When Policymakers and Parents Meet Political Discourses: Fields and Subject Positions in the Finnish Debates on Children's Day Care

Freedom of choice, gender equality, or employment promotion? Finnish party positions on childcare in the light of election manifestos 2015

“…If so, this can be interpreted as a 'strategy of avoiding' , which enables political actors to shun topics that they see as challenging to their traditional ideological positions, or that are simply seen as too controversial (cf. Autto, 2015).…”

“…The first set of values relate to (gender) equality and incorporate income redistribution between different families, as well as notions of 'positive freedom' (Taylor, 2007), that is, freedom to social security. Consequently, since the 1970s the accentuation of public day care rights can be seen as a freedom for mothers, and increasingly for fathers as well, to choose between domestic work and labour market participation (Autto, 2012(Autto, , 2015. The latter set of values, in turn, emphasize the inherent value of the family institution along with traditional family roles, but it also reflects the right, or freedom, to decide in matters that relate to the family, that is, it can be seen as a freedom from state interventionism -or a 'negative freedom' (Taylor, 2007) or 'negative right' (Hobson & Lister, 2002).…”

“…Whereas left-wing parties, notably the Social Democratic Party (SDP), have generally advocated public day care services and 'freedom of choice' in terms of the right for the mother to choose paid employment, the Centre Party and the Christian Democrats (CD) have accentuated more traditional, or 'familist' , values and championed 'freedom of choice' in terms of the right to care for small children at home and to receive child home care allowances from the state (Kangas, 1986;Nygård, 2007Nygård, , 2010. The positions that parties take on family policy, however, tend to be conditioned by constitutional factors, such as the parliamentary status of parties, or by strategic considerations that pertain to the party's ambition to maximize the number of votes in competition with rival parties (Autto, 2009(Autto, , 2012(Autto, , 2015. For instance, incumbent parties are generally more constrained by fiscal realities in their actions than are parties in opposition (Kitschelt, 2001).…”

Local childcare policy and the changing gender contract

“…) This is one of the examples from the local policy documents where changes are first and foremost justified with financial considerations (see Kari-Björkbacka, 2015). Possible advantages or disadvantages of service money are discussed without referring to gender, and thus the possible gendered implications of these changes remain hidden in the local policy documents (see Autto, 2016 The rate of service money was relatively high when compared with other childcare benefits, being 400 EUR per month per child in home care, and the initiative was eventually implemented in 2011. The first part of this initiative did not concern a large number of families, as families with four or more children under school age are rare in Finland -only five percent of families have four or more children below the age of 18, making families with four or more children below the school age particularly rare (Statistics Finland, 2015).…”

Justifications of citizens’ subject positions in public debates on welfare

“…The reform required municipalities to arrange full-time day care for children if their parents asked for it (see e.g. Autto, 2012Autto, , 2015cSalmi, 2006). The public discussion on the reform culminated in 2004 with a polarised dispute on the subjective right, the opposing sides of which our two texts demonstrate.…”