Local loops of care in the metropolitan region of Helsinki: A time-economy perspective

Abstract

Finland subsidizes caring for young children at home by several cash-for-care schemes. In 2001, it adopted a tax credit for domestic services, including care. This article adopts an everyday perspective to social policies to analyse how Finnish cash-for-care policies produce local care loops using a time-economy approach. It examines the increase in private services alongside public ones through an analysis of the organization of childcare in time and space, paying attention to the micro-mobilities and daily choreographies of care. Drawing on interviews with Finnish employers of privately employed childcarers, our results demonstrate that childcare policies and tax credits are central means through which childcare is increasingly being privatized. We argue that the notion of time as a scarce resource and the organization of care loops in a way that maximizes time available for wage labour and ‘quality time’ point towards the emergence of a classed time discipline. Time becomes a commodity with not only monetary value but also another inherent value, captured in the notion of ‘quality time with children’. Significantly, this quality time does not include time used for other reproductive labour tasks, such as cleaning or cooking.

Paid home-based childcare in Slovakia: Informal markets and care loops

“…Cash for care policies have been recognized as an important factor leading to the marketization of care (Brennan et al, 2012; Williams and Gavanas, 2008). In Finland (Näre and Wide, in press) and Sweden (Hobson, 2014; Hobson et al, 2018), cash for care policies led to both marketization and formalization of care. While there is a childcare allowance in Slovakia, most employers do not use it and instead hire childcare workers informally.…”

“…During the years 2013–2018, the childcare allowance was not sufficient to cover the expense of a private nursery in the capital. A similar shift in Western Europe and in Finland (Näre and Wide, in press) – from the states providing services related to care, to providing cash, enabling parents to buy such services on the private market – led to the employment of low-paid migrant domestic workers providing care in the households of their employers (Williams and Gavanas, 2008).…”

“…In contrast to the absence of government-subsidized care for infants and toddlers, day care is provided in kindergartens for children over the age of 3 years. As in Finland (Näre and Wide, in press), kindergartens are run by municipalities. The price of municipal kindergartens is relatively low due to state subsidies.…”

‘Quality Time’ in Nanny Families: Local Care Loops and New Inequalities in Sweden

“…Of importance here is the surplus time that parents experience through the practice of hiring nannies and au pairs, a surplus that they argue makes them into better parents. This becomes visible in what the parents think they get when they buy the services of a nanny or au pair (Näre & Wide, 2019;Näre and Wide, 2022). Firstly, they buy themselves available-for-work time.…”

Nanny care in Sweden: The inequalities of everyday doings of care

“…The ‘local care loops’ orchestrated by parents in everyday life, entail and enable different movements, both for themselves and for the other actors involved, that is, the nannies, au pairs and the children (Näre and Isaksen, this issue; Sheller and Urry, 2006). As argued by Näre and Wide (this issue), care loops are the ‘daily choreographies’ organizing actors’ movements in time and place. To fully capture how this is making possible a certain kind of family, a family practice perspective is necessary (Morgan, 1996, 2011); by conceptualizing family as something constituted in and through ‘doings’, rather than being defined through the noun of The Family, this perspective enables a focus on a ‘what appears to be trivial or even meaningless activities’ which are ‘given meaning through being grouped together under one single label, that of family’, as well as on everyday activities ‘which seem unremarkable, hardly worth talking about’ (Morgan, 2011: 5–7).…”