Child care and mothers' right to work: New practices in crisis-ridden Europe

By examining the cases of Belgium, France, Italy, Sweden and the European Union, this article describes the emergence of new child care policies for the 0 to 3's. In the 1960s and 1970s rising rates of female labour force participation were accompanied by ways of representing women's employment which put the accent on equality of access to the labour force. With the arrival of economic crisis came new employment policies stressing flexible labour markets as well as decentralization of state responsibilities for social policies. Child care policies are now organised around principles which respond more to employment policy, neoliberal ideologies of "parental choice", and cost concerns than to the goal of gender equality. The result is that mothers are often represented as the best care-givers for their children. Other policies incite parents to hire care-givers rather than use public child care centres. As well as threatening women's access to paid work, such policies undermine the ideal of high quality child care as a public service available to all.