mother dominant and mother solo category are low-skilled workers, implying a close correlation between families’ care arrangements 

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Trine P. Larsen Table  Educational background of the parents and gender division of childcare tasks High educational attainment

Low educational attainment

Total



Equal sharing

FINMC FINMC FINMC FINMF FINMF ITMC ITMC UKMC UKMF UKMC

Mother dominant

FINMC FINMC FINMC FINMF ITMC UKMF

ITMC ITMC ITMF PMC PMF



Mother solo

FINMC PMC UKMC

ITMF PMF PMF*



Total







Note: High educational attainment refers to any higher education: from the high school level to university degrees. Low educational attainment refers to anything lower than the high school level. * In this family, the husband has a university degree.

and parents’ educational background. This seems to be reinforced when looking at the day-to-day care arrangements (table ). Among the group with low educational attainments, it is primarily the mother who gets the children ready in the morning and is responsible for the transportation tasks (ITMC, ITMF, ITMF, PMF, PMF). During evenings, weekends and emergency situations only two of these families (ITMC, PMF) share the care responsibilities. The high-skilled workers, on the other hand, share childcare tasks equally during weekends and evenings. However, during the week, the mother gets the children ready in the morning in almost all of these families. The transportation tasks follow a similar trend, being mostly performed by one parent only. This shows that parents’ educational background has an important impact on these families’ work–life balance strategies and on their gender division 

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Work and Care Strategies of European Families Table  Age of the youngest child and gender division of childcare tasks –

 –

Total

Equal sharing

FINMC FINMC FINMC FINMF ITMF UKMC UKMC

FINMF ITMC ITMC



Mother dominant

FINMC FINMF ITMC ITMC ITMF PMC PMF UKMF

FINMC FINMC ITMC



Mother solo

FINMC ITMF PMC PMF PMF UKMC

Total









of care. Sharing care tasks between parents seems to be more usual among highly educated families. As most Portuguese and Italian parents are lowskilled workers and all the Finnish and British families are highly educated, it may even be questioned whether the existing dissimilarities in sharing between national samples come from differences in educational attainment level rather than from differences between national cultures.

Age of Children According to Julie Brines () and Blossfeld and Drobnic (), the age of children has a key effect on the care arrangement. They argue that fathers’ involvement in the daily care tends to increase when children grow older, while in families with small children the mother tends to be the main carer (see table ) (Brines : ; Drobnic and Blossfeld : ). Most interviewed couples have children under the age of ; only six families no longer have such young children. Of those families with older children only, none belongs to the mother solo category. However, the children’s age has only a limited impact on the gender division of care. This 

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becomes evident when focusing on how the families have coordinated their weekly care arrangements. However, many families report that when the children are older, the organization of care is no longer as stressful as it used to be. Now, due to the availability of childcare, it is easier for them to reconcile work and family life. For example, an Italian respondent reports that when her children reached the age of compulsory schooling, their care arrangement became more structured and thereby less stressful (ITMC). However, not all parents in all countries find their care arrangement becoming less stressful as the child gets older. An example from Finland: “Before, when both children were at the day-care, we did not have these problems [of combining work and care]. When one of them started school, this came out. He has a two-and-a-half-month long summer break and we have had to depend on relatives in order to manage the summer . . . This was especially the case when he was in the first and second grade, but now that he is already attending the third grade, the summer will not be a problem. He can spend days alone and maybe even wants to.” (FINMC)

Working Schedules of Parents Parents’ working schedules and the number of their weekly working hours, as well as the flexibility of their workplaces, have a crucial impact on families’ choice of work–life balance strategies. In relation to this, Joseph Pleck () argues that it is primarily fathers’ working schedules and the inflexibility of their workplaces that limits their participation in childcare. During weekends they often spend more time with their children. As similar working hours were a selection criterion for this sample, the impact of the couples’ working schedules can be analysed here only by looking at whether they have flexible, regular or irregular working hours. Furthermore, we may see which partner works the longer hours, as well as whether parents are able to get time off in care emergencies, that is, whether their workplaces are flexible. Parents’ working schedules and their numbers of working hours per week seem to have a crucial impact on the gender division among the families. Except for one family (FINMC), it is only families where the couple works the same number of hours per week that belong to the equal sharing category. Likewise, families where the man is working longer hours than his partner belong to the mother solo category or to the mother dominant category. In addition, parents who have flexible working hours, meaning parents being at least to some degree able to organize their working day, employ an equal sharing pattern. In contrast, the mother was the main carer in many couples having a different combination of flexible, regular or irregular working hours, including shift-work or travel-related work (see table ). The influence of working schedules and working hours is also reflected in the day-to-day care arrangement (see table ), as many couples tend to engage equally in the care arrangement during evenings and weekends while their involvement varies during the week (table ). Out of the four families where care tasks are not shared equally during evenings and weekends, the husband in three families works night shifts and during weekends (ITMF, 

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Work and Care Strategies of European Families Table  Working hours of parents and gender division of childcare tasks Father having longer working hours

Mother having longer working hours

Equal sharing

FINMC

Mother dominant

FINMC FINMF ITMC PMC PMC UKMF

FINMC ITMC ITMC ITMF

Mother solo

FINMC PMF PMF PMF UKMC

ITMF

Total

12

5

Both parents having the same number of working hours

Total

FINMC FINMC FINMF FINMF ITMC ITMC UKMC UKMC UKMF



FINMC





10



ITMF, PMF). This leaves a Finnish family (FINMC) as the only one to employ, during weekends and evenings, traditional gender roles that do not seem to be impacted by working schedules. Moreover, most families with flexible working hours tend to help each other in alternate ways in the morning and with the transportation tasks. A wider spread of care arrangements is seen among the ten couples with regular hours: only five families employ equal sharing in the morning while four couples share the transportation tasks (tables  and ). The main reasons given by these families are that their arrangements fit with their working hours and/or that the care facilities are on their way to work. Similarly, parents’ working schedules have an important influence in families having irregular working hours. Most of the men in these families (FINMC, ITMF, ITMC, UKMC) tend to work irregular hours in terms of shifts, while in two cases (PMC, PMC), it is the mother who has an irregular schedule. As a result, it is the parent with the most suitable timetable who gets the children ready in the morning and who is responsible for the transportation tasks. 

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Trine P. Larsen Table  Flexibility and regularity of working hours of the parents and gender division of childcare tasks Flexible working hours

Regular working hours

Irregular working hours

Equal sharing

FINMC FINMC FINMC FINMF ITMC UKMC UKMF

FINMF ITMC

UKMC*



Mother dominant

FINMC ITMC

FINMF ITMC PMF UKMF

FINMC** FINMC*** ITMC*** ITMF*** PMC*



ITMF PMF PMF UKMC

FINMC* PMC*







Mother solo

Total



Total



Notes: * Mother has irregular working hours. ** Both parents have irregular working hours. *** Father has irregular working hours.

Coordinating the care of the children according to the parents’ working schedules is an essential aspect also in families where parents work evenings and weekends. Often parents try to organize their work in such a way that one parent always stays at home with the children. For an Italian family, this has meant that the father is the main carer during weekends when the mother is working (ITMC). Indeed, this shows that families’ care arrangements are, to a large degree, organized around work. The analysis also implies that it might be easier for families to share care responsibilities when having a flexible timetable. The number of hours each parent works weekly is essential to the division of care tasks, putting in question the impact of gender differences on families’ work–life balance strategies. This seems also to be supported by the fact that the flexibility of the workplace is another crucial element in terms of families’ ways of handling care emergencies. It is mainly the parent with the most flexible working schedule, the most generous entitlements to leave and/or whose work can most easily be replaced, who takes time off when children are ill. However, 

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Work and Care Strategies of European Families Table  Families’ use of childcare providers and gender division of childcare tasks Informal care only

Equal sharing

Formal private care only

Formal public care only

Formal public + formal private care

Formal public + informal care

Formal Total Formal private + public + formal informal private + care informal care

FINMF UKMC FINMC FINMC ITMC UKMF FINMF

FINMC ITMC UKMC



FINMC FINMF ITMC PMC



Mother ITMC FINMC ITMC dominant ITMF PMF

FINMC UKMF

Mother solo

ITMF

FINMC PMC PMF PMF





Total

UKMC















it is mainly the mother who cares for the children if they are ill for longer periods although on such occasions some families also rely on their informal network, particularly grandparents. In addition, many families tend to rely on different combinations of informal care. During school vacations and if their partner is away for a longer period, parents use their own vacations and different available summer schools. An example is a Finnish family: “When my husband has a long work-trip that takes a couple of weeks, they [her parents] can offer help and come over . . . They cannot help in acute cases because they live in Tornio [500 km away], but it is different when there is a longer need for care.” (FINMC) However, it is not only the working schedules that determine the structure of the care arrangements. Many families also reported that the availability and flexibility of childcare facilities had a crucial impact on their way of organizing their daily life.

Use of Childcare Facilities The impact of national welfare service systems on families’ way of organizing their care arrangements has not yet been clarified. Recent research findings have indicated that public care facilities have a negative impact on families’ division of care responsibilities in terms of gender inequality (see, for instance, 

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Crompton ; Windebank ). On the other hand, other scholars have argued that state support leads to more equality in men’s and women’s shares of the provider role, the care responsibilities and the household work (see Perrons ; Esping-Andersen ). Therefore, the provision levels of social care services may not necessarily cause differences in the work–life balance strategies employed by European households. The families rely on a variety of care providers ranging from informal carers like relatives and friends to private and publicly funded nurseries, childminders, voluntary care institutions, as well as private and public schools. Eight families manage to cover their care needs by relying only on one source of care. However, the most common arrangement is a sort of formal care supplemented by informal care, implying that formal care services in all countries are insufficient to cover all the families’ childcare needs. The impact of the availability of childcare is difficult to assess, as most parents tend to rely on a mix of different care providers. However, it is primarily Finnish families who rely on public services. Most of the Italian and British families, along with the Portuguese families, tend to use private care facilities. The availability of welfare services may, therefore, have an impact on families’ gender division, as Finland, in contrast to Italy, Portugal and Britain, is known for its universal childcare provisions. Finnish families are also over-represented within the equal sharing category while most Portuguese families belong to the mother solo category. However, it is merely the inflexibility of the care facilities, rather than their type, that impacts families’ care arrangements. Most families also organize their work around the opening hours of the care facilities. As a Finnish mother reports: “The inflexibility [of the childcare] also gives our life some structure because we do not have any regularity in our work . . . I do not think that it should be more flexible, since I have this kind of work, because if it did, then my workday would never end. I think it is rather good that there are some limits in our life and that there are certain hours when you have to pick your children up.” (FINMC) Many families have tried to compensate for the lack of adequate services in various ways. A British family (UKMC) relies on reciprocal care exchange with friends while a Finnish family has chosen to employ a nanny to cover the gaps created by the inflexibility of public services (FINMC). Other families, particularly the Portuguese and Italian, rely on informal care provided by relatives, mainly grandparents, to cover a part of their childcare needs. As a result, the availability of care services can be argued to impact on families’ choice of care services and, to some extent, the gender division of care.

Conclusion Families in the same kind of work and care situations tend to employ the same kinds of work–life balance strategies. The childcare patterns employed by our sample transcend the traditional way of dividing European welfare states according to families’ divisions of paid and unpaid work. The work– 

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life balance strategies of many families were influenced by a number of factors, including the parents’ attitudes and perceptions towards work and family life, their educational background, the age of their children, their working hours and the availability of state-funded childcare. All these factors seemed more influential than traditional gender roles. It was apparent that flexible working hours make it easier for families to share their childcare tasks, as most couples where both partners had flexible working hours shared the care responsibilities. The number of working hours also seemed to be important, as most couples who work similar numbers shared the care tasks equally between them. On the other hand, most families had to organize their care arrangements according to the opening hours of the childcare facilities. Only a few families were able to rely purely on one type of formal care as most couples had to supplement the formal care by informal care in order to meet the gaps between the parents’ timetables and the opening hours of the formal care facilities. As a result, a new typology was developed in accordance with the parents’ own perceptions about the sharing of the childcare responsibilities in their families. This typology has three categories—“equal sharing”, “mother dominant” and “mother solo”—and it cut across the families’ nationality, implying more international similarities than are often assumed by contemporary research. The most prevalent gender divisions were the equal sharing and the mother dominant categories, indicating that, if both parents are to pursue full-time work, both of them need to be involved in the daily care of the children. However, although in many families the male partner participated on equal terms with respect to childcare, in most families it was still the mother who was responsible for household chores. Many couples employed different childcare patterns with respect to mornings, evenings, weekends and transportation of the children. Three different care patterns were identified. One pattern is that parents help each other in alternate ways either by dividing the childcare into specific periods or by one parent being responsible for certain tasks while their partner is responsible for other chores. A second pattern is that a third person, a grandparent or a nanny, comes in to help, for instance, in getting the children ready in the morning. The third care pattern consists of one parent, mainly the mother, being solely responsible for the childcare tasks. Overall, the analysis clearly indicated that families in similar work and care situations, facing the same problems in balancing two full-time jobs and childcare responsibilities, employ very similar care patterns. As a result, a family living in, for instance, Portugal had more in common with a Finnish family than with their next-door neighbour in terms of their ways of reconciling work and family life. Such similarities may also apply to other types of families, implying that the strategies of individual European families in balancing work and care may be more alike than ever imagined.

Acknowledgement This paper draws heavily on earlier work by the Finnish, Italian, Portuguese and British SOCCARE Project teams in carrying out interviews and preparing 

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background reports. Furthermore, I would like to thank John Baldock, Jan Hadlow, Jorma Sipilä and Teppo Kröger for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

References Blossfeld, H. P. and Drobnic, S. (eds) (), Careers of Couples in Contemporary Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brines, J. (), The exchange value of housework, Rationality and Society, , : – . Brines, J. (), Economic dependency, gender, and the division of labour at home, American Journal of Sociology, , : –. Cohen, T. F. (), What do fathers provide? Reconsidering the economic and nurturant dimensions of men as parents. In J. C. Hood (ed.), Men, Work and Family, London: Sage, pp. –. Crompton, R. (ed.) (), Restructuring Gender Relations and Employment: The Decline of the Male Breadwinner, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crompton, R. and Harris, F. (a), Attitudes, women’s employment, and the changing domestic division of labour: a cross-national analysis. In R. Crompton (ed.), Restructuring Gender Relations and Employment: The Decline of the Male Breadwinner, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. –. Crompton, R. and Harris, F. (b), Employment, careers and families: the significance of choice and constraint in women’s lives. In R. Crompton (ed.), Restructuring Gender Relations and Employment: The Decline of the Male Breadwinner, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. –. Drobnic, S. and Blossfeld, H. P. (), Careers of couples and trends in inequality. In H. P. Blossfeld and S. Drobnic (eds), Careers of Couples in Contemporary Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. –. Ellingsæter, A. L. (), Dual breadwinner societies: provider models in Scandinavian welfare states, Acta Sociologica, , : –. Esping-Andersen, G. (), Social Foundations of Post-industrial Economics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. European Value Study (), The European Value Study: A Third Wave, Tilburg: Tilburg University. Eurostat (), Social Situation , Brussels: European Communities. Eurostat (a), Women and Men Reconciling Work and Family Life, Statistics in Focus, Brussels: European Communities. Eurostat (b), The Life of Women and Men in Europe: A Statistical Portrait, Theme , Population and Social Conditions, Brussels: European Communities. Ghysels, J. (), Boundaries adrift: partners’ combinations of paid work and childcare time in Spain, Belgium and Denmark. Paper given at ESPANET Conference, Copenhagen, – November. Guest, D. (), Perspectives on the study of work–life balance, Social Science Information, , : –. Hochschild, A. and Machung, A. (), The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home, New York: Viking Penguin. Kauppinen, T. (), The -hour society and industrial relations strategies. Paper given at European Industrial Relations Association Conference, Norway,  June. Kay, T. (), The work–life balance in social practice, Social Policy and Society, , : –. Kröger, T. (), Comparative Research on Social Care: The State of the Art, Brussels: European Commission.

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Work and Care Strategies of European Families Lane, C. (), Gender and the labour market in Europe: Britain, Germany and France compared, Sociological Review, , : –. Leira, A. (), Working Parents and the Welfare State: Family Change and Policy Reform in Scandinavia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, J. (), Gender and the development of welfare regimes, Journal of European Social Policy, , : –. OECD (), Labour Force Statistics –, Paris: OECD. OECD (), Employment Outlook , Paris: OECD. OECD (), Employment Outlook , Paris: OECD. Perrons, D. (), Economic strategies, welfare regimes and gender inequality in employment in the European Union, European Urban and Regional Studies, , : – . Pfau-Effinger, B. (), The modernisation of family and motherhood in western Europe. In R. Crompton (ed.), Restructuring Gender Relations and Employment: The Decline of the Male Breadwinner, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. –. Pleck, J. H. (), Are “family-supportive” employer policies relevant to men. In J. C. Hood (ed.), Men, Work and Family, London: Sage, pp. –. Sundström, M. and Duvander, A. E. (), Family division of childcare: why do— or don’t Swedish fathers take parental leave, Stockholm Research Reports in Demography, : –. Trifiletti, R., Pratesi, A. and Simoni, S. (), Care Arrangements in Dual-career Families. National Report: Italy, SOCCARE Project Report .. Accessed  July . Available at: http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/sospol/soccare/reports.htm. Wall, K., São José, J. and Correia, S. (), Care Arrangements in Multi-career Families. National Report: Portugal, SOCCARE Project Report .. Accessed  July . Available at: http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/sospol/soccare/reports.htm. Windebank, J. (), Dual-earner couples in Britain and France: gender divisions of domestic labour and parenting work in different welfare states, Work, Employment and Society, , : –.

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Title O riginal Article December  Blackwell Oxford, SPOL © - Social Blackwell Policy UK Publishing,  Publishing & Administration Ltd. 

7 Caregiving in Transition in Southern Europe: Neither Complete Altruists nor Free-riders Simonetta Simoni and Rossana Trifiletti

Introduction and Background The aim of the paper is to explore whether, by focusing on the daily organization, discourse and practical strategies of families caring on two (or more) fronts, it is possible to achieve a new perspective on changes in intergenerational relations and the new demands they pose for social policies. In so doing, we attempt to bridge the gap between two debates which have developed as separate fields of research and reflection, but which need to be more closely connected to better define the needs of an ageing society: the debate on social care and the debate on the intergenerational contract. Our paper is a by-product of the research we conducted comparing the five countries of the SOCCARE Project, and focusing on multi-generation families with a double burden of care for children and elderly people at the same time.1 From this comparison, we gathered the idea of a sort of family resemblance in Italy, Portugal and even France, concerning the daily care of the elderly and children, a resemblance which contrasted those countries, in a sense, with countries belonging to other welfare regime types, Finland for the universalistic Nordic ones and the UK for the liberal ones. This similarity, however, appeared to be embedded in slightly different socio-cultural contexts of life experience for our participants in each of the three countries and, of course, in each of their three welfare systems. From this point of view France is the most notably different, since its family policies are so generous that some scholars have spoken of a mixed form of welfare regime with universalistic elements embedded in the Continental-conservative one (Létablier ), so that it approximates to Lewis’s Adult Worker-Carer regime (Lewis ). In our view, however, the similarities in the intergenerational pattern of relations seem to prevail over welfare regimes. Nevertheless, the cultural differences among the three countries seemed worthy of further investigation, since they concerned exactly the boundary between family or, better, informal care, and public intervention measures, which is so important in the fourth, Southern European regime type,

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if it exists, and in the Conservative-continental one of Esping-Andersen (). At the same time these three countries seemed to have in common— though to different extents—an emerging family type in which generations are stretched in time. They experience a very different co-survival from that usually described, as a result of increasingly anticipating the phases of life (being a child, parent, grandparent, great-grandparent . . . ). On the contrary, there seems to be emerging in Southern European countries a model of declining fertility, in which having children is so shifted towards middle age that it increasingly overlaps with the phase in which one has to take care of disabled parents, in-laws or other relatives. The idea of studying this type of family came from the classic debate on intergenerational contract (Bengston and Achenbaum ) in which it was often assumed that the mere ageing of populations would produce a new type of condition for middle-aged cohorts, especially of women in fourgeneration families. Because of longer average life spans, these families have become a statistically more frequent phenomenon throughout Europe. Whether this trend might mean a change in the intergenerational solidarity pact, however, especially in terms of equity, has been puzzling researchers for nearly twenty years ( Johnson et al. ; Laslett and Fiskin ; Walker ). Some of them formulated over-simplistic and catastrophic projections with wide resonance in public opinion (cf. Arber and Attias-Donfut , for a critique). The unsustainability of the care burden was supposed to follow. But, at the same time, several researchers, concerned about the possible social ramifications of this transformation, also point out that our knowledge in this field is still far too limited (Rossi ) and, especially, that European contexts have been under-researched (Dautzenberg et al. ). It now makes sense to ask ourselves whether we are generalizing a strictly Anglo-Saxon image of the future to all our countries. The hypothesis, in fact, has become widespread that a shortage of care resources would ensue: in four-generation families, women, in a phase of life when they would usually become grandmothers, would still have an important role as an adult child having to care, for much longer, for their very old and dependent parents or relatives (Miller ; Hicks ). All this would result in the overburdening of a cohort of women who, at the same time, at least in our three countries, have already begun to spend longer caring for their own grown-up children, who are leaving their parents’ home later and later (Cavalli and Galland , ). The image of a “sandwich generation” (Miller ; Laslett et al. ) has been criticized for overestimating burdens and underestimating meaningful exchanges in such relations (Dautzenberg et al. ). But, even if we adopt in its place, as suggested, the more value-free image of “women in the middle” (Brody ), it has to be admitted that being at the centre of demands from one’s own parents and grandchildren or grown-up children is very different from being at the centre of demands from one’s own dependent parents and young children. It is precisely the latter case we want to put at centre stage because it is usually somewhat overlooked. It also seems to be becoming more common (though luckily still involving only a minority of families) precisely in Southern 

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European countries in connection with the rising first-marriage age (and age of the mother at the first birth), which explains the exceptional fertility decrease which has been named, in doubtful taste, a “fertility strike” (EspingAndersen ; cf. Hobson ). Such a trend, on the other hand, foreshadows new and little-known types of vulnerability for the family. Finally, if the demographic factor which started the debate about a sandwich generation in four-generation families was the reduced gap between age cohorts—the age at marriage appearing to diminish in the s—it now becomes clearer that the still rare four- or even five-generation family structure is normally perceived as uncommon and experienced more as a lucky circumstance than a growing burden (Arfeux-Vaucher ). It is probably just another example of misplaced expectations about the coming disorganization of families. Not only are demographic factors probably overstated as regards other factors in the current debate about intergenerational relations and changes (Daatland ), but, at least in some cases, it seems that these same factors are oversimplified or under-represented. The lack of balance between care demands and care resources, for instance, is usually represented as a direct consequence of the ageing of the population, forgetting that the increase in the number of very old people in need of care is itself framed by other demographic circumstances such as the delay in births, as well as other socioeconomic and welfare factors. As Ian Gough () recently conjectured, the ageing of the population might even be, in a sense, an “internal” feature of welfare regimes, rather than an external universal constraint. Thus, the simple fact that four generations exist, in itself, provides little basis for predicting the form of the network of support among family members. We therefore decided to look at families with a serious overload in caring problems, regardless of the generations involved. The families caring on two fronts, we found, were mostly three-generation families, and there is a good reason for this: most often they were “care-poor” families, from countries in which a recent and rapid ageing of the population is coupled with the final effects of a long trend in declining fertility, as is common in Southern Europe, with only some differences in timing in Portugal. The paradigmatic example of this family structure with a longer interval between generations was an only child of belated birth, or the last-born of other siblings, who cared for one parent, being a late child him/herself, and, at the same time, for her own young children. “If I had had our children earlier . . . because it’s people who have their children late who find themselves in this situation with older parents and young children. That’s what the problem was . . . you are more likely to have an elderly parent to care for, unless they pass away quickly, as my father did.” (ITDB) “When I was born my parents were already enough old . . . my mother was  . . . she had severe health problems . . . when I was very small she used to take me to work with her . . . the first years of my life I always went to work with her . . . I’ve taken care of elderly people for my whole life . . . they have always been very dependent on me.” (PDB) 

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“I had my child late, after several years of marriage, and I suppose that my mother thought: ‘with the newborn baby they will care less for me’, I’m sure she had these thoughts, these worries.” (ITDB) And it is noteworthy that such a demographic vicious circle has in itself the effect of hindering free fertility choices. As a couple of respondents stated: [ Wife] “Honestly, I would have liked to have had another child, but . . .” [Husband] “We thought about it several times, but, then . . .” [ Wife] “We thought about it a lot, then . . . having these elderly in-laws, what could we do, leave it in a crèche? You couldn’t even enjoy a baby, but let’s see if we will even be able to enjoy the one we have. Well, and then we’d also like to have some time for each other, from this point of view we’re a little selfish, if you want to call it selfishness.” (ITDB) In a sense we have here to deal with an underestimated gap in the generally recognized greater ability of Mediterranean family units to preserve and utilize strong kinship ties. In these countries, contrary to what happens in the UK or the USA, four-generation families seem to be still more interconnected and richer in care resources, so that they can avoid overlapping the timing of different care tasks (Boyd and Treas ), not entrusting them to the same person or couple. However, this new type of care-poor family, more often in three-generation families, is emerging.

Methodology In our  double-front (DB) cases, the families face an exceptional care burden. We considered them worth studying, not because we expect them soon to become the majority, but rather because they are such extreme cases that they more clearly highlight hidden aspects of the gift economy of family support (Godbout ; Bimbi ) — entering, for instance, into the long debate as to whether being in the middle is becoming a normative experience or not (Brody ; Rosenthal et al. )—and the nature of family obligations in different welfare regimes (Millar and Warman ). From this point of view, the overall approach of the SOCCARE Project, which aimed to describe family strategies in combining in daily life their care responsibilities for children or older people with participation in paid employment, reached an original viewpoint on social policies we want to apply again here. In particular, this means taking account of the fact that, in all welfare regimes, most of the necessary care is informally provided (Daly and Rake ); however, at the same time, we must look at how families blend informal care with the use of formal care services in order to understand how social policies really affect them. Another very important lesson learned from recent comparative work about social care is that what really matters is the whole system of provisions 

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and services existing in a country (Rostgaard ), since different services or benefits may be functionally equivalent in different contexts or, on the contrary, services or provisions with the same name may not be similar. This lends support to our choice of a qualitative approach: in the study of social care, extensive mapping of existing provisions may give an image which is too complicated and fragmentary, whereas looking at them as they apply to practical cases may bring order. The same effect has been obtained in other comparative research projects by the use of vignettes corresponding to hypothetical cases of a typical mix of resources (cf. Millar and Warman ; Pacolet ; Saraceno ). It is interesting to note that ours is an extreme case, but that we continue to measure the differences in culturally similar systems, since it is the culture which appears to play an important role in care services (Rostgaard and Fridberg ). If the debate on social care is to provide a useful outcome, it has to be considered as something more than personal services plus informal care provision “in order to capture something of the normative and moral qualities of care systems” (Anttonen et al. : ). Thus we cannot help but choose a qualitative approach. This could also allow us to detect good practices and solutions in order to learn from positive experiences found in care settings. Thus, if the emerging problem of all welfare systems today is how to face long-term care for elderly and disabled people, it is really important to go back to individual biographies and family histories: granting a good quality of life to carers and the cared-for is a necessary condition, if sustainability in time is the main criterion. Finally, our analysis tries to go beyond the “narrow view of caregivers coping with burden and strain” (Lyman : ). Rather, we have tried to evaluate the practical daily organization of these families from our respondents’ perspective, giving back their world of meaning as revealed by their own verbatim words.2

How Does the Combination of Influencing Variables Shape the Situation in Each Country? The main question seems to be: “Which available resources—and in particular which combination of them—may make a heavy burden of care acceptable and defined as ‘still normal’ in each national context?” For reasons of space we do not analyse here the different paths which lead one to become a (double-front) carer (Finch and Mason ; cf. Trifiletti et al. ). The comparative strategy used in this paper is biographical matching, treating each caregiving and family history as an individual case. The main factor used in matching cases, for the comparison of France, Portugal and Italy, is, first, the overall kind of double care responsibility for dependent children and frail elderly people that we described earlier. This, of course, brings other basic objective characteristics with it: life-cycle phase, age of children and the presence of an important, almost daily, task of care towards at least one elderly person; all very similar in the three countries. Of the hundred cases investigated in our main study, we chose here an important proportion of those with a heavy burden of care. 

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First, we try to match all our  cases on a more general plan, describing similar dimensions in the way family obligations are defined and resources exchanged, in order to capture cultural and gender order factors which differ, and the main characteristics of national welfare regimes which may exert an influence. Institutional and cultural traditions shape the contexts in which families’ preferences, values and choices are embedded, when they have to face specific constraints and emergencies or when their relatives become progressively less self-sufficient. In table  we describe this larger frame of family obligations in which the subsequent matching cases should be inscribed. At this stage we only glimpse some general features of a possible model which can be considered as a first empirical generalization, a provisional synthesis of our qualitative data (while many other features are still disordered, just like in a first stage of extensive coding; Strauss and Corbin ). However, some correlations, to be better tested, are already appearing. There seems definitely to be emerging a visible connection between the compulsory and punitive subsidiary forms of old-age assistance made available in less generous Southern Europe welfare regimes, and the form family obligations take. For instance, the fact that Southern European families are the most likely to try to “shelter” the youngest generation from relationships with grandparents, who are seen as being too ill or frail, has to do with how much the assumption of the care burden for them, even if heavy, is viable and defined as normal in the life course and in everyday life. In bettermanaged situations, where the caregiver receives more support and greater freedom to decide what type of help can be meaningfully given, children and the elderly share a warmer relationship. In the latter case, family obligations are not so normative and their reciprocity—the economic help of the elderly person cared for—is much less considered. At least it is no more connected to the inheritance of home3 but probably subdivided in inter vivos transfers (Attias-Donfut et al. ). Also, cohabitation may be considered the framework of this exchange and we can see how in the Portuguese sample it is usually considered a possible solution and also some kind of obligation, while in Italy and France it becomes more of a negotiated solution. Even if all these cases present characteristics of a heavy double front of care, we focus our analysis now only on  cases, which have to face a double front and the important workload of real jobs,4 in order to understand how families cope with these kinds of “triple constraints”: work, care of children and care of elderly relatives. Characteristics of chosen and not-chosen cases are illustrated in table .

The Criteria of Case-matching As a second step, we will now introduce closer case-matching on this smaller number of cases (cf. Crompton and Birkelund ) where both members of the couple are working and have to deal with three different types of care situations: . double responsibility of care for children and a couple of elderly relatives, one of them not self-sufficient; 

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Simonetta Simoni and Rossana Trifiletti Table  Main differences in caregiving practices and shared opinions among the three countries ( cases) France

Italy

Portugal

Degree of freedom of the caregiver in granting intimate services to the dependent elders

You have the right not to want to do so, based on previous personal relations [ cases +  (only imagined/planned) ]

If possible, you avoid it, if you have private financial means or the support of services [ cases +  case from France]

There is a tendency to resign yourself to it, lacking an alternative [ cases +  case from Italy] Private alternatives exist for those with rich financial means [ case]

Reasons for not putting a dependent elder in a home

Keeping the elderly person at home is a free choice, not a family obligation [ cases ( is in a sheltered house) ]

If it becomes heavy, the sacrifice is justified by the history of a past relationship with the person cared for [ cases +  from France]

It is out of question or financially impossible [ cases +  from Italy]

Public intervention . . .

Is important and manifold but still not enough [ cases]

Is very difficult to detect, almost hidden, there is no entitlement right [ cases] except for health care of very dependent persons [ cases]

Is absolutely lacking Clearly expressed [ cases +  from Italy]

What limit is placed on involvement in care

You do it as long as it does not jeopardize family life or the health of the caregiver Conditional involvement [ cases]

You do it as long as the elderly person understands and the caregiver is not personally harmed or if delegation is accepted by the elder person. Obligation and negotiation [ cases]

Family obligations are binding even for daughters-in-law. You have to face it anyway Absolute obligation [ cases]

Relationship between children and elderly people

Children and the elderly may be a mutual resource of care. Children are only damaged by emergencies [ cases]

Children are described as potentially sacrificed: they have to be separated and “protected” from frail elderly people [ cases] Only exceptionally or if the care is still light may they be a mutual resource [ cases]

They are in fact often already sacrificed because of the needs of the elderly [Clearly expressed in  cases]



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Caregiving in Transition in Southern Europe Table  Continued France

Italy

Portugal

Sibling relations

Good for the most part with sharing of tasks, but resentment sometimes

Often a matter of an only child

Often resentment for lack of task sharing

“Legitimate excuses” accepted from other relatives not to care

Living too far away, but siblings who do less are better disposed for holidays

Living too far away, having a difficult job, but frequently doing other tasks (e.g. paperwork) to make up for it

To have a family of their own is itself a “legitimate excuse” not to take care, but, then, resentment is common

Sharing the work with the husband

He looks after the children

He looks after the children but occasionally does something nonpersonal for the elderly person

He resists the inevitable request to share the work

The elderly person is an economic resource

No, family home is usually paid for by earnings; care costs may sometimes reduce inheritance [ cases +  is favoured in buying her parents’ home; , instead, is applying for a mortgage for her father buying a house]

Elderly parents cared for will leave or have already given their home [ cases] Or the home has been used in order to get nearer or cohabit [ cases]

Elderly parents cared for will leave or have already given their home [ cases] Sometimes their pension is itself a resource in the family budget [ cases +  from Italy]

. double responsibility of care for two children and one dependent elderly person; . double responsibility of care for one child and one dependent elderly person. This case-matching, based upon the different numbers and types of care needs of dependent members of these families, should allow a more in-depth analysis of national differences and similarities. Our analysis includes the distinction between responsibility for care and the composition of the care network. This difference clearly emerges from the interviews on the division of care work between husband and wife, since it is an area of negotiation which becomes more subject to changes with the increasing burden of care. 

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Simonetta Simoni and Rossana Trifiletti Table  Characteristics of all our double-front cases: family structure, age and work of the couple, age and sex of children, age and housing of the cared-for elders France

Italy

Portugal

FDB Married couple Mother (), teacher Father (), senior executive Three children: F, M, M Maternal grandfather () Maternal grandmother () Not cohabiting

ITMC-DB Married couple Mother (), civil servant Father (), civil servant Three children: F, M, M Maternal grandfather () Maternal grandmother () Not cohabiting

PMC-DB Married couple Mother (), administrative worker Father (), salesman One child: M Paternal grandfather () Paternal grandmother () Not cohabiting

FDB Unmarried couple Mother (), therapist Father (), social worker Three children: M, M, M Maternal grandmother () Maternal grandfather () Not cohabiting

ITDB Unmarried couple Mother (), university researcher Father (), university researcher Two children: M, M Paternal grandfather () Paternal grandmother () Not cohabiting

PMC-DB Married couple Mother (), school helper Father (), policeman One child: M Maternal grandmother () Maternal grandfather () Cohabiting

FMC-DB Unmarried couple Mother (), nurse Father (), cabinet-maker Three children: M (autistic), M, F Maternal grandfather () Lives nearby

ITDB Married couple Mother (), mechanical engineer Father (), civil servant Two children: M, M Maternal grandmother () Living next door

PDB Married couple Mother (), administrative helper Father (), administrative assistant Two children: F, M Paternal grandmother () Cohabiting

FMC-DB Married couple Mother (), nurse Father (), civil servant One child: M Maternal grandmother () Not cohabiting

ITDB Married couple Mother (), public manager Father (), freelance One child: M Maternal grandmother () Not cohabiting

PMC-DB Married couple Mother (), architect Father (), civil engineer One child: M Maternal grandmother () Cohabiting

(Subtotal  for the case-matching where both members of the couple work and care for children and elderly relatives) FMC-DB Married couple Mother () and Father () work together in taxidermy centre One grandchild not cohabiting cared for every day – hours Maternal grandmother () Cohabiting



ITDB Married couple Mother () looking for a job, previous work as a secretary Father (), unskilled worker Two children: F, F Maternal grandmother () Cohabiting

PDB Married couple Mother (), gardening technician Father (), skilled worker Two children: F, M Maternal grandfather () Cohabiting

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Caregiving in Transition in Southern Europe Table  Continued France FMC-DB Married couple Mother (), childminder for the DDAS Father (), just retired Three children: M, F, F Maternal grandmother () Cohabiting

Italy

Portugal

ITDB Unmarried couple Mother (), looking for a job, previous work in a shop Father (), financial advisor One child: M Maternal grandmother () Cohabiting

PMC-DB Married couple Mother (), university researcher Father (), lawyer Three children: F, F, M Paternal grandmother () Disabled paternal cousin () Cohabiting (also with mother’s godmother)

(Total of all double-front cases ) Note: MC = multi-career family; DB = double front of care family; F = female child; M = male child.

Finally, we shall consider three main findings which are here shown to be clearly distinguished: the balance between the two care arrangements towards children and the elderly, the balance between care and work, and the assessment of the quality of life, as expressed by the interviewees. Type : caring for children and a couple of elderly relatives This situation is apparently less difficult and burdensome for the adult children, because one partner of the elderly couple is assumed to be the main caregiver. For this reason, it takes longer to organize outside help, since the relatively healthy partner finds it difficult to admit (cf. Baldock and Ungerson ) that he or she is no longer able to look after the partner adequately. This situation deserves in-depth inquiry since it creates hidden burdens and discomfort which tend to be overlooked by social service systems, apart from some form of care allowance. In table  we will analyse how similar care arrangement solutions are differently assessed by the caregivers; in table  we will see “typical” national differences in choices, service provisions and preferences of the families. The interesting results of case-matching and qualitative research can show “what is hidden” in the daily combination of care and work, of children and elder care, in the relationship between formal and informal care. In these first six cases, the elderly usually prefer to ask their grown-up children to look after them, until such time as the children suggest taking on paid help, applying for public services or, in the worst scenario, institutionalization. The acceptance of an outsider to do the more burdensome tasks of caring, such as personal hygiene, is a gradual process. It is often preceded by lengthy periods of caregiving by the relatively healthy spouse 

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Simonetta Simoni and Rossana Trifiletti

or other family members, and gradually exhausts the psycho-physical and organizational resources of the main caregiver and the family network concerned, ending in a dramatic and sudden crisis, as described by one respondent: “Well, it got really bad, we went through a really terrible period when everything was happening at once, there was my mother who was immobile with severe arthritis, and because she had a problem with her knee . . . And so she was not able to get around, and my father, I think, he was trying to do too much . . . And from the time that no one wanted to bring in outside help, someone from outside the family, well, having overexerted himself, all that worry, all of this, his own problems, his age, he’s got diabetes, he ended up having a heart attack. My mother called my brother, she was frantic.” (FDB) Often in elderly couples who have long depended on each other for emotional and physical support, even when their own self-sufficiency was limited, the situation may be extremely precarious. One of them might find him/ herself unexpectedly alone and without any apparent reason to go on. In this way, the death of a spouse marks the beginning of a rapid decline and produces, for the carer, a series of caring obligations, one after another. The characteristic regularity of this rapid transformation is striking but mostly goes unnoticed.5 When the other partner finally dies, it becomes apparent that the couple had actually already “collapsed from within”. Weakened by the care burden and the loss of the loved one, the surviving spouse quickly runs out of internal resources and becomes extremely dependent. We seem to have captured, through the link with the caregiver, some evidence of such vulnerability of the couple, which is usually overlooked in research, precisely because they are often unable to give interviews because of their overload (cf. Rose and Bruce :  –). With reference to the framework of general case-matching, from the  cases involved we first examine three cases where a choice has been made to care for the dependent elderly person within the family network (see table ). The French and Italian family nuclei are similar in composition, with grownup children of similar ages, whereas the Portuguese adult couple is younger and has only one child (thus mirroring the diverse timing of the life course). In all three cases, the elderly couple lives separately. The Portuguese family availed themselves of “specialist” services (i.e. limited to certain tasks), such as home delivery of meals and medical treatment, whereas the Italian and French families had not yet resorted to outside assistance. Our findings highlight two common features in the three situations examined. On the one hand, the absolute necessity to share childcare with the partner, and on the other, despite the efforts made to reconcile the two care fronts, the de facto priority given to the care of the elderly, even though they are still a couple. In this type of situation, in all three countries, childcare takes second place and reconciling care and work only appears possible if a job in the public sector permits flexible working hours, short afternoon shifts and a great deal of time off. One might remark, however, that French parents 

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face their children’s care with the sole help of the school and day-care services, whereas the Italian ones mobilize a larger network of informal help in combination with care services, and the Portuguese ones count on informal resources. In addition, there emerges a finding which we will encounter later in other typologies. This is the well-known tendency for grown-up children to look after their own parents and, less frequently, their parents-in-law. When this is necessary, as in the Portuguese case mentioned above, any care work which is not linked to the obligations of one’s own family history becomes very heavy to bear, as does cohabitation. Even if cohabitation is chosen as a workable solution in all the Portuguese cases (except one), it is hard and difficult to live with, as one of our respondents formulated: “It got to be where I couldn’t go out any more, I couldn’t have a weekend off to pay some attention to the baby; I started to have problems with my husband, because the atmosphere had become strange and unfamiliar and after three years he told my father ‘dad, we need to find another solution’ . . . And then we start to argue and things get complicated, very complicated. But I don’t even let my parents see this, because in the end they would be the ones who would suffer most. If I start telling my father that I’m having problems with my husband he’ll get even worse.” (PMC-DB) We will now consider three strategies which distinguish very clearly the families in the three countries in question. This comparison is of interest because Table  Type : double care of children and a couple of elderly relatives: similar care arrangement Type  FRANCE FDB Married couple Mother (), teacher Father (), senior executive

Type  ITALY ITMC-DB Married couple Mother (), civil servant Father (), civil servant

Type  PORTUGAL PMC-DB Married couple Mother (), administrative worker Father (), salesman

Children cared for

F M M

F M M

M

Care responsibility for children

Shared

Shared

Shared

Care network for children

Parents + school

Parents + parents of the younger son’s school mates + school + public summer service

Couple + maternal grandparents



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Simonetta Simoni and Rossana Trifiletti Table  Continued Type  FRANCE FDB Married couple Mother (), teacher Father (), senior executive

Type  ITALY ITMC-DB Married couple Mother (), civil servant Father (), civil servant

Type  PORTUGAL PMC-DB Married couple Mother (), administrative worker Father (), salesman

Dependent elders

Maternal grandfather (), very dependent; had a neurological accident. Maternal grandmother (), in the past had some health problems and couldn’t leave home Not cohabiting

Maternal grandfather (), had a stroke Not cohabiting

Paternal grandfather (), suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, living with his year-old wife who is on a kidney machine Not cohabiting

Care responsibility for the elders

Maternal grandmother + mother + elder son

Maternal grandmother () + mother + aunt + sometimes father and mother’s brother

Paternal grandmother + father + mother

Care network for the elders

Family network

Family network

Paternal grandmother + father + mother + mother’s sister. Lunch delivered at home; no-profit + domiciliary private profit medical services

Assessment of combining the double front of care

Priority to elder care

Priority to elder care

Priority to elder care

Assessment of combining work and care

Very difficult to combine work and care, the arrangement is not stable

Quite good balance Working in the public sector makes the combination of work and care easier

Very difficult balance for both partners. She would like to get a part-time job

General quality of life

Very worried about the future

Long-term exhausting care responsibility. Worries about the care of adolescent children

The mother, daughter-in-law of the dependent elders, feels a deep sense of injustice towards the husband’s brother who does not help



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both the discourse and the organizational strategies of caring are “typical”, i.e. recurrent in the countries examined. Even when the family could choose to cope themselves with these problems, as did the families of table , they prefer to search for some kind of help, because they feel they cannot manage for a long time. Table  shows their characteristics. In what sense are these three cases “truly typical” of the three countries? As we saw above in table , the French interviewees present the options for care of the elderly as a choice to which public intervention gives some support but not enough, and which has its limits when it harms family life or the caregiver’s health. The French couple shares these opinions and attitudes, trying to combine the double front with the sharing pattern for children, and a combination of private and public services and family care for the dependent elderly, postponing the solution of institutionalization. The mother, the main caregiver, shares part of the responsibility of care for the elderly with her husband and sister, trying to keep her job involvement as unaffected as possible by the double responsibility. Nevertheless, she is very tense and very worried about the uncertain future: “[Caring] means trying to anticipate . . . trying to understand . . . trying to put their needs in perspective, into the right light. To try and understand and decode language that isn’t necessarily easy to decode: to try to get them involved, to try to make them accept, to accept being the bad girl . . . all things that you don’t think about when you’re under stress . . . to adapt to the situation . . . things change very quickly. But it also means to not mourn for someone who is still alive.” (FDB) The Italian couple is typical in that they try to avoid the long hours involved in care and most of the intimate tasks for the dependent elderly person by paying someone to live with him. Even here the choice of not putting the elderly person in an institution is justified by the history of past relationships, and public assistance is difficult to come by. This couple decides on a “rigid division of labour”: childcare is the mother’s responsibility, care of the elderly is the father’s responsibility (as it is his parents who require it). This choice, combined with a flexible job, allowing for a good combination of care and work duties, gives the couple the feeling of a good routinized equilibrium. The Portuguese case is typical in that the task of personal hygiene is delegated when possible to someone paid to do it, institutionalization is out of the question because of its high cost and the low quality of service, so the solution preferred is cohabitation. In this case, though several people in the family network may be available, the main responsibility of the double front of care falls to the mother, who feels overburdened, lacking help from her husband as well as from her brother and sister. This case is also typical because Portuguese men seem somewhat reluctant to share care work and thus the woman’s paid work is pushed very much into second place. The research data show that Italian families behave in a similar way, until the crisis and worsening of health condition of the elders, when the man has often to change his responsibilities and get more involved in the care tasks. 

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Simonetta Simoni and Rossana Trifiletti Table  Type : double care of children and a couple of elderly relatives: contrasting situations Type  FRANCE FDB Unmarried couple Mother (), therapist Father (), social worker in hospital

Type  ITALY ITDB Unmarried couple Mother (), university researcher Father (), university researcher

Type  PORTUGAL PMC-DB Married couple Mother (), school helper Father (), policeman

Children cared for

M M M

M M

M

Care responsibility for children

Shared

Mother

Mainly mother + father some caring tasks + maternal grandfather

Care network for children

Parents + school + paternal grandmother + childminder

Mother + school + once a week a friend for leisure activities of the second child

Mainly mother + school + father some caring tasks + maternal grandfather + school porter + extra-curricular activities (sport + holiday camp)

Dependent elders

Maternal grandmother (), Alzheimer’s disease Maternal grandfather (), is not dependent but exhausted by longterm care Not cohabiting

Paternal grandfather (), suffering from a deep depression Paternal grandmother, cardiopathic, she was recently hospitalized as she broke her leg. Not cohabiting

Maternal grandmother (), diabetic, had several cerebral vascular accidents. She needs personal care and accompanying services. Cohabiting with the couple and their son and paternal grandmother

Care responsibility for the elders

Maternal grandfather + mother + father + mother’s sister

Father + sometimes mother

Mother + maternal grandfather () + paternal grandmother ()



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Caregiving in Transition in Southern Europe Table  Continued Type  FRANCE FDB Unmarried couple Mother (), therapist Father (), social worker in hospital

Type  ITALY ITDB Unmarried couple Mother (), university researcher Father (), university researcher

Type  PORTUGAL PMC-DB Married couple Mother (), school helper Father (), policeman

Care network for the elders

Maternal grandfather + daycare centre twice a week + domestic help + mother + father + mother’s sister during weekends

Father + minder living with the elderly couple

Home services of an adult day centre + mother + maternal grandfather + paternal grandmother + mother’s sister

Assessment of combining the double front of care

Stressful balance

The division of care responsibility makes daily care arrangement quite easy. Good balance

Priority to elder care

Assessment of combining care and work

Her professional activity is a priority, to keep this she has to plan in advance work and care timetables.

When the elderly couple’s health conditions worsened, mother chose to leave her job as a teacher in primary school to have a more flexible timetable

Difficult, because the caregiver feels very tired, physically and mentally

General quality of life

Very worried about the future

This solution of care arrangement is quite satisfying. The relationship between siblings is very affectionate

The caregiver is overburdened by the double responsibility of care. She is supported neither by her brother and sister nor by her husband.

Type : caring for two children and one dependent elder In this type of situation, where the responsibility and the care network for children should be greater, the findings differ from the previous one (see table ). Services for the elderly are another typical feature which distinguishes the three countries: the specialized service of meal delivery in 

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Simonetta Simoni and Rossana Trifiletti Table  Type : double care of two children and one dependent elder

Children cared for

Care responsibility for children Care network for children

Dependent elders

Care responsibility for the elders Care network for the elders

Assessment of combining the double front of care Assessment of combining care and work General quality of life



Type  PORTUGAL PDB Married couple Mother (), administrative helper Father (), administrative assistant

Type  FRANCE FMC-DB Unmarried couple Mother (), nurse Father (), cabinet-maker

Type  ITALY ITDB Married couple Mother (), mechanical engineer Father (), administrative employee

M (autistic, independent) M F Mainly mother Father helps Mother + father for some tasks + school

M

F

M

M

Mainly mother Father helps Mother + father for some tasks + preschool + school + childminder + leisure activities Maternal grandmother (), senile dementia Living next door

Mainly mother + father for some caring tasks Mother + private childminder + school + maternal grandmother (occasionally)

Mother + mother’s sister

Father + mother + father’s sister

Minder living with the elder + mother + mother’s sister only in summer or holidays

Adult day-care centre every day from . a.m. to . p.m. + father + mother + father’s sister. Every two months grandmother goes to another child’s home. Priority to care of children

Maternal grandfather (), first symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease Lives nearby Only mother + sometimes the second child Mother + meal service

Good balance between the third child and the elderly person. No time for herself Easy, because she decided on a parttime job after the birth of the third child She’s quite satisfied with the care and work arrangement

Difficult. Priority to care of children. Children are hostile to their grandmother. Difficult, tiring, she would like to get a part-time job, but she’s worried about being fired Very stressful

Paternal grandmother (), Alzheimer’s disease Cohabiting

Good balance, because of the quite rich network of care, especially for the children Difficult cohabitation. Worries about the future cooperation between siblings for elder care

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France, the use of a badante (“round-the-clock minder”), in Italy, and a third-sector adult day-care centre in Portugal, where cohabitation is considered an effective remedy to the cost and trauma of institutionalization. The most striking difference from the previous model, where similarities prevail, is in the pattern of sharing childcare, because instead of sharing, the main caregiver, the mother, is only “helped” by the father, in practical terms, though the giving of moral and psychological support is pointed out and appreciated. There are also some differences in outcomes: in the French case, a balance is reached by sacrificing time for oneself and involving the elder son in looking after the grandparent; in the Italian case, priority is effectively given to the children, who nevertheless are hostile to the dependent grandmother: “Well, there was a period in which I was very busy taking care of my mother, and I really wasn’t there for them, and they saw her as an enemy: ‘You’re always at her house, you’re always with Grandma!’ They didn’t handle it very well, and then they don’t see her how children usually see their grandparents . . . They don’t feel a lot of affection for her; she’s just a very needy person to them, someone who takes me away from them, and that’s all . . . my children . . . they practically see my mother as their enemy, it’s something that comes between us.” (ITDB) In other situations, on the contrary, it seems possible to encourage the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, developing acceptance of illness as a “normal condition” of the elderly person: “Well, children don’t question things very much. If you have a good relationship, I think that they pick up on things pretty quickly . . . I talked about my mother a little bit with Laura, every once in a while, but not so often any more. But I don’t think that it bothers her very much, deep down, I think that she believes that my mother has always been ill.” (FMC-DB) In other interviews, not included in the case-matching, this same relationship between children and frail elderly people develops a positive exchange of mutual resources and learning: “. . . then, watching the children play, their smiles, they give her hugs, these are things that an old person . . . She is coming to the end of her life, and so it is important to give her these things . . . children are like medicine for the elderly, and vice versa, grandparents have an incredible wealth of affection to give.” (ITDB) “And it’s also important that the children learn things that we haven’t thought about teaching them. It’s a positive thing to put different generations together, because they learn from each other. My daughter gives something to her grandmother, and my grandmother gives something to her.” (FMC-DB) In the Portuguese case, we find a division of roles, the mother looking after the children and the father the grandparents; however, cohabitation with the mother-in-law remains a problem. The presence of two children seems to have introduced organizational routines which make it easier for the mother, 

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predominantly, to handle them, attempting to keep the children as a priority or sacrificing her time for herself. Type : caring for one child and one dependent elder In these cases, again, we find the typical national solutions for care of the elderly: private paid care in Italy, a mix of private and public home care in France, cohabitation and domestic private help in Portugal (see table ). What is different, in comparison with the previous types, is a larger care network for the child and a differentiated care responsibility for children: shared in the Italian case, almost shared in the French one, not shared in the Portuguese one. In the assessment of combining the double front of care, we find three different outcomes: the French caregiver feels that she has reached a good balance; the Italian one declares that the priority is given to the care of the child, with great psychological stress; the Portuguese one highlights the advantages of cohabitation, though she complains of their deteriorating social life and she claims, like other Portuguese respondents, the right of the caregiver to delegate certain tasks. “In addition I think that all of the elderly, we are all quite different from each other . . . while one old person might be able to completely detach himself from what is being done to him, it might be impossible for another, it depends on their personality, of course . . . I think that effectively the physical dependence and mainly the need to take care of personal hygiene and all of that . . . They are situations in which if the person doesn’t have a certain attitude . . . It’s always very humiliating, you’re not prepared for it, even if the people who come to take care of it are wonderful, they still understand it as a humiliating moment either for themselves or for the other person, I think that’s how people feel, you don’t need. . . .” (PMC-DB) There is a striking similarity in all three cases, as they all underline that the double responsibility of care affects the quality of their life as a couple. We could perhaps hypothesize that, for these couples, having an only child involves a greater quest for resources outside the family, as if they were safeguarding a precious “investment”, on the one hand, and, on the other, that this choice may be linked to greater sensitivity and emotional investment in their life as a couple. However, when a second child arrives, the childcare becomes more of a routine, more internal resources are made available, but the couple’s time for themselves tends to disappear. From the confrontation of the results of the case-matching we can draw some conclusions about the choices, resources and preferences of these families. What we can consider the worst situation, in terms of stress, fatigue and constraints, is the care of an elderly couple and children, because these families are quite invisible in terms of the assessment of services, and they may have a sudden and dramatic health crisis. In all these cases, the priority is given mainly to the care of the elderly and this can deeply affect the relationship with children and the quality of family life. There is a high potential risk of exhausting the psycho-physical resources of the caregiver, and the 

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Caregiving in Transition in Southern Europe Table  Type : double care of one child and one dependent elder Type  FRANCE FMC-DB Married couple Mother (), nurse Father (), civil servant

Type  ITALY ITDB Married couple Mother (), civil servant, manager Father (), freelance in computing service

Children cared for Care responsibility for children

M Almost shared

M Shared

Care network for children

Couple + school + maternal uncle + neighbours

Couple + private nursery school + when necessary, childminder and home help

Dependent elders

Maternal grandmother () Not cohabiting

Care responsibility for the elders Care network for the elders

Mother + her brother and his wife Mother + her brother and his wife + paid home help every two days for one hour Good but tiring organization, shared with siblings. She feels that elder care responsibility is harder than for her son She decided on a part-time job

Maternal grandmother (), quite autonomous, but she cannot go out alone nor organize her daily life Not cohabiting Mother

Assessment of combining the double front of care

Assessment of combining work and care

General quality of life

Quite good, even if they have some relationship problems with the old lady

Type  PORTUGAL PMC-DB Married couple Mother (), architect Father (), civil engineer M Main caregiver + occasional help of the father Couple + paternal grandparents + school + extra-curricular activities + paid domestic help Maternal grandmother (), rheumatic problems Cohabiting in a large flat

Mother

Paid home help for daily care,  hours a day + mother once a week and every weekend Good balance, often priority to the child. No time for herself and for the couple

Domestic help + mother + occasionally father

The father decided to get a more flexible job to devote more time to the child, when she advanced in the career in public administration Good, the care arrangement would be easier if the old lady accepted to move closer to her daughter

Good balance because the double care network is well organized

Good balance. They lack time for the couple

The large flat allows all family members to keep their privacy, and cohabitation is easy



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difficulties are also linked to the fact that it is often the start of a long period of caregiving which could continue after the death of one spouse. It is also a delicate moment because the main caregiver is extremely worried about the future and the configuration of family roles, particularly that of the main caregiver, among the adult brothers and sisters. The only solution which appears to work is to make a clear division of labour within the couple, which seems to keep the two caregivers from using up all their resources. The number of children involved does not appear to affect the distribution of care work significantly, except that, contrary to what we might expect, having two children paradoxically gives the main caregiver more organizational responsibility, with the partner’s help but no real sharing of the burden. Case-matching has also revealed cultural and service resource specificities which illustrate real differences in the three countries in question. This is especially true for the care of the elderly rather than childcare, where the only particular feature we found was that Portuguese fathers were less than enthusiastic about sharing in childcare. In the Portuguese case, the solution of cohabitation with the elderly seems to be the most culturally acceptable, economical and easiest to organize, though we should bear in mind that it has the support of (inexpensive) commercial care services or paid domestic help, as well as inevitable relational problems which are seen as the price to be paid for this option. In the Italian case, the assistance of a minder who lives in the elderly person’s home is the solution preferred, since it enables the two family nuclei to live independently (even if usually very near) and is preferable and also cheaper than institutionalization, although there has to be constant “supervision” of the caregiver. France, on the other hand, shows interesting particularities which fall between the preference for the nuclei to live separately and the possibility of combining a variety of different care resources, and avoid, for the most part, the Italian solution of employing a person to live with the dependent elderly and guarantee total assistance. In that case, institutionalization is considered preferable. In most cases, there is a price to be paid to reach a certain equilibrium while maintaining a double responsibility. Some of the interviewees decided to work part-time or looked for a more flexible job. People are prepared to pay this price if care of the elderly is felt to be a free choice, the result of negotiation within the family, the denouement of an affectionate family history, or in exchange for the care once received as children. As regards the representation of the intergenerational pact, on the other hand, the discourse on obligation and duty is much less justifiable. At first denied, it re-emerges, however, in other forms, when, for example, an only child is involved or when one child is destined by family history to be the caregiver. We can find this statement in several interviews, not chosen for the stricter case-matching, like this one: “She’s been sick like this for  years, I, I was still single when the symptoms first appeared, then, because I am an only child, and she owned the house, but my mother needed help, so when I got married I decided to stay in the same house with her, in effect I never left home. But it seemed normal, we both wanted it.” (ITDB) 

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Caregiving in Transition in Southern Europe

Conclusions In this paper, we have attempted to show that an under-researched type of family with a double front of care seems to be emerging in Mediterranean countries, due to life-course delays which are beginning to take place alongside the ageing of the population. Using a qualitative sample, it was not possible to better measure the vulnerability of this new type of family, but only to pose some questions about it. We are also aware that we describe a minority; for example, in France the link of this kind of family with low fertility disappears in a generally good fertility level. In Italy, instead, it probably converges with many other reasons why couples decide not to have a second child. Nevertheless, we are convinced that our typological comparison has revealed new items about how families make complex choices in mixing resources and giving meaning to such mixes, when facing long-term care of dependent family members. This was achieved by our capturing the information in extreme situations. In general, intergenerational pacts are not to be changed or set aside in such haste as is often supposed; they sometimes actually gain in importance (Attias-Donfut et al. ). Here, the comparison with France, a country which clearly belongs to the Continental-conservative cluster, but with a generous family policy and a solid secular tradition, shows the inadequacy of many explanations of this persistence based on familism, Catholicism or other traditional characteristics (cf. Esping-Andersen ). Although it is true that most of the care required is provided on an informal basis, it is equally evident that informal care networks are never self-sufficient, and practices in each country are the result of the real possibilities at hand, more than of cultural elements. When strong family obligations still prevail, people appear to feel sacrificed in comparison to the common model of “pure relationships” to which they aspire (Giddens ). It seems that the quality of life/level of aspirations has much to do with where, in each context, the public/private boundary is placed and how families perceive and take for granted their right to be supported and assisted by public services in the special case of the double burden of responsibility. This factor might go some way to explaining why summing up similar elements in different contexts may often produce different outcomes. Thus, a subtext of paramount importance in the division between public and private spheres lies in the work of caregiving which families put together every day, interweaving a variety of strands. In the case of our most heavily burdened families, it emerges how important it may be that such practices slowly become publicly defined as work, whether on the basis of service help or of an intra-family transparent negotiation. Our case-matching and the general results of the research show how intensity and lack of prospective opportunities of such care involvement make it impossible to conceal it among generic family obligations. This reveals the need for the members of the carer couples we observed to share tasks, when it concerns burdensome care of the elderly. This is also true for countries where time –budget outcomes are usually most discouraging for gender equality. It is as if the elements of 

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gender order, traditions, values and cultural norms were more persistent, while social practices ( gender contracts included) could change more easily when faced with real difficulties and scarcity of resources, if building on some form of help. This is something of great interest for the European project on gender mainstreaming. From our analysis, there emerge many similar effects, which may prove useful as policy recommendations. In general, the services and forms of assistance found in our sample countries are always aimed at one problem at a time, and are less capable of supporting double (or triple) directions of need, the various commitments they demand, and the consequences of such burdens on family life. What these policies amount to is a mix of various forms of formal care—which apparently are made accessible and delivered according to very strict rules—with a completely arbitrary blend of whatever forms of informal care happen to be available. An evaluation of the total personal resources that make a family “care-rich” or “care-poor” should be, instead, objectively formulated so that it can be inserted into the access criteria of various support programmes and services. At present, family caring resources are “counted” only insofar as social protection systems use them punitively, as “demerits” against an individual’s right to assistance. We often saw this phenomenon in Southern Europe, where family resources are measured so that help may be accordingly taken away. As we saw from the interviews, when families first encounter a care crisis for an elderly relative and are pressed to quickly develop new care arrangements, they above all require assistance in “constructing” the new setting and orienting themselves in these radically changed circumstances. What they find most lacking are clear points of reference capable of providing comprehensive, updated information and of understanding the complexity of the situation, and not just certain clinical or sectored dimensions of it. Support services should facilitate the clarification of both the intra-familial solidarity pacts and the gender contract on which future care arrangements will hinge. If public assistance were conditional on a sort of explicit, contractual stipulation of who, among siblings or within couples, is responsible for what caring labour, an enlarged sense of collaboration could take root. The idea that other people are also involved in the caregiving relieves a complaint expressed by some main caregivers who receive no assistance. The counselling capacity of the “first aid” points for caregiving (cf. Trifiletti et al. ) should be able to mobilize any expert knowledge regarding both the present and future needs of each case. The systems of social protection of the countries in our study seem to be, if it is possible, even less capable of introducing a range of relatively “light” and less costly measures that, when used well and at the right time, could serve as preventative mechanisms and reinforce families’ capacities to help themselves and to sustain the caregiving burden over time. As we saw from the analysis of the case-matching, though granting choices to families and caregivers is of paramount importance, it is also important to recognize that, in this case, choice should not be thought of as purely individualistic behaviour. In a systemic way, by contrast, it should be characterized 

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by relational sensitivity, in which the individual and others are seen as interdependent (Sevenhuijsen ). People do not move between obligation and freedom, between taking a free ride and a completely altruistic attitude; rather, they need to make sense, personally, of responsibilities they decide to take on by redefining “normal” family obligations on the basis of their personal experience. The task of support services should be that of eliciting and facilitating specific social practices which make sense for those involved and safeguard their relationships and connectedness. For instance, the richness of the relational network within kinship and neighbourhood is beginning to be recognized as a form of social capital, at least in the Italian debate (Piselli ; Bagnasco ). Nevertheless, we still lack social services capable not only of preventing this special social capital from going to waste but also of protecting and developing it, and providing the framework of complementary items required in order to avoid the physical and mental exhaustion of those involved. It is noteworthy that the situation of most underestimated stress for carers often arises when the elderly couple they supervise is beginning a rapid decline, which remains hidden for a while behind their apparent self-sufficiency. Another factor frequently overlooked by social workers is the number of children, since, contrary to expectations, an only child could be an indicator of a less stabilized situation, more difficult to reconcile with care of the elderly. In countries like Italy (or at least in some of the Regions), where the only child is already a dominant model, even if mostly not based on a free choice, the double front of care risks giving rise to a sort of demographic vicious circle. In France, caregivers are granted a clearer right to choose how to shape their care task, mainly on the basis of their own relationship with the person being cared for, for instance by deciding freely to take responsibility or not for the most intimate caregiving tasks. One could argue, on the contrary, that in every country cultural changes can be seen as a necessary condition for the mobilization of an enormous patrimony of intergenerational solidarity. But we are in the sticky area of cultural change. It is, in fact, precisely what is normally denied in the needs assessment by social services and is left in the hands of the private sector, or even exploited without its due social recognition in Portugal and Italy. Family relations might, instead, be seen (for the purposes of planning public support) as richer, and not poorer, than they were in times when the mechanisms of duty and exchange were the defining factors, provided that some choice is granted. Moreover, where family obligations are still experienced as absolute and non-negotiable, the stress of caregivers is higher and the quality of life of the families involved is much worse. From this point of view, the greatest potential contribution of a “storied database” such as ours, one approximating family histories (Bertaux and Delcroix ), is undoubtedly that it allows us to test certain aspects of family reciprocity, as well as their need to be complemented by the many different support alternatives we can see at work in our cases. Apart from all national differences, the more public support is generous and the more caregivers needs are interpersonally recognized, the more normal (and sometimes rewarding) family relations can survive in the burdened family. It is on 

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this terrain that the mechanisms of social integration, as opposed to the “selfdestructive spiral of solidarity”, can be tried out (Castel ).

Notes . It was workpackage  of the SOCCARE Project; for a more complete description of the methodology and results of the research see Trifiletti et al. (). . The bulk of our analysis is an open coding of the expressed meaning of our respondents, which cannot be fully reported here for reasons of space (cf. Trifiletti et al. ). Choosing our three countries, however, allows us to overcome one difficulty we faced in the SOCCARE comparative report. When we analysed the spoken expressions of our respondents from the five countries of the project we had to treat Finnish transcripts translated into English. Although we used the rich potential of a computer-assisted analytical tool (N. Vivo software package), in first setting the inductive apparatus and identifying the discourse items before translating the sentences we had chosen, this was not really possible with Finnish. It is a different matter if one has a good command of a spoken language or if it is filtered through a written translation. In this case the translator becomes a very real third party, adding another layer of reflection to the data, just as if s/he is participating in the interviews (Temple and Edwards ). In our present three-country comparison, we were able to work with the three original languages and leave the translation to a much later phase. . We should not forget that home ownership is a sort of functional equivalent for social protection in Southern European countries (Castles and Ferrera ). . We exclude, for instance, not only non-working people but also people whose caring function is recognized as a job, like assistantes maternelles in France. . Recent statistical data have clearly shown that in Italy the proportion of these families receiving help from the network of informal helpers is consistently lower than families with only one elderly person or couples with children; it is the second lowest number among all family types, except polynuclear ones (Buratta and Crialesi : ).

References Anttonen, A., Baldock, J. and Sipilä, J. (), The Young, the Old and the State: Social Care Systems in Five Nations, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Arber, S. and Attias-Donfut, C. (eds) (), The Myth of Generational Conflict: The Family and State in Ageing Societies, London and New York: Routledge/ESA. Arfeux-Vaucher, G. (), Les familles à cinq générations: entre plaisir et souffrance. In Récherches et Prévisions,  (March): –. Attias-Donfut, C., Lapierre, N. and Segalen, M. (), Le nouvel esprit de famille, Paris: Odile Jacob. Bagnasco, A. (), Il capitale sociale nel capitalismo che cambia. In Stato e mercato, : –. Baldock, J. and Ungerson, C. (), Becoming Consumers of Community Care: Households within the Mixed Economy of Welfare, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Bengston, V. L. and Achenbaum, W. A. (eds) (), The Changing Contract across Generations, New York: Aldine De Gruyter. Bertaux, D. and Delcroix, C. (), Case histories of families and social processes: enriching sociology. In P. Chamberlayne, J. Bornat and T. Wengraf (eds), The Turn to Biographical Methods in Social Science: Comparative Issues and Examples, London: Routledge, pp. –.

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Simonetta Simoni and Rossana Trifiletti Lyman, K. A. (), Fieldwork in groups and institutions. In J. F. Gubrium and A. Sankar (eds), Qualitative Methods in Aging Research, London: Sage, pp. –. Miller, D. A. (), The “sandwich generation”: adult children of the ageing, Social Work, , : –. Millar, J. and Warman, A. (), Family Obligations in Europe, London: Family Policy Studies Centre. Pacolet, J. (), Social Protection for Dependency in Old Age: a Study of the  EU Member States and Norway, Aldershot: Ashgate. Piselli, F. (), Capitale sociale, un concetto situazionale e dinamico, Stato e Mercato, , : –. Rose, H. and Bruce, E. (), Mutual care but differential esteem: caring between older couples. In S. Arber and J. Ginn (eds), Connecting Gender and Ageing: A Sociological Approach, Buckingham: Open University Press, pp. –. Rosenthal, C. J., Mattews, S. H. and Marshall, V. W. (), Is parent care normative? The experience of a sample of middle-aged women, Research on Ageing, , : –. Rossi, A. (), Intergenerational relations, gender norms and behaviour. In Bengston and Achenbaum (), pp. –. Rostgaard, T. (), Conference paper to the EU Presidency Conference on Care services for children and other dependent people. Equal opportunities in the European Employment Strategy process, Elsinore, – November. Rostgaard, T. and Fridberg, T. (), Caring for Children and Older People: A Comparison of European Policies and Practices, Copenhagen: National Institute for Social Research. Saraceno, C. (), Social Assistance Dynamics: National and Local Poverty Regimes, Bristol: Policy Press. Sevenhuijsen, S. (), Caring in the third way: the relation between obligation, responsibility and care in Third Way discourse, Critical Social Policy, , : –. Strauss, A. and Corbin, J. (), Basics of Qualitative Research. Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques, Newbury Park: Sage. Temple, B. and Edwards, R. (), Interpreters/translators and cross-language research: reflexivity and border crossings, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, , . Accessed  July . Available at: http://www.alberta.ca. Thomson, D. (), Generations, justice and the future of collective action. In Laslett and Fiskin (), pp. –. Trifiletti, R., Pratesi, A. and Simoni, S. (), WP Work and Care in Double Front Carer Families. SOCCARE Project Report . Accessed  July . Available at: http:// www.uta.fi/laitokset/sospol/soccare/reports.htm/. Walker, A. (), The New Generational Contract: Intergenerational Relations, Old Age and Welfare, London: UCL Press.

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Title O riginal Article December  Blackwell Oxford, SPOL © - Social Blackwell Policy UK Publishing,  Publishing & Administration Ltd. 

8 Managing the Family: Productivity, Scheduling and the Male Veto John Baldock and Jan Hadlow

Competing Conceptions of the Work and Care Problem Debates about the work–life balance have been structured by two distinct analytic frameworks or paradigms of “the problem”. The first paradigm emerges directly from the literature that debates the future of the, largely European, welfare state. This is a literature that is concerned with the sustainability of welfare capitalism and in particular with the future of the welfare state in the context of global competition. The second paradigm is rooted in more normative accounts of citizenship rights and obligations and particularly of the roles of women in the household and the economy. The first approach is notably dominated by male writers (Esping-Andersen , ; Ferrera and Rhodes ; Scharpf and Schmidt ; Taylor-Gooby , ), the second by women (Lewis , ; Lister ; Crompton and Harris ; Leitner ). The contribution of the family to work and to care is a key boundary on which these two paradigms meet. From the point of view of the welfare state theorists, the work–care balance has critical impacts on productivity, social costs and social reproduction. European economies cannot compete effectively in world markets unless as large a proportion as possible of people of working age, both women and men, are engaged in paid work. Growth in per-head productivity in the older industrial nations has been declining since the s and has trailed that of the new industrializing nations of the Far East (Taylor Gooby : ). The United States has responded to the productivity problem by restraining the growth of real incomes among significant sections of the population and so allowing income inequalities to rise (Dunford ). Part of the European response has been to compensate for declining per-worker productivity growth by increasing family productivity. The revolution in women’s labour market participation across Western Europe since the s has raised the economic output of families faster than their total wages. At the same time the family has continued to sustain its contribution to the production of social care and to maintaining social capital.

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However, the fruits of the revolution in women’s participation in paid labour may be almost spent. There are no longer large untapped reserves of skilled labour power to compensate for Europe’s productivity deficits. Some room remains where women’s labour market participation is relatively low, such as in Italy among the countries studied here, or where women’s parttime work is relatively high. Britain has the second highest proportion of part-time employment among working women,  per cent in , in Europe. This is much higher than in the other countries in our sample: France  per cent; Italy  per cent; Finland  per cent; Portugal  per cent (Eurostat : table ). Although there is strong evidence that British mothers want part-time work (OECD : table .), it is difficult to separate this response from the scarcity of affordable childcare. Similarly strong preferences are not found in other European countries. Part-time work may be a less than optimal solution for the whole economy and for women over the whole of their working lives. It continues to be associated with low pay, few training opportunities and limited career progression. As a recent British government White Paper put it, A more effective use of human resources within the economy, including the better utilisation of skills of those with caring responsibilities, is likely to have a beneficial impact on the UK’s productivity. It is clear that an efficient labour-market—one where the pool of labour is maximised and utilised to its full—is essential to the UK’s competitiveness. (HM Treasury : para. .) There are growing signs that women’s labour is not a free good and that the family’s “cost-free” contributions to the production of care may be about to decline. “Labour market trend analysis has shown that mothers, in both couple and lone households, have experienced the greatest intensification of economic activity and general growth in working hours since the early s” (O’Brien and Shemilt : ). If a consequence of high levels of participation in the labour market by women and men is expensive state support for childcare and for older people, then economic competitiveness and the financial viability of the European welfare state are put under pressure. There are also arguments that women’s labour market participation has led to reductions in fertility rates, particularly in Mediterranean countries, though the evidence remains ambiguous over the longer term (Del Boca et al. ). On the other hand, those researchers and writers whose starting points are citizenship rights and gender equality observe that if the household is required to internalize unacceptable levels of care responsibilities, then the implicit contracts sustaining welfare capitalism are threatened; labour market participation by women, and to a lesser extent by men, may fall; and a variety of social problems increase. Taken together, it is these forms of calculus that have brought to the fore the question of what is often called the “work–life balance” but what is essentially the “paid work–unpaid care balance”. How families combine care responsibilities and paid employment, and which policies and services are of most assistance to them, has consequently become a key focus of research. 

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What the patterns of labour market participation in industrial societies show above all is that any particular constellation of services, policies and labour market conditions is associated with a range of significant work and care arrangements. While there may sometimes be majority “responses”, there are almost always significant minorities behaving in a quite different way. The survey-based work suggests there are rarely majority responses to the work and care “choices” among European families but rather polarization around a variety of different solutions (e.g. Deven et al. ; Hogarth et al. ). How do families with young children combine their paid and unpaid work lives? Data from  show that, among the five countries, only in Portugal ( per cent) was there a clear majority of parents both working full-time when a child is under age  (see table ). If families with children up to  are included, then Finland too can be included with a bare majority of  per cent both working full-time (Deven et al. ). The broad pattern is of significant proportions of parents choosing, or at least finding themselves using, each of the three main arrangements: both full-time; woman part-time/ man full-time; woman not in paid work/man full-time. Only the “woman full-time/man part-time” solution remains distinctly rare. What the macro data suggest are complex interactions between social and economic forces and individual preferences and life-trajectories. For example, among couples with children in the UK, two out of three women in paid work are employed part-time while the situation in France is that three out of four will be working full-time. At the same time,  per cent of the UK women and  per cent of the French women will not be in paid work at all at a point in time (Eurostat ), though over time many women in both countries will move into or out of different forms of paid work. While it may be the case that there is some evidence in these data that in France childcare options and full-time working hours are more frequently compatible with parenthood, it is also true that part-time work is less available in France and that more of the French women are choosing not to enter employment at all for some parts of the childrearing period. Again, this last effect may reflect the more generous maternity leave and job-security arrangements that operate in France, but they are clearly not influencing all French mothers in the same way. In short, much of the data on how families combine paid work with care responsibilities reveals the blindness of the macro analysis of large data sets Table  Employment patterns among couples with children under  (; %)

Both full-time Woman part-time/Man full-time Woman unemployed/Man full-time

Finland

Portugal

Italy

France

UK

  

  

  

  

  

Source: OECD ().



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John Baldock and Jan Hadlow Table  Preferred employment patterns among couples with children under  (; %)

Both full-time Woman part-time/Man full-time Woman unemployed/Man full-time

Finland

Portugal

Italy

France

UK

  

  

  

  

  

Source: OECD (: table .).

to significant non-majority responses, and their inability to take account of changes in individuals’ labour market participation over time. Policy reforms based on these large statistical correlations will impact on individual households in highly differentiated ways and may simply rearrange patterns of advantage and disadvantage rather than bring about clear gains. The SOCCARE Project was deliberately designed to look behind the quantitative survey data that have provided the basis for the more powerful analyses of how households respond to the challenge to combine paid work with care responsibilities. It also allows the parents to explain the solutions they had come to. As majority responses to the work plus care choice are rare, we decided to look instead for patterns in the reasons parents gave for reaching their differing solutions. We wished to understand the terms in which the respondents talked of “the problem” and how they rationalized the outcomes. We also hoped to shed light on the long-observed paradox of the gaps between couples’ expressions of their preferred combinations of full-time and parttime work and the actual patterns of work found in each country. Only in Britain do fewer than half of families with children under  express a preference that both parents should work full-time (see table ). In Finland, Portugal, Italy and France the number of women with young children who wish to work full-time, and to a lesser extent part-time, is much greater than those who are currently able to do so. To what do the significant proportions of families who are combining paid work and care in ways they find less than satisfactory attribute this gap? We found no simple answers to the questions we set ourselves. Allowing our  respondents to explain their lives in their own terms with little prompting produced accounts of a great variety of solutions, but ones that were explained in relatively similar ways. That is to say, despite the fact that their actual work and care routines varied considerably, our respondents explained them in similar terms. As the paper by Trine P. Larsen, above, points out, within the SOCCARE samples there were no patterns of family care provision distinctive to individual countries or that could be attributed to particular national combinations of public policies and labour market conditions. Families apparently facing very similar care responsibilities and 

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labour market choices did not necessarily behave in similar ways. Our respondents did not give primary importance to the social policies and service arrangements in their countries. However, as Trine Larsen also shows, the division of household and caring work within many of the families was strongly gendered.

Distribution of Housework and Childcare within the Family There is now a significant body of published research on how couples allocate housework and childcare between them. An excellent review is provided by Bond and Sales () in the introduction to their important study of patterns revealed within the British Household Panel Survey. However, as they point out, interpreting findings based on samples large enough to be representative presents a number of key difficulties. Firstly, definitions of housework and childcare differ across studies. Secondly, the ways in which they are measured vary, for example, in terms of hours or tasks. Thirdly, and most importantly, survey data “can only highlight broad, aggregate trends” and “there may be some interesting and complex processes occurring that might be best explored by a qualitative approach” (: ). This paper seeks to explore some of the light that a qualitative study does shed. However, it is first worth summarizing the patterns revealed by the survey data: • Where mothers are in paid work they tend to spend less time on housework and childcare (Pleck ; Horrell ; Bond and Sales ). • Within couples, when women are in paid work there is less inequality in the time men and women spend on housework but the total hours women spend in paid work and housework combined will usually exceed those of the men. However, much of this equality effect is due to the reduction in housework hours by working women and not an increase in the contribution from their partners (Pleck ; Gershuny et al. ; Horrell ; Bond and Sales ). Across all OECD countries, mothers in full-time work spend an average of twice as much time on unpaid work as do full-time employed fathers (OECD ). • There is limited evidence of a breadwinner trap (i.e. of men’s working hours precluding participation in housework) to be found in the macro data. For most men, there are no strong correlations between paid and housework hours (Clark et al. ; Baxter ; Speakman and Marchington ; Bond and Sales ). Only where men work very long hours (over  a week) is there a measurable consequence (O’Brien and Shemilt ). The implication is that most men are choosing to limit their housework contribution rather than being prevented from making it. An interview-based study conducted for the Equal Opportunities Commission reported that “in some cases fathers who are prevented by work commitments from spending more time with their families do admit that this is a choice they have made, and that they are lacking the motivation to be further involved” (EOC : ). • Men’s and women’s contributions to housework and childcare are more equal the higher the mother’s earnings relative to the father’s, and this 

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• •

•

•

effect is stronger than that of women’s working hours (O’Brien and Shemilt ). Women’s contribution to household work is most commonly not affected by men’s working hours (Bond and Sales ). The presence of children leads to more traditional divisions of housework and the extra workload that comes with children is more likely to be borne by women, though both partners are likely to do more hours of housework (Pahl ; Berk ; Baxter ; Gershuny et al. ; Bond and Sales ). There is evidence that many dual-earner couples do not discuss the allocation of household tasks at all (Brannen and Moss ) or that when discussion takes place, it is most commonly vague and imperfect (Bond and Sales ). Better provision of or support for childcare services and maternity leave may paradoxically allow families to adopt a more traditional allocation of tasks within the home. Windebank’s study of childcare and housework in France and Britain concluded that there were strong signs that the more “family-friendly” policies in France allowed more selective participation by men: “the greater flexibility in labour markets and traditional lack of support in Britain is leading to a more equal gender division of domestic labour and parenting work in the British group than in the French because both partners need to be involved in caring for children in order to liberate the labour power of the woman in which men have financial and/or emotional interest” (Windebank : ).

Again, these findings from largely quantitative analyses should be understood as reporting the strongest patterns. The range of actual contributions to housework and childcare that lie behind the aggregated data is broad. In significant numbers of families, the dominant patterns will not apply. Nonetheless, the patterns revealed by survey data suggest that work and care arrangements are less determined by external factors (availability of care services, number and flexibility of working hours) and are more the products of negotiation and settlements made within households in which men’s preferences play a key part. Additional evidence for the critical role of male choice is provided by studies of men’s take-up of optional childcare leave arrangements provided either voluntarily by employers or required by public policy. Most fathers, but importantly not all of them, appear reluctant to use optional childcare leave (Hochschild ; Lewis ; Epstein et al. ; EOC ). Brandth and Kvande (: ) have shown how Norwegian fathers rarely used their potential entitlements to a flexible shared parental system of paid leave of up to  weeks ( per cent in their study), but most ( per cent) took the quota of four weeks of paid leave available only to fathers. The paternity quota, they explain, is seen as “compulsory”, supported by “strong normative guidelines for the behaviour of fathers” and not essentially a matter of choice. Their respondents reported strong implicit pressures from the work environments not to be a “time deviant”, which they found stronger than the pressure from their partners (: ). 

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Scandinavian experience suggests that high take-up of parental leave by fathers is linked to four key conditions: when parental leave is an individual entitlement and is not transferable; where there is flexibility in the ways that leave can be used; when provision for fathers is publicised; and where there is high wage compensation. (EOC : ) However, we wish to suggest here that variation in men’s contributions to housework, and particularly childcare, is not simply a reflection of their preferences but of their preferences mediated by the practical difficulties facing the whole household in constructing effective work and care schedules.

How Our Samples Explained Their Work and Care Schedules Across the five nations studied in the SOCCARE Project we found parents describing how and why they organized work and care largely in terms of the detailed problems involved in constructing timetables into which a great deal had to be fitted. Two broad and closely related areas of constraint were consistently spoken of: problems of time pressure and problems of coordination. To borrow the language of management science, the respondents talked a great deal about “scheduling”, getting a complex set of productive resources to operate together in ways that would produce the required outcomes reliably and efficiently. The resources were principally their own time and energies, sometimes those of other family members, together with the very wide array of formal and informal sources of help described throughout this volume: nurseries, schools, after-school clubs, childminders, nannies, babysitters and care workers. All of these sources came with their own timetabling constraints and needed to be coordinated to fit the parents’ own schedules. Much of the work–life balance literature, insofar as it considers the micro issues of care management at all, treats the scheduling problem as essentially one of flexibility. The key solutions recommended are more family-friendly and flexible work timetables, and care services available at more varied times. The implication is that if there is enough flexibility on the part of employers and service providers, coupled with appropriate government policies allowing or requiring parental and care leave, then parents will be helped to combine their employment and care responsibilities. However, this is not how the parents themselves spoke of the issues. Rather than suggesting ways in which their time could be better arranged, they simply pointed out that they did not have enough of it. “Someone says, ‘look I only got up half an hour ago,’ and I say, ‘look mate, I have been working for God knows how long already’.” (PMC)1 “Sometimes he says in a sad tone that we never spend time together, that I arrange to be out when he is at home on purpose. But this is how it happens and how it has to happen. He has been flexible, though he does not like our current situation at all. He thinks our life is just constant coming and going.” (FMC) 

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John Baldock and Jan Hadlow Table  Hours a week worked by respondents in the SOCCARE study (%) Country

Up to 

–

–

 +

Number sampled

France Finland Italy Portugal UK All

     

     

     

     

     

“I can say that I really don’t have hobbies now. Neither do I study anything. This has been a conscious choice I have made. I know the realities of my life. With this kind of work, if I gave spare time to other things than my child I would do harm to others and to myself . . . Of course [ I miss] free time. When you have a family you miss the time when you did not have to organize all the time. When you have a family, it means you have to hold all the pieces together all the time, and take account of what others do too.” (FMC) “It takes a lot of work and you have to fix your timetables all the time . . . You have to do a lot of preparation . . . You have to plan, for example, what the children will eat and so on. Of course it’s sad for the children, although we have tried to make sure that there is always one of us at home . . . My work is not an  to  job. Instead you always carry your work with you . . . It’s really draining but it cannot be helped.” (FMC) “It has been very tiring and it has affected my work a lot, and P’s work. We get home and it’s all work, and then you can’t make the extra effort in work itself, in your career . . . It was lucky that P is self-employed. He has flexible hours. Of course he has to meet clients in the office, but then he can work at home and at night and weekends. Even so, it’s very hard.” (PMC) Almost all the respondents within this sample of the SOCCARE study,  per cent of whom were mothers, wanted to spend more time with their children or older relatives and recounted the personal and emotional costs of insufficient contact (see table ). When asked whether more control over their employment hours or over those when childcare was available would help, the responses of many, particularly women, were guarded. If further combinations of work and care were made possible, they feared their lives would become more demanding; they would be asked to manage more complex timetables, do more work and involve more people in their lives. These responses are particularly consistent with the work of Kerry Daly (; Daly and Dienhart ; Thorpe and Daly ), who has shown how parenting has become a “struggle for time”, that more options add to stress and 

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in particular that mothers have increasingly found themselves responsible for household schedules and motivating family members to comply with them.

Understanding Family Life as a Management Problem Prospects.ac.uk, the British government’s graduate careers website, describes “scheduling” or “operations management” as: The planning, coordination and control of . . . processes, the aim of which is to ensure that goods and services are produced efficiently to the satisfaction of the customer at the right price, of the right quality, in the right quantity, at the right cost and on time. . . . It will almost certainly involve: drawing up a production schedule; working out the resources you will need; estimating how long a job will take, costing it, and setting the quality standards; monitoring the production processes and adjusting schedules as needed. It would not be inappropriate to characterize the role that many of our respondents described themselves as playing in broadly these terms. They gave accounts of difficulties or obstacles that echoed the textbook examples of scheduling problems. An important liberation is when work allows autonomy to arrange schedules: “We both now have the kind of position at work where we are able to plan our work schedules ourselves. We are not ‘grunts’ any more and no one gives us orders. So we are able to fix up schedules in a way that suits us best . . . But you have to constantly fit timetables together. If you don’t manage that then one of you has to cancel a journey or change the date of a meeting or something. We constantly have small-scale negotiations going on and for that we have a calendar on the wall where we sign up our forthcoming commitments so the other can fit his or her comings and goings around it . . . Usually everything works out.” (FMC) Scheduling, as the operations management literature makes clear (e.g. Slack et al. ), is a managerial task that requires one to win the cooperation of other individuals whose behaviour is critical to the procedures that are set up. This is because tight or complicated schedules necessarily give others the power to undermine the routines that have been planned. This happens when other actors in the processes do not share the same goals and interests as the manager. The more tightly defined the processes, the more significant is this veto power. Second only to their accounts of the problem of finding enough of their own time, the most common difficulties described by the mothers in our sample were to do with others’, particularly fathers’, unwillingness or inability to contribute to the care and work schedule in ways they regarded as rational. 

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“ I certainly wouldn’t exchange a PhD for the children I have! All my schedule is organized round my family life but my husband’s schedule is not. His schedule is organized around his professional life, and therefore . . . I think the mother has a fundamental role and as I believe this I am not capable of saying: I’m going out now, you stay with them.” (PMC) “ He just doesn’t do a thing. So I end up doing it all . . . That’s how it is, everything to do with the house is my department. I do the shopping. He looks at the fruit basket and says ‘Look, there aren’t any apples! You’ve got to buy some apples’.” (ITMC) “ It’s the ironing, turning the washing machine on, hanging the laundry out, cleaning the house, and goodness knows what else, and I’m the one who has to do everything . . . I think you start to lose control. Then one day you say one thing and the next day you say the opposite.” (PMC) “At the beginning we thought we would divide everything, but it’s not really that way. Filippo doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, he doesn’t like to touch things. For example, he doesn’t like putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher or change the baby . . . It’s not that he doesn’t know how to do it, but if you only do it once in a while, it seems like the baby will slip away from you, you’ll forget to get the soap, the towel . . . When I get back he tells me they’ve been the worst hours of his life because he’s had to do all the things he hasn’t had to do for a month . . . [But] if I always take care of everything myself then all the work becomes my responsibility.” (ITMC) The portrayals of fathers’ roles provided by our respondents matched those found in the wider literature. Firstly, fathers, while in principle committed to reaching a better work–life balance, bring a different order of priorities to any negotiations, actual or implicit. A review of both quantitative and qualitative studies reported by the British Equal Opportunities Commission summarizes fathers’ roles in this way: Fathers are not a homogeneous group and there is wide variety in the roles they adopt. A number of studies emphasise the importance of the breadwinner role as a powerful source of identity for fathers and many cite this role as their main family commitment . . . At the same time . . . younger men in particular have expressed a wish to participate more fully in family life, and there are some fathers for whom the breadwinning role has less relevance, especially those whose partner is working full-time. (EOC : ) Secondly, fathers’ conceptions of fathering and of their contributions to housework are variable but relatively inflexible. The EOC review argues that qualitative studies portray four main types of involvement: Enforcer dad: is not involved in the day-to-day care of children and sees the most important aspects of being a father as providing a role model and clear rules for the children. 

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Entertainer dad: often entertains the children while mother does the household work. Useful dad: helps out with day-to-day childcare and some household tasks. He still takes the lead from the mother about what needs doing and when. Fully-involved dad: is as equally involved with running the home and family as his partner, at least some of the time, and parental roles are virtually interchangeable. Most fathers are in the two middle groups, which implies a support role in the home rather than the sharing of responsibility. (EOC : ) Thirdly, irrespective of their levels of commitment, the literature shows that fathers are often unwilling to enter into explicit negotiations about their roles. Bond and Sales (: –) conclude their review of variables associated with contributions to household work among parents in the British Household Panel Study by arguing that: the relatively low level of variation explained for levels of sharing in the household suggests that couples are not necessarily adopting a rational “strategy” towards household work. Brannen and Moss (), in their study of dual earner families after maternity leave, found that  per cent of the couples reported that there had been no discussion of household strategy or tactics . . . [In addition] the results of this research suggest that if any household work organisation has actually been discussed and agreed between couples, its application is vague and imperfect or maybe is subject to many extraneous variables.

Conclusion The SOCCARE study included countries in which “family-friendly” policies and services are relatively well developed and established (Finland and France), those in which they are expanding (UK) and those where they remain significantly underdeveloped (Italy and Portugal). Except in the case of Italy (see table ) there appears to be little correlation between the policy and service context and the patterns of employment among women with children. A similar lack of a strong causal relationship was found in an OECD study of the links between an index of “work–family reconciliation policies” and the employment of women (OECD ). Greater public recognition and support for families’ care responsibilities (including childcare coverage for under-threes, maternity pay entitlement, leave provision by employers, entitlement to part-time working) were not associated with higher employment among women, except in those OECD countries with very little public support (Spain and Italy) and those with a good deal (Denmark and Sweden). The trend away from single-earner to dual-earner families, which brings with it significant increases in the proportions of employed workers with caring responsibilities, appears to be one that is 

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relatively independent of the pattern of supports for such families provided by public policy. As the other papers in this volume frequently illustrate, families involved in combining work and care responsibilities report similar difficulties and concerns across all the countries studied in the SOCCARE Project. Throughout Europe governments are seeking ways to assist families with their growing obligations in the labour market and at home. The levels of support may vary, often as much between different parts of countries as between them, but the policy goals and agendas are very similar. A common reform agenda is to be found across Western Europe: assisting the incomes of working families with caring responsibilities, improving the volume of and access to care services, encouraging and requiring from employers flexible work regimes that recognize families’ caring functions, and providing incentives for men to play a greater role in the household and caring work done by families. At the heart of these policies is the idea of flexibility: increasing the range of feasible combinations of employment and care until few sets of eventualities remain impossible. While the trends intensifying the work and care pressures on families are likely to continue, driven by international competition and its effects upon labour markets, this paper has sought to show that it should not be readily assumed that the current policy reform agenda will ease the pressure on families. There is a gap between the understandings of the work–life problem inherent in the Europe-wide reform agenda and the difficulties described by families actually engaged in reconciling work and care. However flexible jobs and care supports are, at the heart of the work and care dilemma is a core problem of limits to productivity: of too much to do in the available time and too much uncertainty in the coordination of all the component activities. These have been described elsewhere as “the time squeeze”, “the second shift”, “the time crunch”, “the time famine” and “juggling work and family” (O’Brien and Shemilt : ). Here we have suggested that they can be usefully understood in the terms of operations management and scheduling theory, particularly as they apply to small businesses. Among other things, that body of theory points to the necessity of prioritizing rather than trying to do everything. It also draws attention to the way in which complex scheduling is vulnerable to differences in expectations among those involved. We suggest this as a way of understanding the persistence of gender roles and the continuing “male veto” in the real world of work and care.

Note . F = French; P = Portuguese; IT = Italian; MC = Multi-career family.

References Baxter, J. (), Power, attitudes and time: the domestic division of labour, Journal of Comparative Family Studies, , : –. Berk, S. F. (), The Gender Factory: the Apportionment of Work in American Households, New York: Plenum Press.

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Index absenteeism: atypical working hours and  accidents: of elderly  African immigrant families in France ,  –  in Portugal ,  –  after-school clubs  afternoon care: Finland  age: of children in dual-earner families  – ,  ageing population ,  allowances, child home-care , –  asylum-seeker migration , , ,  atypical working hours see working hours balancing: work and care  see also work/care management benefits, welfare state: Finland ,  –  black-market care: Italy  blended families: Cape Verde immigrants  breadwinner model  African immigrant families  atypical working hours and ,  decline of ,  immigrant men  importance for men  Moroccan immigrant men ,  UK , – ,  breadwinner trap  Britain see United Kingdom Canada: atypical working hours  Cape Verde immigrant families in Portugal ,  –  deprivation –  gender inequality  general characteristics 

work/care strategies: first generation  – ; lone-parent mothers – ; second generation  – ; student families  capital, social  care, social affordability of  – ; for elderly  availability of  –  blackmarket: Italy  characteristics of  defined ,  –  need for improvements in  not associated with higher female employment  –  perceptions of  – ,  as right ,  as value in itself ,  –  whole system of –  see also formal; informal; work/care management; specific kinds eg childcare care gaps  –  Cape Verde immigrant families ,  Chinese immigrant families  immigrant families  Italy  care life stories  – ,  –  care patterns: dual-earner families –  care-poor ,  care-rich  care workers professionalism  – ,  salaries  see also childminders; nannies child home-care allowances: Finland , –

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Index childbirth: effect on care of elderly  –  childcare atypical working hours and  – ; organization of  –  care of elderly and  – , – defined  determinants of – distribution of, in families – in dual-earner families –, –  in Finland , , –, , –, – in France ,  gaps in  in immigrant families – in Italy – in Portugal  in UK –,  welfare state contexts –,  work/care strategies – see also dual-carer families; self-care childcare services better provision of  use of – childminders African immigrant families  Cape Verde immigrant families  in Finland ,  immigrant families  Moroccan immigrant families –,  children age of: dual-earner families –,  number of: dual-carer families –,  older: childcare by; African immigrant families , ; Cape Verde immigrant families , ; Chinese immigrant families ; immigrant families ; Moroccan immigrant families ,  transportation of: dual-earner families –,  see also childcare; dual-carer families; self-care Chinese immigrant families in Finland , –



citizenship rights ,  cohabitation Cape Verde immigrant families  with elderly parents , , , , ,  commitments: to care  commuting time  compensation schemes: with care leave  crèches France  Italy  crises see emergencies cultural factors dual-carer families  dual-earner families – daily care arrangements: dual-earner families – day-care centres: Finland –, ,  death: of elderly spouse –,  decline, rapid: of elderly ,  delegation, extensive African immigrant families , ,  Cape Verde immigrant families , – immigrant families ,  Moroccan immigrant families –, ,  Denmark: female employment  dichotomies: need to abandon  discourse of care  defined – discourse analysis: childcare – divorce: atypical working hours and  domestic chores see household dual-carer families  case-matching – family commitments – in Finland –, – in Italy –, – methodology –, – in Southern Europe – dual-career families see dual-earner dual-earner families  atypical working hours and –, ,  Chinese immigrant 

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Index contemporary theories on – daily care arrangements – housework –,  immigrant  independence from social support – methodology and data – Moroccan immigrant – work/care strategies –, – earnings see income education in Cape Verde – in dual-earner families –,  of immigrant families – elderly care of: in Finland ; gaps in ; negotiations over –, ; by spouse –; studies  death of spouse –,  emergencies  rapid decline of ,  services for – see also dual-carer families emergencies of dual-earner families –, , –,  of elderly  employee migration: Portugal  enforcer dad  entertainer dad  ethnicity: immigrant families  Europe atypical working hours – immigrants  see also specific countries European Commission: SOCCARE project – European Union: atypical working hours  evenings dual-earner families –, ,  work in , ,  see also working hours, atypical exclusion, social see isolation extensive delegation see delegation extensive formal care see formal care families blended: Cape Verde immigrants 

care by ; Cape Verde immigrant families –, ; immigrant families  effects of atypical working hours , , –, –,  need for shared division of responsibilities  negotiations over elderly care – work/care strategies –, –; contemporary theories –; daily arrangements –; methodology – see also children; dual-carer; dual-earner; immigrant; lone-parent; specific members eg grandparents family life Cape Verde immigrants ,  dual-earner families – as management problem – Moroccan immigrants – family reunification policies  family structure: immigrant families  fathers and fatherhood Cape Verde immigrant families  roles – types of housework and childcare – see also parents feminist issues: shared parenting –,  fertility: decline in , ,  Finland atypical working hours in , –, –, – care of elderly  childcare , , –, , –,  Chinese immigrant families in , – dual-carer families in –, – dual-earner families in –, – part-time work ,  social services  welfare state –, , , –, – work patterns  work/care in , 



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Index flexibility atypical working hours and , , –, – for dual-earner families –, , , – for immigrant families  of social care services  of work/care management  of workplace , – formal care  affordable  for African immigrant families  in atypical working hours , – for Cape Verde immigrant families  for Chinese immigrant families  for dual-carer families  for dual-earner families , , ,  for elderly ,  extensive: Cape Verde immigrant families –; Moroccan immigrant families  in Finland –,  gaps in –,  for immigrant families  for Moroccan immigrant families  need to integrate with informal ,  in UK  France African immigrant families in , – atypical working hours in , , , , –, – childcare ,  dual-carer families – family policies ,  full-time work  part-time work  reduction of working hours (RTT)  work/care in  work patterns  fully-involved dad  gaps, care see care gaps gender and gender roles African immigrant families  atypical working hours and ,  dual-carer families , –



dual-earner families , , –, –, ,  in Finland  housework and childcare distribution – immigrant families ,  Moroccan immigrant families  part-time work and  pensions and  in UK ,  in work/care –,  generation, sandwich , ,  generations four-generation families , ,  help between ,  three-generation families  see also intergenerational contracts Germany: atypical working hours  gift economy  grandparents care by: Cape Verde immigrant families ; dual-earner families , ; immigrant families ; Italy ; Moroccan immigrant families , , ; UK  relationship with grandchildren ,  health atypical working hours and – of elderly  see also illness; sick leave help, paid: dual-carer families –, , ,  see also childminders; nannies hospitalization: care services for elderly after , ,  hours of work see working hours housework distribution of – in dual-earner families ,  by elderly men  ideological work –,  ideologies: welfare states – illness of children: dual-earner families – see also health; sick leave immigrants and immigrant families  domestic work 

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Index in Finland , – in France , – in Italy , – isolation from social networks  managing work and care – in Portugal , – social care policies for – see also migration income atypical working hours and – as determinant for childcare arrangements  dual-earner families  informal care  for African migrant families  atypical working hours and , –, –,  for dual-carer families , ,  for dual-earner families , , ,  for elderly  for immigrant families ,  for lone parents  for Moroccan immigrant families –,  need to integrate with formal ,  in Portugal  strain on relationships  institutional framework: dual-earner families and – institutions for elderly Finland  France  Italy – integration process: immigrants  intergenerational contracts ,  see also generations isolation, social  African immigrant families  Cape Verde immigrant families – ,  immigrant families  Moroccan immigrant families ; women ,  with night work  Italy childcare – dual-carer families –, –, –

dual-earner families – Moroccan immigrant families in , – part-time work , ,  social services  welfare state – work/care in  work patterns  kinship networks see families labour market Cape Verde immigrants in – gender inequality in  Moroccan immigrants in  participation – women in –, – labour migration see migration, labour labour unions  Finland  leave parental ; Finland –; Italy , ; men –; opportunities for  sick  Lisbon  lone motherhood ideological work  meanings of  lone-parent families  atypical working hours and –, ,  immigrant , –, , , ; African , ; low resources of ; Moroccan –; social care policy for – long-term labour migration  long working hours ,  health and  management see work/care management marriage: Moroccan immigrant families – see also mixed-marriage migration men childcare leave arrangements – elderly, death of spouse  housework – part-time work 



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Index role in social care  veto power – see also breadwinner model; fathers; gender; parents migration asylum-seeker , ; France ,  employee  labour ; from Cape Verde –; to Finland , –; to France , ; to Portugal – mixed marriage , ; France , ; gender inequality  patterns , ; France , – professional ; Finland , –; work/care strategies  student , ; Cape Verde ; France ,  see also immigrant families mixed-marriage migration , , ,  money: elderly care and , , ,  mornings dual-earner families –,  early: work in  see also working hours, atypical Moroccan immigrant families in Italy , – gender roles  general characteristics – work/care strategies – mother-centred childcare African immigrant families  Chinese immigrant families – immigrant families –, , ,  Moroccan immigrant families –, ,  mother dominant childcare: dual-earner families –, , –, ,  mother solo childcare: dual-earner families –, , –, ,  mothering: conceptualizing  mothers and motherhood Cape Verde immigrant families  in dual-earner families – growth in working hours  ideological work –



lone ,  stay at home: Finland ; Italy  see also lone-parent families; parents; women moving house: elderly ,  nannies: dual-earner families , ,  National Childcare Strategy: UK  negligence, child see self-care negotiation in African immigrant families  atypical working hours , –,  in dual-carer families –,  in dual-earner families  of family care – for fathers ,  networks, social immigrant families  isolation from  Moroccan immigrant families  see also isolation, social night work , ,  health and – see also working hours, atypical Nordic countries: atypical working hours – see also specific countries Norway: paternity leave – nursery schools: Italy  nursing homes: Italy – old people see elderly older children see children, older parallel realities: dual-earner families , –, – parents and parenting roles as determinant for childcare arrangements – educational attainments – relay ,  separate atypical working hours , ,  see also fathers; lone-parent; mothers; shared parenting; shift parenting part-time work  Finland ,  France ,  Italy , , 

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Index men  Moroccan immigrant women –,  need for  Portugal  UK ,  women , ,  pension system: Italy and Finland ,  planning: dual-earner families  political issue: care as – population, ageing ,  Portugal atypical working hours in , , , –, – Cape Verde immigrant families in , – childcare  dual-carer families – dual-earner families – part-time work  social care –, ,  welfare state – work/care in ,  work patterns  predictability: atypical working hours , –,  productivity problem –,  professional migration , , –,  qualitative research –,  dual-carers  immigrant families  SOCCARE project as – reconciliation care model , – relationships effects of atypical working hours , , ,  effects of informal care  relatives see families relay parenting: atypical working hours ,  religion: Moroccan immigrant families ,  responsibilities dual-carer families  shared division of 

sandwich generation , ,  Saturday working , – see also working hours, atypical scheduling defined  work/care –, –, –,  segregation: immigrant families  self-care African immigrant families ,  atypical working hours and  Cape Verde immigrant families , , –,  Chinese immigrant families ,  immigrant families ; lone-parent families  Moroccan immigrant families ,  separation, conjugal: atypical working hours  shared familial care: African immigrant families – shared parenting  dual-earner families , , , –; discourse of –; equal –,  Moroccan immigrant families  shift parenting: atypical working hours , , – shift work , ,  relationships and  see also working hours, atypical sick leave: atypical working hours and  see also illness single-parent families see lone SOCCARE project , , ,  dual-carer families ,  dual-earner families ,  funding – immigrant families  methodology – organization of – social capital  social care see care social construction: dual-earner families and – social position: African immigrant families  social practices: dual-earner families 



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Index socio-professional categories: atypical working hours – Spain: female employment  spouse, elderly care by – death of –,  stress dual-carer families  dual-earner families –,  student migration , , , ,  Sunday working ,  see also working hours, atypical Sweden atypical working hours – female employment  time commuting  in dual-earner families , – family: atypical working hours and –, –,  free: atypical working hours and  pressures , –,  as rare resource for immigrant families  see also working hours, atypical trade unions  transportation of children: dual-earner families –,  two-front carers see dual-carers United Kingdom (UK) atypical working hours – childcare and housework –,  dual-earner families –, – full-time work  part-time work ,  social services  welfare state –, –, , – work/care in  United States (US) effects of atypical working hours  productivity problem  welfare state  universalism: Scandinavian welfare model – useful dad 



veto power – vulnerability: immigrant families ,  weekends: dual-earner families –, ,  see also working hours, atypical welfare states  childcare and –,  characteristics of – corporatist model  dual-carer families and  dual-earner families and – Finland –, , , –, – future of  Italy – liberal –, – negotiation about care  Portugal – Scandinavian regime type –,  Southern European model  UK –, –, , – US  women African: in Portuguese labour market – Cape Verde  effect of social care services  full-time work ,  labour market participation –, –; in Finland – Moroccan immigrant  not in paid work ,  part-time work , , ; Moroccan immigrant –,  patterns of employment  role in household and economy  role in social care – see also gender; mothers; parents women in the middle  work characteristics of  as determinant for childcare arrangements – management by immigrant families – negotiations over elderly care – orientation toward, dual-earner families –

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Index see also working hours, atypical work/care management –, – atypical working hours and – for dual-carer families –, – for dual-earner families –, – for immigrant families – work/life balance strategies dual-earner families – immigrant families – working hours atypical: childcare and –; consequences of –; in Finland –, –; flexibility of , , –, –; in France , –; of Moroccan immigrant families ; need for flexiblity

of social care ; negotiability of , –, ; in Portugal , –; predictability of , –, ; quantitative data – dual-earner families –,  flexible: for dual-earner families  health and  long , ,  of mothers: growth in  shorter  working patterns: changes in, for women  workplace care in: Chinese immigrant families –; immigrant families ; lone parents ; Moroccan immigrant families ,  flexibility in , –

