Full Description
This book explains and theorises the ways in which family policy instruments come to shape the routine care arrangements of young children. Drawing on interviews with close to a hundred parents from very different walks of life in urban and rural Romania, the book provides a rich account of the care arrangement transitions these parents experience during their children's first five years of life. The influence of family policies emerges as complex and uneven, affecting childcare decisions both directly and indirectly by contributing to the reproduction and legitimation of age-related hierarchies of care ideals. These cultural artefacts, reflective of both longstanding institutional legacies and recent policy innovations between 2006 and 2015, are the prism through which mothers and fathers from diverse backgrounds view and make decisions about their children's care. This unique volume will be of interest and value to students and scholars of childcare, its organisation and familypolicy, specifically in post-socialist contexts.
Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction: Family Policies and the Making of Childcare Arrangements.- Chapter 2. Researching Families' Childcare Decisions.- Chapter 3. Two-Tiered Romanian Family Policy and Inequality.- Chapter 4. Conceptualising the Making of Young Childrens' Routine Care Arrangements.- Chapter 5. Childcare Arrangements for Babies and Toddlers.- Chapter 6. Childcare Arrangements during the 'Gap Year'.- Chapter 7. Childcare Arrangements for Preschool-age Children.- Chapter 8. Parents' Employment Trajectories: Two Worlds of Work-Care Experiences.- Chapter 9. Conclusion: Theorising Childcare Decisions.
