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Palgrave Macmillan

Family Policy and the Organisation of Childcare

Hierarchies of Care Ideals

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. Borbála Kovács

    1. Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

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  • Proposes a novel conceptual framework for explaining children’s care arrangements during the early years
  • Brings into focus the role that childcare policy instruments actually play in shaping lived experiences of organising formal and informal care and the negotiation of work-family reconciliation at the micro level
  • Offers an unprecedented, empirically rich read about Romanian families and their relationship with the Romanian welfare state fifteen to twenty-five years after the demise of state socialism
  • Provides engagement with state-family relationships in the realm of childcare from a gendered perspective

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xix
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: Family Policies and the Making of Childcare Arrangements

    • Borbála Kovács
    Pages 1-23

  3. Researching Families’ Childcare Decisions

    • Borbála Kovács
    Pages 25-49

  4. Two-Tiered Romanian Family Policy and Inequality

    • Borbála Kovács
    Pages 51-91

  5. Conceptualising the Making of Young Children’s Routine Care Arrangements

    • Borbála Kovács
    Pages 93-125

  6. Childcare Arrangements for Babies and Toddlers

    • Borbála Kovács
    Pages 127-160

  7. Childcare Arrangements During the ‘Gap Year’

    • Borbála Kovács
    Pages 161-192

  8. Childcare Arrangements for Preschool-Aged Children

    • Borbála Kovács
    Pages 193-221

  9. Parents’ Employment Trajectories: Two Worlds of Work-Care Experiences

    • Borbála Kovács
    Pages 223-257

  10. Conclusion: Theorising Childcare Decisions

    • Borbála Kovács
    Pages 259-277

  11. Back Matter

    Pages 279-329
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Keywords

About this book

This book explains and theorises the ways in which family policy instruments come to shape the routine care arrangements of young children. Drawing on interviews with close to a hundred parents from very different walks of life in urban and rural Romania, the book provides a rich account of the care arrangement transitions these parents experience during their children’s first five years of life. The influence of family policies emerges as complex and uneven, affecting childcare decisions both directly and indirectly by contributing to the reproduction and legitimation of age-related hierarchies of care ideals. These cultural artefacts, reflective of both longstanding institutional legacies and recent policy innovations between 2006 and 2015, are the prism through which mothers and fathers from diverse backgrounds view and make decisions about their children’s care. This unique volume will be of interest and value to students and scholars of childcare, its organisation and familypolicy, specifically in post-socialist contexts.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Borbála Kovács

About the author

Borbála Kovács is a EURIAS research fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Denmark, and Visiting Faculty at the Central European University, Hungary. She has written widely on family policy and its impact on private lives, as well as post-socialist welfare state adaptation. 

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