22. Childcare systems fit for the future

Ingela Naumann (University of Fribourg)

Jana Javornik (Institute of Contemporary History) 

National childcare systems reflect societal sharing of care responsibilities and obligations; who can access affordable quality childcare is an outcome of government decisions. But provision across countries is often piecemeal, resulting in patchwork arrangements not suited to families’ needs. The failings of national policies often limit families’ choice and force parents to craft their own solutions, leaving many children disadvantaged, even more so those with complex care needs. The increase in casualised contract work means that it is ever more difficult for families to plan care arrangements, with time required to travel between childcare and places of work representing another, often hidden, factor of social and gender inequity. Time and again, research has pointed to the importance of access to quality childcare for all families, whether in employment, education, or out of work, living in urban or more remote rural areas. A key problem of access to childcare stems from multiple sources, including the policy design and financing mechanisms embedded in national childcare systems. For example, subsidised childcare places are often only available to parents in employment or provision gaps are created in certain geographical areas with smaller populations. Any such gaps in provision can create barriers to work or gendered part-time traps. Not only are countries failing to make the best use of their workforce potential, more so as public investment in services remains patchy but, by and large, women continue to pay a higher price for providing care across the family life cycle. This affects care-related penalties and widens opportunity, pay and pension gaps, leading to higher poverty risks in women.

This stream asks: What do inclusive, just, sustainable childcare systems and strategies that promote equitable service take-up, including affordability, availability, quality, accessibility for all groups of children and families across regional/urban/rural divides look like, and should look like, across countries?   

We will consider papers directed to a broad range of topics relevant to childcare systems. We welcome papers that offer conceptual, methodological, and empirical innovations for analysing childcare policy designs and their societal outcomes. We are particularly interested (although not exclusively) in papers that apply a range of comparative lenses and tools that broaden comparative policy analysis, with 'comparative' dimensions broadly defined as, e.g., temporally, intra- / cross-nationally, between groups of parents/carers, intersectionality. We encourage contributions that represent diverse disciplines, geographies, and address both practice and process, policy and legal aspects. Papers that focus on issues specific to regions and underrepresented communities are very welcome.