Social Policy: European Perspectives

Caring for our young: child care in Europe and the United States By Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel

In “Caring for our young: child care in Europe and the United States,” Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel compare the child care systems in the U.S. and Europe. Highlighting the insufficiencies of the U.S. system, they discuss the successful systems in France and Denmark and discuss the aspects of those systems that the U.S. could use in order to establish a better U.S. system. This is a necessary action in the U.S. since almost half of American three-year-olds (46%) and 64% of four-year-olds participate in daycare. However, with so many shortcoming found in the system, more than one our of eight three- to four-year-old children with employed mothers are in three or more child care arrangements and almost half participate in two or more. Clawson and Gerstel discuss the French system, called école maternelle, which is a voluntary publicly funded system that is guaranteed to every child between the ages of three and six. The same national system with the same curriculum and good quality is offered to all classes and citizens of France, all with teachers paid good wages by the national ministry. The centers are open from 8:30 t0 4:30 and offer affordable care before and after those times. Bases on a approach of early education, the centers are not considered a place for working parents with no other options. In fact, the system is so popular that almost 100% parents—employed and non-employed—enroll their three-year-olds. The centers, which are completely publicly funded, can be pricey; cost for a child in Paris was $5,500 in 1999. France funds the system by devoting 1% of its GDP on government funded early education care programs. If the U.S. spent that much on its care programs, it would be spending $100 billion a year. Currently, however, the U.S. spends less than $20 billion a year on child care programs. Other European systems, such as that in Denmark, are established on different goals than educational ones. The lead staffs in Denmark are called pedagogues rather than teachers. Though the pedagogues have the same level of education and qualifications and are paid teachers’ wages, they play a different role than the teachers in French centers. They are meant to cultivate children’s playtime and act as mediators. Care in Denmark is offered to children from birth to age three as well as from ages three to six, unlike France who only offers it to the latter age group. Because the system in France is primarily intended to educate children, it is available to all children. In Denmark, however, the system is meant to aid parents and so it is only available to children of working parents. In the U.S., the child care system operates on a mother-substitute model rather than an educational model like in France. In this model, parents choose child care when the mother cannot be there. 98 percent of child care staff are women. According to this model on which the U.S. operates, these women are meant to be substitutes to mothers and therefore have all the natural maternal feelings and capacities that a mother would have. Therefore, staff is not required to have special training and the primary measure for assessing the quality of the centers is the child-staff ratio. This, however, has proven to be a weak measure, for the European systems discusses have much higher larger child-staff ratios, yet have proven to be greater successes than the U.S. one. Furthermore, despite the importance Americans place on mother care, they have extremely weak parental leave policies. FMLA has guaranteed a 12-week job-protected leave to workers of covered employers, but despite its parading as a “gender neutral” piece of legislation, the majority of those taking leaves are women. These women endure a pay wage penalty for interrupting their careers. Sweden and Norway have confronted this problem by introducing a “use it or lose it” policy in which one of the twelve months families are given for paid leave is designated to the father and if he forfeits this month, the family loses it. Clawson and Gerstel, in discussing possible new U.S. systems, conjecture that U.S. policy makers and child care experts would be very much in favor of adapting the French system. American parents, on the other hand, would be more likely to favor the Denmark systems as most American have a strong idea of fostering and maintaining a child’s innocent childhood. Personally, I think the French system seems like the best possible solution. I do not think it would corrupt American children, as education does not need to take away childhood innocence. Rather, I think it would greatly benefit the children particularly those of low-socioeconomic classes. It would not favor any class, nor would it single out the less fortunate. The major obstacle, however, would be funding, which is inextricably connected to the obstacle of public favor.

Work-Family Policies: The United States in International Perspective By Erin L. Kelly

In the chapter “Work-Family Policies: The United States in International Perspective,” Erin Kelly reviews work-family policies and employer-based work-familu policies in the United States. She compares these policies to international ones in order to gain a better understanding of the American system. Kelly asserts that American work-family policies reflect “the liberal welfare state’s reliance on the market and its meager policies for those who do not fare well in the market system.” (118) As compared to other industrialized nations, the U.S. has much less comprehensive public policies and programs for working families. Furthermore, there is greater inequalities of access to such policies and programs in the U.S. than those other countries. Kelly begins by addressing the family leave policies, which is largely limited to the Federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). This act requires some employers to grants qualified employees 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for family members or to recover from worker’s own serious illness. However, there are many limitations to this program. To begin with, it neglects a large number of workers, most of whom are from the neediest families. Furthermore, the fact that it is unpaid means that these leaves are not an option for many families. These limitations prove that FMLA caters to middle- and upper-class workers, while remaining useless to lower-income workers. Other than FMLA, employers are required to provide disability insurance for pregrant women, which does allow them paid leaves. However, there are few efforts in the way of paid paternity leave. The family leave policies in Nordic countries, on the other hand, provide generous family leaves for both mothers and fathers, reflecting their “commitment to gender equality and to social citizenship that characterizes these countries.” (104) The policies of most of the Continental European countries provoke economic disincentive to fathers’ use of leave time, which is similar to the underlying economic logic of the U.S.. These countries, however, still provide generous maternity leave during the short-run and gender neutral, low-paid leave for longer periods. Asian countries have recently improved and expanded their family leave policies as part of an attempt to increase female employment and, in some countries, as part of improvements in their sex discrimination laws. Policies in Asia are therefore more generous now than those in the U.S. Next, Kelly addresses publicly supported child care. She says that, “the United States has a piecemeal child-care policy, with different types of government support for families at different income levels.” (105) While the federal government funds child care for low-income families through subsidies, it relies solely on tax breaks to aid the rest of the American families. The government, however, has lost more money through childcare related tac breaks than it has spent on supporting child-care programs. But supporters of the tax breaks insist that they are an unobtrusive way that works with the market for the government to aid families. These people are against child-care subsidies for low-income families as they associate them with ostracized “welfare” programs. Furthermore, the quality of child care varies dramatically from state to state as it is a state-job to regulate child-care services, and regulations. In most European countries, child care is available as a public service for children ages three and up. The government in these countries regulates childcare programs and staff is employed or licensed by the government. Furthermore, many of these countries offer a wide range of selection of child care. After comparing various countries’ policies, Kelly asserts that the U.S. provides much less support for its worker than do other countries. Even when workers to have access to work-family policies, they are hesitant to take advantage of them as they worried about negatively affecting their careers. Furthermore, because the benefits are contingent on employment, they do not provide security for working families. Kelly concludes that any change to work-family policies is unlikey to occur in the near future since the current system is beneficial to some workers, particularly more privileged and thus more powerful citizens. This was an important point that Kelly made as it showed that she is not an idealist. While many of the problems she pointed out are extremely relevant and change is necessary, I do not believe that anything substantial will happen until the policy makers and those who influence the policy makers directly experience negative effects of the current policies.

Creating Gender Egalitarian Societies: An Agenda for Reform By Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers

In this article, Janet Gornick and Marcia Meyers attempt to explain the social and economic changes that have fueled the modern problems of work-family conflict, gender inequality, and dangers to children’s health development. In wealthy countries of the world, begin the two authors, employment of women beginning to equal that of men. Accompanying this change is the fact that the majority of children are now growing up in either single-parent families or duel income-earning families. In both cases parents must divide their time between work and caregiving. These authors acknowledge that these changes have afforded many with greater opportunity. However, the changes have also given rise to new problems such as the growing “time-poverty” problem of parents. They have also aggravated gender inequalities and led to many the placement of many children in inconsistent and poor-quality care arrangements. In addressing these changes and problems, the authors focus their analysis and policy recommendations on western, northern, and southern Europe as well as on Canada and the United States. These countries, Gornick and Meyers assert, typify the contradiction between historic gender assumption regarding caregiving and current economic demands and opportunities. Many Americans are view these problems in terms of tradeoffs among interests of women, men, and children that is fundamentally affected by women’s employment decision. The authors, however, maintain that these tradeoffs are not inexorable. Rather they attribute the source of these problems to the contemporary workplace practices and social policies who, in neglecting to respond to the changing social and economic environment, are incompatible with “our shared social interest in raising healthy children while promoting women’s full equality with men.” (114) The solution to these problems, they argue, is to rework our current social arrangements, which are based on “outdated assumptions” that the man will devote all his time to paid employment so that the women can give her time to unpaid care giving in the home. In outlining solutions, Gornick and Meyers propose “a blueprint of institutional reforms that would support gender egalitarian caregiving.” (114) In this blueprint, they assert that we must develop a “duel-earner/duel-cargiving” system on which our society would operate. Under this system, men and women would share employment and caregiving responsibilities. It would respond to the interest of everyone by providing equal employment opportunity for men and women, foster equal contribution from mothers and fathers at home, and ensure consistent high-quality care for children. In analyzing work-family policies, the authors point out that the European policies vary according to country. However, they maintain that there exists consistency across all countries policies of supporting gender equality in the workplace and at home and of making care equally available to all citizens. In applauding European policy efforts, Gornick and Meyers adapt and combine various aspects of policies from certain European countries, such as “paid family leave, regulation of working time, and early childhood education and care.” (324) The authors acknowledge how difficult it would to gain support and funding for any changes. However, they insist that the arguments for government intervention in this dimension of cargiving are very compelling since child rearing is a universal endeavor. Furthermore, though the costs of caring for a child are private, the benefits of a well-raised child are publicly reaped. I agree that the public should theoretical support such government aid. But in reality, it will be difficult to convince the public of the benefits of government intervention and increased funding since the benefits it would produce are for the most part realized in the long run. The fact that the public wouldn’t see all the effects in the immediate would probably lead to doubt.

Developing Earner-Carer Policies in the United States By Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers

In conducting cross-national comparisons of family-work government policies, this reading asserts that government policies that support parents in their earning and caring roles are realistic. Gornick and Meyers put forth that such comparisons also expose the United States as exceptional in cross-national terms. The U.S. stands out socially for such reasons as its diversity of population, its high number of single parents, structure of labor markets, and its decentralization of policy-making authority. Furthermore, the U.S. is politically unique in relation to its European counterparts for its enthusiastic support of private market solutions and its virulent distrust of government—particularly federal government—intervention. These exceptional aspects create obstacles to government-sponsored child care in the United States. Though many European policies are successful, they all involve a lot of government intervention. This, as previously stated, arouses distrust and fear in Americans. Furthermore, its intensely racially and culturally diverse population means that America is a patchwork of differing values. With the staunch desire to retain their own values, parents are hesitant to place their children in care that would encourage opposing values. It is possible then that government instituted child care would be publicly accepted if it offered options that allowed parents to ensure that their values and needs were being met. There is also the fear such policies would lead to an increase in birthrates and a decrease in marriage rates, thus possibly increasing the number of single mothers. However, the authors point out that the contrary has occurred in European countries, which have been experiencing sometimes dangerously low birthrates. A further concern is that instituting these policies would have deleterious effects on employment and would in fact increase unemployment and thus severely harm the economy. However, there is no empirical evidence of this effect. Men and employers are two major groups from whom opposition is expected. It is believed that the former group may resent the changes in gender roles that would result from policy changes. However, many studies have shown that men would like to have more time with their children, but fear the disapproval of their workplace if they were to make such time. It is believed employers would oppose policy changes because out of fear that it would lower the productivity of their company. However, it is believed that easing the family-work conflict would make for happy employees and higher morale in the workplace. I do not think that either side presented in this article are entirely correct; they both seem to clear-cut. Those who oppose increased government intervention seem to have irrational and/or unsupported arguments. But the refutations of those arguments are based on comparison with other countries, which seems sometimes to be comparing apple and oranges. In surveying other countries’ child care systems, we cannot isolate them from the countries’ overall and general goals and values. Many of those systems seem ideal and, in just looking at them alone, seem like perfect solutions to the United State’s flawed system. However, the changes that instituting such system would require would affect the overall system the United States, which would require a reworking of American ideologies.