Mother–grandmother contracts: Local care loops and the intergenerational transfer of childcare in the Czech Republic

Abstract

This article explores the local care loops in the Czech Republic, a country that experienced radical changes in family policies and in the organization of childcare after the fall of Communism in 1989. The aim of this article is to answer the following questions: What is the dominant pattern of childcare organization? What is the nature of the local care loops in the Czech Republic? How are these local care loops reproduced by current social policies? Where are their roots in the pre-1989 period? To answer these questions, the article investigates the local care loops and everyday mobilities of childcare in the Czech Republic. It draws upon secondary analysis of scholarly (sociological and anthropological) works that focus on childcare and its organization and of works that analyse relevant social policies. The article presents the following findings: local care loops in the Czech Republic are endogamous and matrilineal, they follow a gendered care contract between generations of women, and they are thus part of intergenerational solidarity. The analysis illuminates how the care loops are shaped by the social policies that affect care cultures in the Czech Republic.

Being Daughter and Mother: Middle-aged Women in Three-generation Living

“…Second, as in other European countries, grandparents (grandmothers more often than grandfathers) facilitate the balancing of work and family life in the Czech Republic (Saxonberg et al, 2013;Souralová, 2019). This was true for many women in our sample who frequently appreciated multigenerational living as a setting where the reconciliation of work and care was enabled by the presence of other people who could share the caring responsibilities.…”

“Everybody Takes Care of Everybody”: Care Circulation and Care Relations in Three-Generation Cohabitation

“…The fall of Communism in 1989 and the social and economic transformation in the 1990s brought changes in the organization of child care, particularly the prolongation of paid parental leave. As a result, parental care provided by mothers with the assistance of grandmothers became the dominant model of child care in the Czech Republic and “becoming a mother in a climate of strong intergenerational solidarity entails a future commitment to grandparental care” (Souralová, 2019). The family is “a perennial star” in the organization of elder care (Souralová & Šlesingerová, 2018).…”

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

“…In this case, the solution is to use retired parents, the children's grandmother, to fill in the extra day (see also Souralová, 2019).…”

“…The employment rate of mothers of children aged under 6 years old is 63.6 percent, compared to 81.5 percent in Sweden and 76.1 percent in Denmark (Eurostat, 2018). In this regard, Finland resembles Eastern European countries, such as Slovakia (Sekerákova Búriková, 2019) and the Czech Republic (Souralová, 2019) rather than the other Nordic countries.…”