scholarly journals Evaluation of Family Friendly Policy in Lithuania

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-467
Author(s):  
Sonata Vyšniauskienė ◽  
Rūta Brazienė
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
Working Life ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Real Property ◽  
Family Social Support ◽  
Family Friendly ◽  
Qualitative Research Methodology

Purpose of this article is to disclose the effectiveness of family friendly policy implementation based on the attitudes of the parents with juvenile children, attitudes of experts in family friendly policy. The research goals are the following: 1) to describe the concepts family and family friendly policy; 2) to characterize support for family in the context of the welfare states regimes; 3) to analyse family social support system in Lithuania; 4) to prepare qualitative research methodology; 5) to carry interviews with parents with young children and experts on family friendly policy; 6) to present conclusions and recommendations for the improvement family and working life reconciliation. The research results revealed that there are no considerable differences in both parents and expert’s attitudes towards family friendly policy in Lithuania. Both tend to criticize Lithuanian family friendly policy and indicate more disadvantages than advantages. The results indicated, that due to attitudes expressed by the informants, State should ensure adequate benefits and other social assistance means for families with young children; improve existing maternity, paternity and parental leave schemes, the legal basis; to increase public attention and subsidies to young families by helping to purchase real property; to establish more free future parents education centres.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ppaa.16.3.19342

Introduction

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Father Involvement ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Policy Regimes ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Structural Context ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Workplace Cultures

After outlining the key aspects of the changing social, cultural, and policy context of parenting in Western societies, the introduction clarifies terminology and key concepts used throughout the book, such as the distinction among fatherhood, fathering, and types of fathers. It also presents the theoretical framework used to examine father involvement with young children in six countries. This includes the fatherhood regime, fathers’ agency gap and capability to care for children, and gendered care and workplace cultures. In addition, the structural context of welfare states and policy regimes is reviewed to frame the institutional support for father involvement, such as compensated paternity and parental leave. At the individual level father involvement is conceptualized as encompassing engagement, accessibility and responsibility as expressed in the type and quantity of time of fathers’ activities with their young children. Finally, the chapter briefly outlines the structure of the book.

Investing in subsidized childcare to reduce poverty

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 306-319
Author(s):  
Tine Hufkens ◽  
Francesco Figari ◽  
Dieter Vandelannoote ◽  
Gerlinde Verbist
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Microsimulation Model ◽  
Employment Opportunities ◽  
Subsidized Childcare ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact ◽  
European Welfare States

Expanding childcare is often considered as a suitable way to enhance employment opportunities for mothers with young children as well as to reduce child poverty. In this study, the authors critically investigate this assertion by simulating a set of scenarios of increasing subsidized childcare slots and mothers’ employment. For a variety of European welfare states, the impact on poverty and on the government’s budget is estimated using the European microsimulation model EUROMOD. The findings suggest that to achieve significant poverty reductions among young children, both additional childcare slots and increased mothers’ employment should be well targeted. The expenditures for additional childcare slots can to a large extent be recovered by the government receipts generated by the additional employment; however, there appears to be a trade-off between the extra revenue that can be generated and the extent of poverty reduction.

Commodification, vulnerability, risk: gendered social policy developments in the United States, 1980–2018

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Laperrière ◽  
Ann Shola Orloff ◽  
Jane Pryma
Keyword(s):  
Parental Leave ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Labour Force Participation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Risk ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractOver the last few decades, the position of women vis-à-vis the welfare state has changed dramatically. Welfare states have adapted to women's increased labour force participation and to the “new social risks” that characterize postindustrial societies. In this paper, we examine gendered policy developments in the US, focusing on conceptions of vulnerability that inform policies meant to mitigate gendered social risks. Focusing on three policy areas: parental leave, domestic violence and disability, we show that policies increasingly target women's integration into the workforce and self-regulation as strategies to mitigate gendered social risk. We also discuss how these policies rely on individual interventions implemented by what we call punitive therapy practitioners, who encourage women's workforce participation and psychological self-regulation. Finally, we argue that enduring gendered conceptions of vulnerability have shaped the specific designs of policies that emerged in the 1960s–1970s, intensified through the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, and persist today.

scholarly journals Immigrants and the ‘caring father’: Inequality in access to and utilisation of parental leave in Norway

Ethnicities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 959-982
Author(s):  
Anne Lise Ellingsæter ◽  
Ragni Hege Kitterød ◽  
Kjersti Misje Østbakken
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Work Performance ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Performance Criteria ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Quality Register ◽  
Adaptation Processes ◽  
The Impact

How do parental leave rights and interacting societal structures influence immigrant fathers’ compliance with the ‘caring father’ model—typifying Nordic welfare states? Nordic parental leave schemes differ; this study investigated the impact of the Norwegian policy. Strong, stratifying effects related to access, particularly unfavourable for non-Western immigrant fathers, were demonstrated. These effects stemmed not only from the scheme being based on work performance criteria, but also from fathers’ rights being conditioned on mothers’ economic activity. Moreover, the observed gap between eligible immigrant and native-born fathers in the take-up of the father quota (the part of leave earmarked for fathers) was explored further. The gap was associated with weaker individual resources; however, ethnic labour market segregation played a significant role. The gap narrowed with the increased duration of stay of these fathers, suggesting that adaptation processes also are involved. The analysis is based on high-quality register data of all partnered men who became fathers in Norway in 2011, following them until their child was three years old in 2014.

scholarly journals Convergence or Divergence? Educational Discrepancies in Work-Care Arrangements of Mothers with Young Children in Germany

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 629-649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliane Frederike Stahl ◽  
Pia Sophia Schober
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
Care Patterns ◽  
East And West

This study examines how educational differences in work-care patterns among mothers with young children in Germany changed between 1997 and 2013. Since the mid-2000s, Germany has undergone a paradigm shift in parental leave and childcare policies. Our comparative analysis of East and West Germany provides new evidence on whether the long-standing gender regime differences interact with recent developments of social class inequalities in the changing family policy context. The analyses include pooled binary and multinomial logistic regressions based on 17,764 observations of 8604 children below the age of three years from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). The findings point to growing educational divergence in work-care arrangements in East and West Germany: employment and day-care use increased more strongly among families with medium and highly educated mothers compared to those with low education. This has critical implications for the latter’s economic security. The decline in the use of informal childcare options was, however, fairly homogenous.

scholarly journals Beyond the ‘train-first’/‘work-first’ dichotomy: How welfare states help or hinder maternal employment

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Kowalewska
Keyword(s):  
Maternal Employment ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
Female Parent ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Lone Mothers ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Unemployed ◽  
Work First

Since the mid-1990s, welfare states have introduced various ‘activation’ policies designed to promote employment. Most typologies distinguish between a Nordic-style ‘train-first’ approach focused on developing jobseekers’ employability and an Anglo-Saxon ‘work-first’ approach that instead emphasises quick job (re-)entry. These typologies tell us what activation means for the unemployed (male) worker. However, by ignoring the family, they overlook what activation means for the (female) parent-worker with childcare responsibilities. To contribute to filling this gap, this article uses fuzzy-set ideal-type analysis to compare 22 countries representing five ‘worlds’ of welfare by how (de-)activating their labour market policies, parental leave provisions, childcare services and the scheduling of primary education are for lone mothers. It reveals that cross-national variations in support for maternal activation are not well captured by the Nordic-style ‘train-first’/Anglo-Saxon ‘work-first’ dichotomy. Hence, despite the greater attention to gender and ‘new social risks’ within comparative social policy scholarship in recent years, the activation literature remains gender-blind.

Identity and border setting: a qualitative study of homeworkers in China

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-113
Author(s):  
Trevor Tsz-Lok Lee ◽  
Xiyue Ma
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Home Based ◽  
Family Friendly ◽  
Setting Approach ◽  
Late Modern

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to systematically analyze how homeworkers perceive, interpret and make sense of their situations in relation to work and leisure participation. Thus, this study examines the dynamics by which homeworkers struggle to manage leisure and work in their everyday lives, with a special emphasis on how they interpret and make sense of their leisure–work dilemmas.Design/methodology/approachUsing the framework of a dynamic intersection of identity orientation and border-setting approach, this study analyzes qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 13 young, home-based teleworkers in Shanghai.FindingsUnlike the purpose of family-friendly employment policies, homeworkers who had striven for a better leisure life ended up with frustration and disappointment, regardless of their attempts at separate leisure–work borders or not. In contrast, the overwhelming work in a homeworking context paradoxically led to a more fulfilling and satisfying life for most who prioritized work over all else in life.Originality/valueIn the cases of home-based work or other flexible work policies that aim to make a better balance of work and life, public attention has been directed merely toward a debate of whether these policies lead to an enhanced quality of leisure life or an intensification of work intrusion. However, understanding the complexity of such emerging phenomenon requires a richer, more nuanced explanation. In this light, this qualitative study of homeworkers’ lived experiences is sociologically relevant for deciphering the relationship between leisure and work in the late-modern society that entails an evolving process of negotiating identities and situational variability.

FATHERS IN NORWAY

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 96 (5) ◽  
pp. A43-A43
Author(s):  
J. F. L.
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Maternity Leave ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
Paternity Leave ◽  
Family Friendly ◽  
Paid Parental Leave

"Norway's "father quota," which forces fathers to use their four-week paid paternity leave or forsake it, spurs more dads to take the leave, up to 25% of those eligible from just 1.5% the year before. Previously they could transfer the time off to the child's mother. Norway is considered a leading family-friendly country, offering generous parental-leave policies, including 52 weeks' maternity leave at 80% salary or 42 weeks at 100%. Now, Norwegians can also stretch paid parental leave over 2½ years under a government-funded program developed by a group of trade unions and employers. In the first eight months of the program, about 1200 parents took advantage of it—8% of those eligible—including 120 fathers.

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