The Predicament of Childcare Policy in France: What Is at Stake?

Abstract

France is well known for providing working parents with formal childcare arrangements and generous benefits aimed at reducing costs for families. Currently, and despite a general tightening of purse strings in the social security administration, childcare policy has continued to see increases in funding and remains a growth area in the French welfare state. Yet reforms introduced periodically since the mid-1980s illustrate clearly the growing influence employment policies are having on childcare provisions. For all the rhetoric devoted to the promotion of 'freedom of choice' for parents in the childcare sector evidence suggests a different set of priorities. In reality, the impetus to increase the number of options for the placement of children in supervised care derives from the desire to bring more mothers into the workforce while at the same time satisfying the increasing demands placed on employees through the development of flexible work schedules and in particular non-standard work hours.

Change in work-family reconciliation policy in France and the UK since 2008: the influence of economic crisis and austerity

“…Gender equality as a frame of reference played a subordinate role only in this process and work-family reconciliation remained anchored in a notion of maternalism (Bonoli, 2013;Mazur, 2002;White, 2004). This longevity of state support for working mothers explains to a great extent the social acceptability of placing a child of under three in full-time childcare in France (Fagnani & Math, 2011). In similarity to France, the notion of maternalism has strongly influenced the UK welfare state but in contrast, the British liberal tradition has led to a reluctance to intervene in the family lives of citizens, whether to discourage or encourag F " -Kaiser, 2011; Haux, 2011).…”

“…Until the late 1990s there was a gulf separating France and the UK on this issue (Lewis, 2013). On the one hand, the French state had enjoyed wide legitimacy to intervene in family life since the beginning of the welfare state (Fagnani & Math, 2011). From its inception, the social security system had organised a transfer of resources from the childless to families with children I 10 was introduced whilst local authorities ran means-tested and subsidised crèches for the under threes and children from three to school ag 11 for free.…”

“…Alongside the introduction of the parental leave benefit and the continuing provision of nursery schools and local-authority run crèches, through the 1980s and 1990s France sought to increase the number of childcare places by supporting the use of individual and flexible forms of childcare -particularly childminding -through universal benefits for dual-earner parents and single-parent families and tax breaks rather than increasing investment in I A (Fagnani & Math, 2011).…”

Fathers, care and family policy in France: an unfinished revolution?

“…The shorter leave for parents of one child raised again the broader question of the length of parental leave which had been aired for some time because of its gendered impact (Fagnani and Math, 2011;Pailhé and Solaz, 2007). At least 98% of recipients of APE were women.…”

“…Between 2008 and 2012 France had the second-highest fertility rate in the EU, behind Ireland (Moss, 2013;SPSS, 2013). However, the means of supporting working mothers focused largely on childcare provision (Fagnani, 2012;Fagnani and Math, 2011), with relatively little attention to gender equality in the domestic sphere. The persistent tension between conservative natalism and gender equality helps to explain both France's weak fatherhood regime and also the recent, but hesitant, shift towards stronger fathers' rights.…”