This article analyzes eligibility for parental-leave benefits in twenty-one European countries. It distinguishes four ideal-type approaches to how leave-related benefits are granted (in-)dependent of parents’ labor market position: universal parenthood model, selective parenthood model, universal adult-worker model, and selective adult-worker model. An eligibility index is created to measure the inclusiveness of parental-leave benefits, alongside the degree of (de-)gendered entitlements. The importance of employment-based benefits and gender-sensitive policies increased between 2006 and 2017. Eligibility criteria remained stable, but due to labor market trends, such as increasing precariousness, fewer parents may fulfill the conditions for employment-based benefits.

From mid-March 2020, childcare services and schools were closed around the globe in the fight of the COVID-19 pandemic. This situation, unprecedented in the history of modern welfare states, brought striking crosscountry differences in pandemic childcare-policy responses. They varied particularly in the reopening phaseboth in being more lenient or strict, and in being universal or selective. This article presents a conceptual framework that allows to unpack and classify variations in the design of immediate childcare-policy responses to COVID-19, which became (primarily) driven by public-health-related goals and therefore transverse existing conceptualisations. We argue that specific responses are resulting from a country-specific combination of pandemic prevention strategy (either focused on high-risk groups or the whole population), and childcarerelated policy concerns (e.g. educational goals, or work-family reconciliation). The distinct childcare-policy responses are then developed, and empirically illustrated on the basis of data collected for 28 European countries. This provides a basis for future research into the crosscountry variation of responses, as well as gender and social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.