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To investigate the association between country-level differences in childcare enrollment, the presence of affirmative action policy, and female parliamentary representation and individual-level conflict between work and family.

This study applies data from the 2002 International Social Survey Program (n = 14,000 + ) for respondents in 29 countries and pairs them with macro-level measures of childcare enrollment, the presence of affirmative action policy, and female parliamentary representation. I estimate the model using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM 7) and also assess cross-level interactions by gender and parental status.

The models show that female parliamentary representation has a robust negative association with individual-level reports of work–family and family–work conflict. These associations do not vary by gender or parental status. Also, mothers report less family–work conflict in countries with more expansive childcare enrollment, indicating that this welfare policy benefits the intended group.

This research implies that greater female parliamentary representation has widespread benefits to all citizens’, rather than just women’s or mothers’, work–family and family–work conflict. Additional longitudinal research would benefit this area of study.

This research suggests that increasing female parliamentary representation at the country-level may promote work–life balance at the individual-level. It also indicates that public childcare enrollment benefits women through lower family–work conflict which may encourage continuous maternal labor force participation and reduce economic gender inequality.

This chapter builds on an emerging area of work–family research applying multilevel modeling to draw empirical links between individual work–family experiences and macro-level structural variation.

The focus of this article is on gender justice with respect to opportunities (educational) and outcome (earnings). The main research question is whether educational opportunities are positively converted into fairness of income, and for whom and where this is the case. The importance of this study lies in the understanding that the subjective feeling of justice is a significant measure of quality of life, of the individual's subjective feeling of happiness and of the fulfilment of the goals people have reason to value.

The study takes a micro-macro approach, combining macro-level data taken from official statistics and micro-data from the 2018 European Social Survey for 25 European countries; the authors also apply multilevel modelling to the data analysis.

At individual level the authors found gender differences in the associations between education and fairness of educational opportunities. With regard to the scope of fairness, the authors emphasise that fairness of educational opportunities and net pay in European countries is less likely to be felt by someone who has a lower educational level. Higher educational expenditures are positively correlated with fairness of educational opportunities but not with fairness of net pay.

This article contributes to theoretical, empirical and policy-relevant gender justice research on the link between inequalities and justice perceptions. The authors have expanded the theoretical understanding of the concept of gender justice by taking into account the role of a specific gender norm on fairness perceptions. The norm, when asked about in a gender-neutral way, is not associated with fairness of pay, but when posed as a question specifically to women, has a negative relationship with perceptions of fair pay. The empirical contribution consists in the evaluation of individual and country mechanisms from a gender justice perspective. The policy contribution consists in questioning the belief that longer paid maternity leave is beneficial for women. In countries with long paid leave available to mothers, women reported even lower levels of fairness of net pay than men.

Over the last two to three decades, European welfare states have witnessed fundamental changes in both family and labour market structures with many more women being in the paid labour market. While this was seen to address previous problems linked to women’s disadvantage, it has also been argued to give rise to new risk and social inequalities, including falling fertility rates and increasing childlessness. Research has identified the lack of affordable childcare as a key factor in childlessness leading to a strong EU focus on early childhood education and care. Since 2000, the EU has played a more proactive role in policies and initiatives aimed to address decreasing fertility rates with greater pressure for convergence among member states. However, there has continued to be a large degree of variation between countries. This chapter thus examines the case of Germany which has one of the highest levels of childlessness in Europe. It focuses on the intersection between childlessness and childcare provision in Germany and analyses the existing childcare arrangements with a view to understand how they influence childlessness. Particular attention is given to the role of the German government as the main actor in the process to explore ideology-related explanations of German policy-makers which led to contradictory policies. Relying on an extensive review of the related literature and policy documents, together with the personal interviews with policy-makers, academics and women’s organisations, this chapter concludes that the relatively conservative outlook of the German government which prioritises the motherhood and caregiver role, and the dominance of the corporate welfare system, has limited developments to improve access to childcare resulting in ‘a culture of childlessness’ in Germany (Kreyenfeld & Konietzka, 2017).

The purpose of this paper is to formulate a conceptually and empirically grounded new understanding of childcare arrangements for cross-national and longitudinal micro-level empirical research by drawing on theoretical discussions about the social, spatial and temporal dimensions of embodied childcare and empirical data in the form of parental narratives from a Romanian qualitative study.

The paper builds on a critique of an extensive body of empirical literature on the micro-level organisation of childcare and the thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with Romanian parents. The paper combines a critical literature review with findings from a qualitative study on childcare.

The paper formulates a new understanding of household-level childcare arrangements that is context-insensitive, yet reflects the social, spatial and temporal concerns that the organisation of embodied childcare often raises. The paper expands on six real-life care arrangements in Romanian households represented as different combinations of care encounters.

As the paper draws on parental narratives from a single country, Romania, the mapping of childcare arrangements in other jurisdictions and/or at different times would strengthen the case for the proposed understanding of care arrangements as a valuable tool to represent, compareand contrast household-level care routines.

The idea that parents (especially mothers) make work-care decisions in the light of what is best for their child has been widely documented. However, taxonomies of care arrangements have failed to reflect this. The proposed conceptualisation of childcare arrangements addresses this issue by articulating a conceptually coherent approach to developing empirically grounded childcare typologies that “travel well” cross-nationally and over time.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the rather large difference in the take-up of the cash-for-childcare (CFC) benefit between Norway and Sweden.

A quantitative approach is employed, including the analysis of descriptive statistics of data on parents’ attitudes concerning the distribution of paid work and care and a robust regression analysis of data on parents’ behaviour regarding the distribution of paid work and care.

The results show that attitudes regarding childcare and mothers’ and fathers’ employment differ in the two countries. Swedish parents support public childcare and a gender equal employment distribution more than Norwegians. Thereby, attitudinal differences explain why Norwegian parents use the benefit more frequently. The findings indicate that in Sweden, parents’ socioeconomic background affects the duration of public childcare to a lesser extent than in Norway. Nevertheless, the economic incentives of the CFC benefit are more attractive for families with lower socioeconomic status. This explains why Swedes respond less to the incentives of the CFC benefit than Norwegians.

While previous research has focussed on the effect of policies on the take-up of the CFC benefit, this study shows that parents’ attitudes and behaviour are important explanatory variables to explain differences in the take-up of the benefit.

Childcare is one of the main obstacles for women to enter the labour market as they are the primary caregivers for children. The struggle between childcare and women's employment has caused a high labour turnover in women-dominated industries. The aim of this study is to assess the employees’ willingness for an on-site childcare facility

The primary goal of this study was to assess the employees' willingness for an on-site childcare facility using the contingent valuation method. For the analysis, 330 data were collected from all levels of the employees in three firms in the apparel industry using a survey-based questionnaire.

The results illustrate that the mean willingness to pay for the on-site childcare facility is substantially higher for the firm that already provide an on-site childcare facility than the other two firms that do not have childcare facilities. Among all employees who are surveyed, 86.36% of the employees favoured implementation of on-site childcare facilities. According to the survey findings, the newly hired employees have a higher preference for the childcare facility, however less likely to pay for the facility. The monthly income variable has a negative association with the probability of voting in favour of implementing on-site childcare facility. Moreover, the results indicate that the employees who have received the childcare facility have positive attitudes towards the on-site childcare facility.

To the authors' knowledge, prior case studies related to the evaluation of employee's preference for on-site childcare services have not been conducted in the context of industries in Sri Lanka. Therefore, the findings and implications were discussed while expanding the geographical scope of the past literature.

This paper studies earnings and labor force participation of native Swedes and recent immigrants in Sweden in response to the childcare reforms of 2001 and 2002 using a difference-in-differences approach and register-based data for the period of 1995–2009. Immigrant and native Swedish mothers are distinguished in order to study if increased accessibility to childcare might be particularly beneficial for groups facing obstacles in entering the labor market. The results show that the reforms had a positive effect on earnings and labor force participation among native mothers with preschool children. The group of immigrant mothers studied did not experience any gain in labor market outcomes as a response to the reform.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between parent satisfaction and child retention at a childcare provider.

The survey data used in the analyses involves a sample size of 1,003 respondents, all clients of a regional childcare provider in the USA. Logistic regression was used to test the propositions.

The results indicate that parent satisfaction is most important to child retention when the child is very young (birth to one year of age). As children increase in age, however, parent satisfaction becomes increasingly less predictive of children's continued enrollment at a childcare facility.

One of the limitations of this research is that it tests the propositions within a single firm. Future research should attempt to replicate these findings across several childcare providers.

Emphasizing improvements in different attributes for different age groups has implications for increasing retention for childcare providers, in addition to ultimately increasing the satisfaction of parents.

While all would agree that childcare services are of extremely high importance (at both a national and individual level), no research to date has examined the role of parent satisfaction to the continued enrollment of a child at a childcare facility. Our findings show that the presumed relationship between satisfaction and retention varies greatly by the age of child.

This paper assesses the short-term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the market for childcare and speculates about potential long-term consequences of pandemic-related policy intervention.

The paper uses basic statistics and data to describe changes in the market for childcare.

Policy responses to the pandemic likely aggravated pre-existing trends in the market for childcare, drove up the cost of production at a time when demand was collapsed because of the pandemic, and ultimately resulted in systematic closures of childcare centers. These closures will be difficult to reverse due to the high cost of entry into the industry and overall low profitability.

The study is just a preliminary investigation in its current form that points to future areas of research.

This paper summarizes the results of existing studies and draws some basic conclusions about the effects of policy intervention.

This paper evaluates the short-term impact of childcare centres' closures, due to COVID-19 restrictions, on Brazilian mothers' labour force participation and employment rates.

Formal education is non-mandatory according to Brazilian law until the age of four, allowing the identification of children that attend childcare centres and of those that do not attend. Using data from the Brazilian Household Survey, PNAD Contínua/IBGE, the authors construct a two-period panel with women sampled in the second quarter of 2019 and 2020. The authors apply propensity score matching and differences-in-differences methods to control selection into treatment.

The results show a negative impact in terms of employment for mothers whose children attended a childcare centre before the COVID-19 pandemic. But there was no impact in terms of labour force participation rates. Investigating heterogeneous effects associated with childcare centres' closures, the authors find that women with fewer years of schooling, with children aged two or three years old and located in urban areas, suffered greater penalties in the labour market due to the closure of childcare centres.

Few studies could distinguish the pandemic effects directly associated with childcare centres' closures. The paper is the first to analyse the Brazilian case, undertaking an original approach to handle the problem of selection bias. The results help identify the most vulnerable groups of women in the labour market, shedding light on the importance of childcare centres on women's labour supply and of compensating mechanisms to serve as protection during the crisis.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2022-0748.