scholarly journals The Father’s Role in Child Care: Parental Leave Policies in Lithuania and Sweden

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 81-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jolanta Aidukaite ◽  
Donata Telisauskaite-Cekanavice
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
Document Analysis ◽  
The State ◽  
Financial Security ◽  
Child Care Policy ◽  
Care Policy ◽  
Dual Earner ◽  
Father’S Role

This article contributes to the debate on the father’s role in child care by looking at two distinct cases of child care policy development: Sweden and Lithuania. The findings show that Sweden continues to embrace the dual-earner-carer model very successfully. Parental leave, including non-transferable father’s quota, is very popular among the population. In Lithuania we find the dual-earner model, as there is still more emphasis on the mother’s employment than on the father’s child care involvement. Based on the experts’ views and document analysis, we conclude that in Lithuania the parental leave benefit is increasingly seen as a measure to ensure the family’s financial security, but not as an instrument to enhance fatherhood rights. Yet, the state intentionally supports kinship familialism as grandparents are entitled to take parental leave.

Championing Child Care. By Sally S. Cohen. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. 397p. $52.50 cloth, $26.00 paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 822-823
Author(s):  
Joyce Gelb
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Child Care ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Child Care Policy ◽  
Care Policy

Sally Cohen has written an important and comprehensive analysis of child-care policy in the United States, challenging the conventional wisdom that no such federal policy exists and that child care is not a major government priority, in contrast to other democratic welfare states (e.g., the Scandinavian countries and France).

Economic Issues in Child-Care Policy

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 94 (6) ◽  
pp. 1083-1084
Author(s):  
Barbara R. Bergmann
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Child Care Policy ◽  
Care Policy ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
The Government ◽  
American Children ◽  
Economic Functioning ◽  
Child Care Facilities

There are four important, interrelated issues in child-care policy, on which economists can make contributions. One is the adequacy of the supply of "affordable" child care. A second is the proper role of government, if any, in providing or paying for child care. A third is whether the public could afford to have the government provide child care, assuming that such provision was deemed appropriate and desirable. A fourth is the standards of quality that should be mandated by the government for federal or private-sector child-care facilities. The standard literature tends to be scant on all of these topics.1,2 Economists are seldom unanimous in their opinions, and they certainly do not agree on child-care issues. The now-sizeable school of economists led by Milton Friedman, whose members have staffed the administrations of the last two US presidents, believe that, with very few exceptions, government interventions into the economic functioning of the citizens and their businesses are pernicious. Economists faithful to this tradition argue that parents should buy child care out of their own incomes from nongovernmental providers and that those providers should be regulated minimally if at all. An opposing point of view is that child care is different in important ways from such commodities as shoes and strawberries. Children are the direct consumers of child care, and government intervention in protection of their interests is justified because they lack abilities that can be assumed to reside in the usual participants in the economy. Further, child care provided by or subsidized by government is an indispensable ingredient of any program aimed at bringing about the rescue of the 20% of American children who are officially designated as poor, who are living in conditions that should not be tolerated by a rich and civilized country.1

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