European parents’ attitudes towards public childcare provision: the role of current provisions, interests and ideologies

Abstract

Despite the large volume of literature on childcare provision across countries, individuals' attitudes and preferences concerning the role of government in the provision of childcare remain largely unexplored. This study examines how current policy provision structures, measured through objective and subjective indicators, both at the individual and national levels, influence the degree to which parents in European countries support public provision of childcare. The relative importance of current provision structures is then compared with other welfare attitude determinants; that is, self-interest and political attitudes. This is done using data from 22 European countries in 2008/2009 and a multilevel modelling technique. Results show that in general parents across Europe are largely supportive of public childcare provision. Furthermore, current provision structures, and people's assessment of it, are consistently related to parents' support for public childcare. Current provisions are salient factor explaining variance in childcare support (both at the individual and national levels) over and beyond the most commonly used frameworks, namely self-interest and ideologies. The results of this study provide evidence for a vicious and virtuous cycle in the relationship between policy provision and support, where investment in policies may drive up support while rolling back of policies may further decrease support.

Academic, vocational or general? An analysis of public opinion towards education policies with evidence from a new comparative survey

“…Rather than completely abandoning public education when dissatisfied with the current performance, respondents favour more public investments in those educational sectors which are perceived to contribute to the solution of pressing socio-economic problems. Following Chung and Meuleman (2017), this can be called an 'improvement reaction' rather than a 'punishment reaction' from critical citizens (p. 51).…”

Perceived accessibility of childcare in Europe: a cross-country multilevel study

“…The partnership status of the respondent (married or partnered vs. non-partnered) is also included as a control variable for it reflects the presence of alternate caregivers in the household. Nonetheless, except for the decision to use childcare before the child reaches 18 months of age (Zachrisson et al 2013), this variable is found to have a significant effect on neither the type or intensity of childcare use (Geoffroy et al 2012;Sylva et al 2007;Tang et al 2012), nor the attitudes towards public childcare provision (Chung and Meuleman 2017).…”

“…This model suggests that we take into account various dimensions such as the child, the mother (and sometimes the father), the family and environmental characteristics, as well as maternal well-being and cultural beliefs and preferences with regard to childcare when identifying the determinants of the type and intensity of ECEC used. A similar list of variables is also used in a recent study on attitudes towards public childcare (Chung and Meuleman 2017). This framework also meets our needs in controlling for the individual-, household-or family-related factors that may affect the perception of childcare accessibility.…”

Запросы Россиян На Содействие Государства: Социальное Инвестирование Или Социальная Поддержка?

“…Оно диктуется, в первую очередь, (1) собственными интересами населения [Blekesaune, Quadagno, 2003;Knijn, van Oorschot, 2008] и (2) идеологическими паттернами [Blekesaune, 2013;Edlund, 2006;Hasenfeld, RaVerty, 1989;Groskind, 1994, Jaeger, 2006, которые в зависимости от позиций исследователей также могут дополняться спецификой социализации, паттернами национальной культуры в отношении социальной поли тики, текущей конфигурацией социальной сферы и т. д. [Blekesaune, 2013;Chung, Meuleman, 2017;Chung et al, 2018;Kootstra, Roosma, 2018 и др.]. Значимость индивидуальных интересов в вопросе восприятия политики все общего благосостояния и отдельных ее механизмов многократно подтверж дена эмпирическими исследованиями.…”