Diverging Paths? A Comparative Look at Childcare Policies in Japan,South Korea and Taiwan

This article compares state policies to support childcare in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, using fuzzy set ideal type analysis to determine the nature of institutional arrangements with respect to labour, money and time provisions. We then note their implications for familialization and defamilialization in the three countries. Our analysis suggests a common pattern towards the increased use of financial support amongst the three countries over time; however, this commonality does not mean their childcare policies are converging, as the financial supports differ in focus, with Japan concentrating on familialization by valuing family care, and Korea exclusively employing policy to facilitate the use of market‐based care services. For its part, Taiwan has been strengthening familialization by increasing the leave compensation to value time off to provide care. The different labour, money and time dimensions vis‐à‐vis the familialization/defamilialization matrix suggest varying implications of institutional arrangements for gender.     

Class politics in the sandbox? An analysis of the socio‐economic determinants of preferences towards public spending and parental fees for childcare

This article analyses the socio‐economic determinants of public preferences towards public spending and parental fees for childcare and how they are conditioned by institutional contexts. Previous studies of childcare policy preferences have focused on attitudes regarding the provision of care. However, when it comes to questions of financing, we know astonishingly little about how supportive individuals actually are of expanding pre‐school early childhood education and care, and how support varies across different socio‐economic groups in society. This is an important research gap because childcare provision and how it is financed have redistributive implications, which vary depending on the institutional design of childcare policy. Using novel and unique survey data on childcare preferences from eight European countries, we argue and show that preferences towards expanding childcare are more contested than it is often assumed. The institutional structure of childcare shapes how income matters for preferences towards how much should be spent and how provision should be financed. Where access to childcare is socially stratified, the poor and the rich develop different preferences towards either increasing public spending or reducing parental fees in order to improve their access to childcare. The findings in this article suggest that expanding childcare in systems characterised by unequal access can be politically contested due to diverging policy priorities of individuals from different social backgrounds.     

Family Policies in Germany and France: The Role of Enterprises and Social Partners

Although France and Germany are commonly classified as Bismarckian welfare regimes, they differ significantly in terms of family policy. For a long time, social and family policy in (West) Germany was focused on the male-breadwinner model of married couples. This was based on the expectation that women, in particular married women with children, would withdraw from the labour market permanently, or at least temporarily. Whereas care by mothers was massively subsidized by state family policy, the expansion of the childcare infrastructure was neglected and progressed only very slowly compared to the situation in many other countries of Europe. France, on the contrary, is one of the European countries where childcare services are particularly widespread, giving mothers the option to combine paid work and motherhood. Nevertheless, significant changes are happening in both countries. Concern over the demographic trends and low birth rates (in particular in Germany) have refocused attention on family policy in recent years. In Germany, it has now become a key field of debate and policy, and new actors have appeared on the scene. This article proposes to compare the latest developments in both countries, highlighting the contribution of enterprises and social partners to work–life balance, re-analysing the different types of familialism characterizing both countries.     

Labour Markets,Care Regimes and Foreign Care Worker Policies in East Asia

This article analyzes the politics of foreign care worker policies in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. In the face of socio‐demographic challenges, these countries have responded differently to the increasing demand for hiring foreign care workers, creating distinct policies with respect to the origins of the foreign care workforce, the size of the foreign care workforce in the labour market, and job specifications. In this article, I argue that the interaction of female employment patterns, the public provision (or lack) of social care, and labour market policies in the care service sector determines the diverging political pathways of foreign care worker policies in these three countries over the past two decades.     

Institutional Options,Cultural Orientation and Mothers’ Work and Family Reconciliation in Korea

This paper examines what determines mothers' work and family reconciliation in the Republic of Korea. We conducted a survey to examine the influence of use of institutional options such as childcare leave and services, and cultural orientation towards gender roles on the probability of being employed, paid and unpaid care work time, and monthly wages. Our findings show that mothers' with high education tend to be in paid work and to have more traditional attitudes towards gender role. The use of maternity leave increases but the use of parental leave tends to decrease mothers' labor market participation. Maternity leave also is found to influence positively on working mothers' monthly wages. However, no factor is found to be relevant to reduce working mothers' time spent on unpaid care work. Issues have been put forwarded for policy considerations. Firstly, the use of maternity leave should be encouraged and job protection needs to be secured with the use of parental leave. Secondly, mothers with relatively higher education tend to prefer familial care to institutional care. Last but not least, the availability of institutional care services do not effectively reduce mothers' time spent on unpaid care work.     

Reducing Inequality in Childcare Service Use across European Countries: What (if any) Is the role of Social Spending?

Childcare services are increasingly put forward as one of the most important policy levers to combat poverty and inequality. However, higher income families use childcare services to a much larger extent than lower income families. Almost all European countries increased expenditures on childcare over the past years, but has an ever‐increasing public spending on childcare provision led to more equality in its use? In this article, the relationship between spending and childcare use as well as between spending and inequality in childcare use over the period 2006–12 is empirically analyzed using a random effects model drawing on country‐level panel data (n = 156), derived from the EU‐SILC and OECD SOCX databases. Since governments can spend money in different ways, it is discussed whether a public or a market‐based strategy to subsidize childcare provision is related to more equality. The results suggest that more spending leads to higher levels of childcare use, but not directly to lower levels of inequality. For achieving equity in childcare use, government investment should lead to an expansion of childcare places across the income distribution. The findings allow the formulation of new hypotheses regarding the role of the private market in childcare services provision.     

Access to Childcare in Europe: Parents' Logistical Challenges in Cross‐national Perspective

A burgeoning comparative literature has identified the centrality of childcare policy and provision in promoting parental, and specifically maternal, participation in paid employment across countries. This literature has focused on the importance of macro‐level institutional arrangements, with a special emphasis on variation in availability of, and access to, formal early childhood education and care services. However, there has been limited comparative exploration of what this means in practice at the micro‐level: the everyday challenges parents face when attempting to navigate the childcare system and the labour market simultaneously. Taking inspiration from human geography literature on the concept of ‘space–time fixity’, we present cross‐national findings on the logistical challenges of arranging childcare. Evidence is drawn from interviews with parent‐ and childcare‐related organizations in six European countries: Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia, Sweden and the UK. Our research provides a richer understanding of childcare availability than would a sole focus on formal childcare services, by elucidating the difficulties parents face in organizing access to these services, which can be a challenge to some extent even in contexts where childcare services are comprehensive and affordable.     

Marketisation policies in different contexts: Consequences for home‐care workers in Germany,Japan and Sweden

Market‐oriented restructurings of long‐term care policies contribute significantly to the aggravation of care workers’ situations. This article focuses on the effects of broader long‐term care policy developments on market‐oriented reforms. Germany, Japan and Sweden are three countries that have introduced market‐oriented reforms into home‐based care provision embedded in distinct long‐term care policy developments. Conceptually, this article draws on comparative research on care to define the institutional dimensions of long‐term care policies. Empirically, the research is based on policy analyses, as well as on national statistics and a comparative research project on home‐care workers in the aforementioned countries. The findings reveal the mediating impact of the extension and decline of long‐term public care support and the corresponding development of the care infrastructure on both the restructuring of care work and the assessments of the care workers themselves.     

A Confucian War over Childcare? Practice and Policy in Childcare and Their Implications for Understanding the Korean Gender Regime

We ask about the development of childcare policies in Korea and what these mean for our understanding of the gender assumptions of Korean governments. Women's labour market participation has been increasing rapidly, with married women now much more likely to be in the labour market. The provision and regulation around support for women's employment, and especially for mothers’ employment, is a key issue and problem for Korean women and for governments. A number of policies give the impression that the Korean government is moving rapidly towards a policy for reconciling work and family based on a dual‐earner model of the family. But we argue that a close inspection of these policies suggests that the state is still playing a residual role, legislation is not effectively implemented, and government is giving way to the private sector and to the family in responsibility for childcare. Mothers’ accounts of their lives centre on a childcare war played out beneath the apparently harmonious Confucian surface, with resisting husbands supported by powerful mothers‐in‐law, and daily struggles over the management of services. The Korean government and its policy‐makers, far from moving rapidly towards a dual‐earner model of the family, are still rooted in Confucian ideals.     

Return of the Nanny: Public Policy towards In‐home Childcare in the UK,Canada and Australia

Research on early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy focuses overwhelmingly on formal, centre‐based provision and, to a lesser extent, on family day care (or childminding) provided in the homes of registered carers. Comparatively little research addresses the policy treatment of care provided in the child's home by nannies and au pairs. This article examines the position of in‐home childcare in Australia, the UK and Canada, and the varied nature and extent of public funding and regulation. Introducing a new dimension into comparative studies of ECEC, it also explores how shifts in migration policy in each country have intersected with ECEC funding and regulation to reshape the recruitment and employment of in‐home child carers. Australia, the UK and Canada are all liberal, market‐oriented countries, but there is considerable diversity in the way governments support and regulate in‐home childcare, their rationales for so doing, and in the connections between childcare and migration. We argue that connecting the analysis of in‐home childcare to migration policies raises new questions about the classification and comparison of ECEC policies.     

Who is my family?: A comparative study of the family boundary in East Asia

Most Asian countries are regarded as Confucian countries although each has its own historical and cultural background. Little is known about how people in different Asian countries perceive their family boundaries. This study is an attempt to compare the perception of the family in China, Japan, and Korea. We examined the family perception and found substantial differences among the three. Chinese people showed the widest and paternally extended perception of family. Data from people in Korea nearly matched data from China, but family perception developed bilaterally. People in Japan, however, perceived only blood-tied, intimate relations as family members. In addition, the perception of the family was not substantially different between the genders in Japan and China, but in South Korea, men perceived family boundaries more widely than women, implying that women have a greater family burden than men in Korea. Considering the heterogeneity in family perceptions in these countries, this paper tries to explain how social institutions interact with individuals and impact the perception of family. Finally, this paper concludes that it is inappropriate to tie the three East Asian countries as ‘Confucian civilizations’ in terms of family perception.     

Migrant Care Work Going Dutch? The Emergence of a Live‐in Migrant Care Market and the Restructuring of the Dutch Long‐term Care System

In recent years, a live‐in migrant care (LIMC) market has emerged in European countries with specific care, migration, and employment regime features. In countries with relatively low levels of formal long‐term care (LTC) provision, people in need of care and their families have started purchasing LTC directly from individual – mostly migrant – workers who live‐in with the person in need of care. Previous research has shown that this arrangement is facilitated by the availability of cash‐for‐care benefits that can be freely used by the beneficiaries, and/or by low levels of regulation of employment and migration. The Netherlands traditionally features strong, universal and generous LTC policies. However, recently, the phenomenon of LIMC has also appeared there. Based on exploratory qualitative research, this article examines the features of Dutch LIMC and the factors that foster or hinder its development. Our findings show that the ongoing restructuring of the Dutch LTC system – particularly the emphasis on informal care and decreasing accessibility of institutional care – are important factors pushing an LIMC market. At the same time, various institutional factors limit its growth, particularly the high levels of regulation of the Dutch care, migration and employment regimes. Further cutbacks in the care sector might push more families to this market in the near future, and change the character of the Dutch LTC sector. The Dutch case is relevant for other countries with longstanding traditions of generous LTC services which currently undergo retrenchment, and sheds light on routes to institutional change.     

Through the gender lens: a comparison of family policy in Sweden and China

In this study, Sweden and China's family policies, with a specific focus on their effect on gender equality, are compared. We describe the different goals and objectives of parental/maternity leave and childcare policies. The effect of family policies on gender equality, indicated by equal employment opportunities for women and the gender division of labour in the family in the two countries, is also discussed. A systematic comparison revealed that both countries included the promotion of gender equality in their policy agendas, but they varied in design and implementation. Swedish family policies assume childcare is a public concern, and women's participation in the labour market and men's involvement in childcare are considered to be crucial to achieving gender equality. In contrast, China's family policies emphasize women's participation in the labour market, but overlook the gender division of household work and childcare at home.     

Attitudes towards childcare policies,policy feedback and path dependency: Czech Republic contrasted to Norway

This article explores the recent changes in mothers’ employment, childcare policies and attitudes towards gender equality in the labour market, in the Czech Republic and Norway, how these factors interact and what impact they have on the provision of childcare. Analysis suggests that there is convergence of the Czech Republic with Norway in terms of female employment, but divergence in childcare policies. The policy feedback – the mutual interrelatedness of attitudes towards mothers’ employment and childcare policies – has shaped refamilialising policies in the Czech Republic, whereas in Norway policies that support gender equality in work and family have emerged.     

The ABC of Child Care Politics

The care and education of children below school age is an area of intense public debate and the subject of considerable policy innovation in Western democracies. Child care raises complex philosophical and policy issues ranging from broad questions about the relative responsibilities of state, market and family to technical aspects of policy design such as the interaction of child care subsidies with income support, family payments and taxation. Across the developed world, countries are finding new ways to address the growing need for child care, with market‐based solutions looming large in several countries. This paper analyses Commonwealth policy towards long day care in Australia since the early 1990s. It explores the shift towards market‐based, for‐profit care for children below school age, especially the growth of publicly listed child care corporations. In allowing a single corporation to assume a dominant position in the provision of long day care, Australia has embarked on a vast experiment in the care of children, unparalleled in other countries.     

Social Policies for the Elderly in the Republic of Korea and Japan: A Comparative Perspective*

The Republic of Korea (South Korea) and Japan are highly industrialized and modern nations which are both influenced by the Confucian tradition of respect for the elderly and family responsibility for the care of aging parents. In both countries the proportion of the elderly population is increasing. Japan, since the end of World War II, has utilized its government bureaucracy to help develop the social welfare system and to formulate social policies and programs for the elderly. Japan's tradition of samurai Confucianism is congruent with the commitment of the Japanese government to such social development as a matter of national policy. The Republic of Korea has not assigned a comprehensive planning role to its government bureaucracy. Lacking the mix of industrial/post-industrial infrastructure of Japan and not yet faced with the immediacy of a very large elderly population, the Republic of Korea's government has developed its social policies for the elderly in a more incremental manner, usually emphasizing small scale and piecemeal initiatives. With respect to social support, it has emphasized voluntary family efforts as congruent with the Korean (and Chinese) variant of Confucianism. This paper will compare and contrast these different approaches.     

Party Politics and Childcare: Comparing the Expansion of Service Provision in England and Germany

The expansion of childcare provision in the traditionally ‘service‐lean’ welfare states of England and Germany, in times when most other welfare programmes faced retrenchment, came with some surprise to the comparative social policy and political economy literature. With the expansion of employment‐oriented family policies, both countries have departed from their previous strong male breadwinner trajectories. Electoral competition and corresponding party and family policy modernisation in attempts to improve female voter mobilisation is key to understanding this paradigmatic shift informed by the adult worker model.     

‘Active Families’: Familization,Housing and Welfare across Generations in East Asia

Debates around welfare change have tended to concentrate on the balance between market and state provision. Although there is increasing reference to a mixed economy of welfare, this generally signifies a greater emphasis on a third sector of voluntary/community level provision. However, the family sphere has been, and still remains, an important and dynamic source of welfare provision across changing regimes and between generations. With this as background, the article addresses three particular questions. First, how has the role of families in the welfare mix changed over time? Second, how do family ‘strategies’ adapt to structural changes in order to maximize collective/individual benefits in certain areas and how do these strategies evolve over generations? Third, is such family engagement in welfare influenced by policy shifts appropriately conceptualized as ‘re‐familization’ or ‘de‐familization'? These issues are explored in the comparative socio‐economic and cultural contexts of China and Japan and draw on qualitative research with three generations of families in Shanghai and Tokyo.