Abstract
Following the structure of the previous chapter, the discussion in this one focuses on routine care arrangements for children aged two-to-three, the ‘gap year’ of Romanian family policy given the absence of paid leave schemes and the severely limited availability of public ECEC service provision for under-threes. Following a detailed account of the care ideals and the competing hierarchies of care ideals informing families’ childcare decisions, the chapter expands on care arrangements typical for children of this age. Another contribution of this chapter is the articulation of a taxonomy of childcare decision-making, developed inductively using interview dyads with mothers and fathers in the same families. Describing three different models of childcare decision-making, this chapter questions whether decisions to do with young children’s routine care are first and foremost those of mothers.
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Notes
- 1.
Not included in this accounting are families that relied on incomes from informal income-earning activities only. See Appendix A.
- 2.
Impoverished Roma parents without regular formal employment and living in ghettoised, majority Roma areas of research sites were not asked about paid helpers. Having done so would have communicated not lack of understanding, but lack of consideration and of appreciation of the severe material hardship and social marginalisation that these families were facing, plainly clear from the environment in which they were living.
- 3.
With a mean conversion rate of 4.1 RON for €1, between €12 and 110.
- 4.
With a mean conversion rate of 4.4 RON for €1, i.e. €1.1 per hour.
- 5.
Interviews with only one parent in two-parent families were conducted in nine families, seven of whom were little educated Roma mothers and one little educated Romanian mother with a Roma partner. See Appendix A for further details.
- 6.
Missing in this accounting are two single-mother families where child-related decisions were said to be made by mothers alone.
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Kovács, B. (2018). Childcare Arrangements During the ‘Gap Year’. In: Family Policy and the Organisation of Childcare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78661-2_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78661-2_6
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