•Subsidized childcare arrangements in Georgia’s Childcare and Parent Services program are relatively stable, with only a third of children ever changing providers and with median spells of ...uninterrupted care being 16 weeks.•About one sixth of subsidies go unused each week, but spells of subsidy non-use are short with a median duration of three weeks.•Subsidized childcare arrangements are more likely to be interrupted by a period of subsidy non-use than by subsidies ending or a change in providers.•Spells of subsidy holding and of care arrangements are much more likely to end at annual redetermination dates than at other dates.
Programs supported by the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) help families with low incomes and in vulnerable circumstances obtain high-quality childcare at a reduced cost. Stable childcare arrangements are an important aspect of quality, but stability depends on families maintaining eligibility, using their subsidies, and staying with a provider. This study uses records from Georgia’s CCDF-supported Childcare and Parent Services program to investigate children’s spells of receiving subsidized childcare from the same provider and of holding subsidies but not using them. It finds that subsidized care arrangements are relatively stable but frequently interrupted by non-use. Only 37% of children are ever observed to change providers, and the median length of spells of continuously receiving care from the same provider is 16 weeks. However, 17% of subsidies go unused each week, and 66% of children have spells of not using their subsidies. The median length of spells of having an available subsidy but not using it is three weeks. Many spells of care arrangements end on annual eligibility renewal dates. Children in smaller settings, before-/after-school care, Quality-Rated care, and settings close to home have more stable care arrangements than other children.
Food insecurity is endemic in South Africa because of high levels of poverty. Children in foodinsecure households may be exposed to childcare instabilities. However, the role of social protection in ...mediating the relationship between food insecurity and childcare arrangements is not well understood. This study explored the relationship between food insecurity, childcare arrangements and the child support grant (CSG) in a township in Cape Town. The study designwas mixed-methods; a hunger scale was administered to 120 participants and in-depth interviews conducted with 23 primary caregivers of children under 2 years of age. The findings indicated that despite being food insecure, many households had stable childcare arrangements, presumably because of the CSG and the age of the children at the time of the study. Further research is needed to unpack the relationship between food insecurity, childcare arrangementsand the CSG. Keywords: childcare arrangements, child support grant, food insecurity
•The use of multiple childcare arrangements is higher when mothers have an irregular work schedule.•The use of center-based childcare is lower when mothers work a shift schedule and an irregular ...schedule.•Families’ financial resources are related to the use of center-based childcare.
Mothers with a nonstandard work schedule may be more likely to use multiple childcare arrangements to accommodate their childcare needs and find it difficult to use center-based care that typically operates during daytime hours. Using the framework that working mothers’ workplace demands influence their childcare needs, while families’ relational and financial resources enable them to satisfy the needs, this study examined the association between mothers’ nonstandard work schedules and their use of multiple and center-based childcare. Using a sample of 2566 young children of working mothers from the Survey of Income and Program Participation of 2008, we found that the odds of multiple childcare arrangements were 36% higher when mothers worked an irregular schedule. The odds that one of the arrangements was a childcare center were 54% and 30% lower when mothers had a shift schedule and an irregular schedule. Families’ relational resource, the presence of non-mother adults in the family, was associated with the use of both multiple and center-based care arrangements, but financial resources were related only to the use of center-based care. Potential policy efforts are discussed to help low-wage working mothers better achieve a work-family balance.
This study examined talk by parents about the early years transitions of their children (n = 7) in the context of parental non‐standard working hours and Finnish early childhood education and care ...(ECEC) services. Parents were interviewed at three time points: when their child was aged one, four, five or six years (a total of 21 interviews). The third interview was conducted during the COVID‐19 pandemic. This article focuses on the children's ECEC transitions and the interpretative frames used by parents when talking about their work and childcare. The frames used by the parents to discuss the children's transitions were stabilising the children's lives, balancing between staying at home and attending ECEC and adjusting to norms and rules. The diversity of families' experiences and their children's transitions during the early years should be considered when developing family policy and ECEC services.
Non‐standard work schedules (NSWS) have become typical, but their associations with childcare arrangements and children's well‐being are unknown. This study explores how risk factors are associated ...with the social–emotional well‐being of girls and boys using flexibly scheduled early childhood education and care. Furthermore, the study investigates whether well‐functioning cooperation between parents and educators buffers the negative effects of the risk factors. This study, which is a part of a larger survey carried out in three European countries, reports Finnish parents' (N = 146) perspectives. The results showed that high parental stress was associated with low child well‐being. Strong parent–educator cooperation positively impacted both boys' and girls' social–emotional well‐being. The risk factors of reconciling work and family life had negative associations with children's well‐being and the fulfilment of their basic needs. The results illustrate the complex interrelations between children's well‐being, risk factors relating to NSWS and the buffering effect of protective factors.
Parental time is a key resource for children's development. Studies in the United States highlight diverging gaps in parental time for children between highly educated and low-educated parents. South ...Korea offers an interesting context in which to examine the trend. This study assesses whether differences in childcare time have diverged or converged between parents with higher and lower levels of education over the 15-year period. Utilizing the advantage of household survey, the total amount of childcare time spent by both fathers and mothers is examined, in addition to separate time for each parent. The Korean Time Use Surveys (KTUS), conducted in 1999, 2004, 2009, and 2014, provide time diary data for two consecutive days. OLS regression models are applied to 14,044 married mothers and fathers who have at least one child under school age in order to examine how educational differences in childcare time have changed across the four surveys. The OLS results show that both mothers and fathers have spent increasingly more time for childcare between 1999 and 2014, regardless of educational levels. However, the rise of time use is more substantial among mothers and fathers with a university degree than their counterparts with high school or less education. The diverging trend is even more evident for the combined childcare time spent by both mothers and fathers.
Quality childcare has been associated with multiple long-term benefits for children including improved school readiness, better educational outcomes and improved health and productivity. Evidence ...suggests that returns on investment are much higher when targeted at the youngest children, especially during the first 1,000 days. Despite the evidence and the ever-increasing need and potential benefits, investments made so far to make high-quality childcare accessible to the neediest families are not commensurate. It is estimated that nearly 350 million eligible pre-primary school-age children have no access to quality childcare, especially in low-and middle-income countries. The purpose of this study was to establish the role of fathers and the childcare arrangements in selected urban informal settlements in Kenya and Ethiopia.
A mixed methods design was adopted with quantitative data being collected using a structured household questionnaire administered to 635 mothers of children of 0-3 years from both countries. In both countries, data was collected from three vulnerable communities namely urban informal settlements, large commercial agricultural settlements associated with flower farms, and female penal institutions where women with young children below 4 years old are incarcerated. Quantitative data was not collected from the penal institutions because during the time of the study (at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic), access to members of the public including researchers was restricted and so here only qualitative data was collected. The data reported in this article therefore does not include data from penal institutions.
Findings show that fathers played a major role in childcare according to 74% of respondents in Kenya and 57.7% in Ethiopia. This involvement is mainly defined in terms of providing financial support for basic needs for the family and child and for accessing health care. Some fathers were found to be either minimally involved or not involved at all. Key reasons advanced for minimal engagement included fathers having either left home permanently, had another family, was working far from home or was working long hours. Findings regarding care arrangements established that significant proportions of children had been left behind without adult supervision. Neighbors and siblings younger than 18 years provided most of the alternative care. House helps also accounted for 20.3% of care in Ethiopia with none being registered for Kenya. Daycare services only accounted for 13.4% of care in Kenya and 6.3% in Ethiopia, respectively.
The findings revealed that fathers are fairly involved in childcare even mainly through providing necessary resources. Significantly high proportions of children were left under the care of their underage siblings leading to questions of the safety of these children. Parents and guardians in these settlements had access to a mix of care arrangements including both unpaid and paid neighbors, toddler's siblings and in limited cases, daycare services. The low levels of utilization of daycare services indicate either limited services or inability to pay for the same. It is recommended that governments consider investing in childcare services in informal settlements.
Parenthood necessarily increases the scope of unpaid work in households and tends to depress women's employment rates relative to men's. This paper examines the relationship between the use of ...full-time childcare for children under 3 years of age and employment rates for men and women with one, two, or three or more children under 6 years of age in European households. Panel data from a sample of the (then) twenty-eight European Union member states for the 2005-15 period were analyzed. The results indicate that smaller differences between employment rates of men and women with one, two, or three or more children under 6 years of age are associated with greater use of full-time childcare arrangements for children under the age of 3.
HIGHLIGHTS
Traditional gender roles impose a greater burden of unpaid work on women than men.
Parenthood widens the gap between women's and men's employment rates.
The use of childcare reduces gender inequality in the labor market.
Part-time work arrangements help women combine parenthood and employment.
Long leaves have a negative impact on women's employment.
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