 Childcare Markets and Maternal Employment: A TypologyLindsay Flynn () No 728, LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg Abstract: How does the structure of a country’s childcare market influence maternal employment? Childcare markets vary across countries, leading mothers to rely on various forms of care depending on what is available to them in both the public (state-provided) and private (non-state) childcare markets. Maternal employment is higher in countries that combine comprehensive childcare policies with an available and affordable private care market. When aspects of either the public or private market are lacking, the employment of mothers, and especially mothers with young children, is lower. This paper proposes a four-fold classification scheme based on the type of ""penalty"" that women experience in the labor market as mothers. It then links each penalty to distinct policy structures of childcare markets, and shows that the four penalties are visible at both the country and individual level. By articulating how public and private care markets work in concert to shape maternal employment, this paper adds to a literature that to date has focused primarily on the role of public childcare in reconciling work and family. Keywords: childcare policy; private childcare; maternal employment; work-family reconciliation; child penalty (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Journal of European Social Policy 27:3, 2017, pp. 260-275 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lis:liswps:728 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg Contact information at EDIRC. |
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