lone mothers and the puzzles of daily life: do care regimes really matter?

Lone mothers and the puzzles of dailylife: do care regimes really matter?ijsw_682 390..401

Kröger T. Lone mothers and the puzzles of daily life: do careregimes really matter?Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 390–401 © 2009 The Author,Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and theInternational Journal of Social Welfare.

This article studies childcare patterns and day-to-day strate-gies of 111 working lone mothers from Finland, France, Italy,Portugal and the UK, and asks whether their arrangements areprescribed by care regimes. Lone mothers’ arrangements aregrouped into five based on the availability and use of differentformal and informal childcare resources. The article arguesthat, even though lone mothers have a more favourable start-ing point in Finland and France compared with Britain, Italyand Portugal where formal childcare coverage is patchier,childcare arrangements are not very dissimilar within differ-ent care regimes. Instead, similarities across care regimes arehighlighted. Formal provisions have their limitations in all thecountries studied and in all cases significant expectations areplaced on informal childcare. The availability of informalchildcare cannot, however, be taken for granted in anycountry, and working lone mothers whose informal andformal resources do not adequately meet their childcare needswere located in every care regime, facing care poverty.

Teppo KrögerUniversity of Jyväskylä, Finland

Key words: lone mothers, care regimes, Finland, France, Italy,Portugal, UK, work–family reconciliation

Teppo Kröger, Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy,Unit of Social Work (Agora C), University of Jyväskylä,Fin-40014, FinlandE-mail: [email protected]

Accepted for publication April 15, 2009

Introduction

Lone mothers are positioned at the intersection of manyongoing social transformations: lone motherhood isclosely connected to changing gender relations andfamily forms, but it is also affected by ongoing changesin labour markets and welfare policies. SheilaKamerman and Alfred Kahn (1988) were among thefirst scholars to discuss how different welfare statestreat lone mothers. Since then the issue has beenaddressed by a number of social policy researchers. Aseries of studies carried out and coordinated by SimonDuncan and Rosalind Edwards (1996, 1997, 1999),have examined how different welfare states provide arange of both opportunities and constraints with regardto lone mothers’ ability to actively negotiate the rela-tionship between motherhood and work. Anotherresearch focus has concerned the impacts of labourmarket activation measures of different welfare stateson lone mothers (e.g. Skevik, 2005).

This article looks at how lone mothers from fiveEuropean countries manage to combine working withchildcare responsibilities, and what kind of everydaypuzzles they face when using formal and/or informalchildcare. The study is based on 111 interviewsof lone mothers from Finland, France, Italy,

Portugal and the UK, i.e. from five countries represent-ing rather different welfare systems and care regimes inEurope. The main research question of the article is: docare regimes really matter in the everyday life ofworking lone mothers? Does the national context makea real difference for the daily strategies of lone mothersin how they manage to balance paid employment withcare responsibilities for their children? Is it reasonableto expect that different welfare regimes bring funda-mentally dissimilar opportunities for lone motherfamilies and that, as a result, there is considerable inter-national variation in the everyday lives of lone mothersand their children? This article asks if this expectationreally holds in light of the data. Earlier research doesnot offer much evidence to support – or to question –this assumption. There have been a number of recentanalyses from different countries of how mothers ingeneral manage to combine their work and familyresponsibilities (Duncan & Irwin, 2004; Dyck, 1996;Hobson, Duvander & Halldén, 2006; Knijn, Jönsson &Klammer, 2005; Tobío & Trifiletti, 2005), but particularstudies on lone mothers’ everyday reconciliation ofwork and family have been rare. For lone parents inemployment, according to Millar and Ridge (2009),work and care are two sides of the same coin,which must be managed together. This article will

DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2397.2009.00682.xInt J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 390–401

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analyse work/care strategies of lone mothers comingfrom five European countries, and discuss whether theirdaily arrangements seem to be influenced by theirnational welfare state contexts. To begin with, thearticle provides a short summary of earlier care regimediscussions in connection with lone mothers, and thendescribes briefly the welfare state and labour marketcontexts of the five countries in question. This is fol-lowed by a grouping of the lone mothers’ work/carearrangements and a discussion of whether and howthese arrangements are connected to national careregimes.

Lone mothers and care regimes in the five countries

Jane Lewis and Barbara Hobson (1997) have sketchedtwo ideal types of care regimes. In the ‘Parent/WorkerModel’ all parents, including lone mothers, areexpected to be active labour force participants, and thisis supported by providing available and affordable careservices together with parental leave benefits. In the‘Caregiving Model’, on the other hand, lone mothersare well supported as full-time carers by the provisionof a caregiver social wage. The high rates of povertyamong lone mothers in liberal welfare states (alongwith Mediterranean countries) are interpreted asmarking a failure to acknowledge childcare work as alegitimate area of societal responsibility; these coun-tries form a third model – one which lacks a coherentpolicy of supporting lone mothers.

Other researchers have made their own modifica-tions of these care regime models affecting lonemothers. Majella Kilkey (2000) has suggested anotherregime be added – the ‘Paid Worker and Carer Model’in which both choices are available to lone mothers:they are supported whether they choose to be full-timecaregivers or members of the labour market. On theother hand, Rossana Trifiletti (1999) has argued for adistinction between liberal and Mediterranean welfareregimes and claimed that while Mediterranean

countries like Italy do not protect lone mothers in anyway, liberal welfare states actually do support thoselone mothers who have no access to the labour market.

Finland, France, Italy, Portugal and the UK werechosen to be studied here because they represent thevariety of welfare and care regimes in Europe and thusprovide diverse social contexts in which to examine theinterplay between work and childcare for lone mothers.Finland is a Nordic welfare state that provides universalcare services to all children, even to those who areyounger than three years of age. Like Sweden, it can beclassified as a weak male breadwinner society (seeLewis, 1992), as its female labour market participationrate has been high for several decades and its socialpolicies, including its taxation model, which is basedon individuals and not on families, support the employ-ment of women (Table 1). Part-time work is quite rarein Finland but working schedules vary. The proportionof lone mother families is high, but there are practicallyno lone mothers living together with their own parents(Table 2). The recession Finland experienced in theearly 1990s caused the employment rate of lonemothers to drop from 87 per cent in 1990 to 67 per centin 2000, a rate from which it has not fully recovered(Hakovirta, 2006). As an alternative to public childcareservices, Finland offers financial support for parentalcare of under-threes and can thus be said to representthe ‘Paid Worker and Carer’ regime (Kilkey, 2000).

France is often categorised as a conservative-corporatist welfare state, but Anttonen and Sipilä(1996), among others, have emphasised that its exten-sive family policies distinguish it from most centralEuropean nations. For example, it provides formalchildcare in the form of a universal preschool systemfor all children aged three and over and also for a largeproportion of younger children (Table 1). For Lewis(1992), France represents a modified male breadwinnercountry. Among French lone mothers, paid work is veryusual and part-time work is less common than amongother French women (Table 2). When it comes to lone

Table 1. Work and childcare conditions in Finland, France, Italy, Portugal and the UK.

Country Labour market participationin 2003 (per cent)

Part-time workin 2003 (per cent)

Working hour schedules Formal (public & private) childcareprovision in 2000/2001 (per cent)

Women Men Women Men Working hourschanging daily

Working dayschanging weekly

Shiftwork

Children under3 years

Children aged from 3 tomandatory school age

Finland 72.1 76.1 15.0 8.0 47.6 26.6 22.9 48a 73France 62.5 73.8 22.8 4.7 39.3 22.4 20.9 29 99Italy 48.3 74.8 23.6 4.9 31.8 19.6 26.3 6 95Portugal 65.6 78.5 14.9 5.9 20.1 10.6 10.4 12 65UK 69.2 83.9 40.1 9.6 36.1 20.9 25.2 34b 60b

a Children aged 1–3 years.b England only, mostly private provision.Sources: Boisard et al., 2002: 36; Daly & Klammer, 2005: 125.

Lone mothers and the puzzles of daily life

© 2009 The Author(s)Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 391

mothers’ care regimes, France is very close to the‘Parent/Worker Model’.

Italy and Portugal are Mediterranean nations whosewelfare and care provisions have developed quiteslowly compared with, for example, the aforemen-tioned countries. However, their pre-school provisionsfor children over three years old are actually quiteextensive (Table 1). The female labour market partici-pation rate has been increasing recently in Italy, and inPortugal it has been high for a long time. There aredifferent figures available concerning the employmentrates of lone mothers, the figures from Bradshaw andFinch (2002) being higher for both Italy (65% in 1998)and Portugal (88% in 1996) than those from Chambaz(2001) (Table 2). Part-time work among lone mothers isextremely unusual in both countries, which means thatthere is a direct correlation between the increasingnumber of working lone mothers and the need for full-day childcare arrangements. So far, Italy and Portugalhave mostly represented the model of a regime thatlacks a comprehensive policy in supporting lonemothers.

Britain is classified by Lewis (1992) as an histori-cally strong male breadwinner state, which, in relationto its policy towards lone mothers, for many years hada tendency to not encourage their participation in paidwork (Tables 1 and 2; Kilkey, 2000). This has changedrecently, however, and the policy reorientation hasbegun to result in visible outcomes. The labour marketparticipation rate of lone mothers has been movingupwards, reaching 55.5 per cent in 2005 andapproaching the level of other British working women(Bradshaw & Finch, 2002; Millar & Ridge, 2009;Skinner & Finch, 2006). A characteristic of femalelabour markets in the UK is the remarkably high pro-portion of part-time work, including very shortweekly work hours for some women. From the late1990s, the UK has started to invest more in pre-schoolservices, but its publicly organised childcare servicesfor children under three years old still remain quite

limited (the figure in Table 1 reflects mainly privateprovisions). Nevertheless, the UK seems to be on themove from the ‘Caregiving Model’ towards the‘Parent/Worker Model’.

Research setting and data of the study

This article asks whether system-level categorisationsof care regimes have a visible role in the everyday lifeof European lone mother families or, more precisely,whether they prescribe certain childcare arrangementsused by lone mothers who participate in paid employ-ment. The ‘Paid Worker and Care Model’ and the‘Parent/Worker Model’ actively support the labourmarket participation of lone mothers, and Finnish andFrench families can thus be expected to have goodaccess to formal childcare services. In Britain, suchservices were not available earlier, but have been devel-oping since the late 1990s. As a result, variation can beexpected in the situations of British lone mother fami-lies. Italy and Portugal are placed in the regime thatlacks a substantive policy to support lone mothers; thus,combining lone motherhood with paid employment canbe expected to be most problematic in these two coun-tries, being possible only for those women who haveplenty of either economic resources (to purchaseprivate services) or informal childcare resources (fromgrandparents, ex-partners, relatives or friends). If careregimes really matter in the lives of European lonemothers, the situations of Finnish and French families,on the one hand, and Italian and Portuguese, on theother, should be radically different from each other,with British lone parents being situated somewhere inthe middle.

The study is based on qualitative thematic interviewswith 111 lone mothers from Finland, France, Italy,Portugal and the UK carried out by local research teamsduring the summer and autumn of 2000 (Table 3). Eachinterviewed lone mother participated in paid work andlived with and cared for at least one child aged 12 years

Table 2. Proportion and labour market participation of lone parents in Finland, France, Italy, Portugal and the UK, 1996 (per cent).

Country Share of lone parent families amongall families with children under 25

Labour marketposition of lone parents

Working hours of working lone parents

Lone parent familiesliving independently

Lone parent families livingwith other family members

Employed Unem-ployed

Out oflabour market

Full-time

Part-time over15 hours a week

Part-time under15 hours a week

Finland 19 0 63 11 13 95 4 1France 13 1 76 11 13 88 12 0Italy 7 3 51 7 42 92 7 1Portugal 8 3 75 2 23 92 6 2UK 22 1 45 9 46 61 31 8

Source: Chambaz, 2001: 660, 662, 663.

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392© 2009 The Author(s)

Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare

or under.1 The interviewees were located through socialnetworks, public and voluntary services, lone parents’organisations, internet forums and notice boards. Thecollection procedures for the samples were adapted tolocal conditions, but the main principle was the same inall countries – to locate working lone mothers withyoung children. There are 22 interviews from Finland,17 from France, 22 from Italy, 27 from Portugal and 23from the UK (for basic information about each inter-viewee, see Appendix Table A1).

The group of interviewed lone mothers is quitediverse in terms of the participants’ occupationalstatus, working times and hours, as well as thenumber and age of their children. The majority of

Finnish, Italian and Portuguese interviewees workedfull-time, which reflects the general labour marketsituation of lone mothers in these countries at the timeof the present study. Part-time workers formed half ofthe interviewed lone mothers in France and the major-ity in Britain. Nearly half of all respondents alsoworked outside typical weekday working hours, and inthis respect there were no major differences betweenthe national samples. On average, interviewed lonemothers were in their early or mid-30s, had one ortwo children aged 12 or under, the youngest childbeing, on average, 5 years old. Only in the Frenchsample was the youngest child generally younger thanthis. The number of children was lowest in the Italianand Portuguese families.

The interview data were analysed by examining theuse of both the formal and informal resources availableto lone mothers in meeting childcare needs during theirworking hours. Accordingly, the situations of the par-ticipants have been grouped into five: the first four ofwhich consist of situations where the type of care is (i)formal, (ii) informal, (iii) a mix of formal and informaland (iv) a nanny (situated between formal and informalcare). Lone mothers using these four childcare arrange-ments have been able to secure the necessary care fortheir children (though sometimes not without tensions),but in the data there still remains a fifth group of fami-lies, (v) those for whom adequate childcare has notbeen available (Table 4). These five types of situationstogether with their ramifications are described in thenext section. The article concludes with a discussion ofthe connections between care regimes and the lonemothers’ arrangements.

1 The data were gathered within the SOCCARE project, anR&D project funded by the 5th Framework Programme of theEuropean Union, Key Action for Improving the Socio-Economic Knowledge Base (see www.uta.fi/laitokset/sospol/soccare/). Some original interviews were excluded from thefinal sample of this article because of technical problems orbecause they did not fulfil the mentioned two criteria. Theinterviews were carried out in the five local languages, buteach interview was summed up in a synopsis written inEnglish. This article is based primarily on these synopses. Allnames used in the extracts have been changed. This article isindebted to the work of national project teams and theiroriginal project reports (Baldock & Hadlow, 2001; Kröger &Zechner, 2001; Martin & Vion, 2001; Martin, Vion &Machado, 2001; Trifiletti, Pratesi & Simoni, 2001; Wall, José& Correia, 2001); however, the authors of these reports arenot responsible for the conclusions presented in this article asthe article is based on a re-analysis of the data. Some of thetranslations of the used interview extracts were already usedin the project reports, while others were translated for thisarticle.

Table 3. Characteristics of the national samples of interviewed lone mothers.

Country Number Working time Working hours Age (average) Number of children aged 12or under (average)

Age of youngest child(average)

Full-time Part-time Typical Atypical

Finland 22 20 2 13 9 36.0 1.5 5.7France 17 9 8 8 9 35.0 1.6 3.8Italy 22 17 5 10 12 36.8 1.2 5.8Portugal 27 26 1 15 12 32.2 1.3 5.2UK 23 9 14 12 11 31.2 1.4 5.3Total 111 81 30 58 53 34.1 1.4 5.2

Table 4. Childcare arrangements of interviewed lone mothers.

Country Formal care Informal care Formal–informal care mix Nanny Care poverty Total

Finland 8 1 8 2 3 22France 2 0 8 6 1 17Italy 4 3 12 1 2 22Portugal 6 3 12 1 5 27UK 9 1 10 2 1 23Total 29 8 50 12 12 111



Childcare arrangements of working lone mothers

Using formal childcare exclusively

A number of the lone mothers interviewed did notreceive or require any regular informal support fromfamily members, friends, neighbours or others in orderto meet childcare needs during their working hours(they might have received such support during theirfree time but that is not discussed here). They receivedthe support they needed from formal services, i.e. frompublic or private child daycare services and schools.Most of these lone mothers were from Finland or theUK. For example, a Finnish 33-year-old mother of a2-year-old child was a satisfied user of local authoritychildcare:

It is a really flexible daycare centre [. . .] At leastconcerning the daycare centre, I have no com-plaints. At the moment, it is pretty perfect. (Fin5).2

This situation is characteristic of the image of thePaid Worker and Carer Model, attached to Nordicwelfare states. On the other hand, there was only oneFinnish lone mother in the first group who workedevenings, nights or weekends – others worked typicaloffice hours, which raises questions about the capacityof Finnish care services to respond to childcare needsduring atypical working hours. Furthermore, not allFinnish lone mothers receiving formal childcare ser-vices were completely satisfied with them, and severalwould actually have preferred their children to be caredfor at home.

Many of the British lone mothers also used solelyformal childcare. Unlike the Finnish sample, however,they include a number of part-time workers who hadadjusted their working hours to fit school hours. Ford(1996), too, noticed that many British lone mothers usethis strategy (see also Marsh, 2001). On the other hand,half of those who used only formal childcare in Britainwere working full-time, and several of them were usingnurseries, pre-schools and childminders to provide carefor their young children, like Finnish lone mothers inthis respect. However, the cost of this formal care wasoften very high. For example, one British mother(UK15) paid around €650 a month for full-day care forher 2-year-old son and afternoon care for her 5-year-olddaughter, while in Finland, the maximum fee in asimilar situation would have been €288.

Some of the French, Italian and Portuguese lonemothers also used formal services only. In France, allbut one of them worked part-time, while in Italy and

Portugal, these lone mothers worked full-time and usedcrèches, nurseries and after-school clubs. In contrast tothe ‘lacking policy model’, these formal services wereof significance to a number of Southern Europeanmothers. However, particularly in Portugal, the workinghours of lone mothers were sometimes very long, andalthough many nurseries and after-school clubs offeredextended opening hours, many mothers reportedfinding it difficult to arrive before closing time. Somelone mothers used private services, but these wereusually more expensive than their public counterparts.A 34-year-old clerk and mother of a 7-year-old childexplained:

But really, even the schools that give the childrensome free time – and there are not very many of them– are really only open until about 5:30 or 6:00 pm atbest, and I can’t fetch my child at that hour. Look,anyone who has normal working hours cannot reallyfetch a child much before 7:00 pm, they just can’t[. . .] Paula [the child] goes to a private school onlybecause she can stay there till 7:00 pm. (Por24)

Using informal childcare exclusively

There were only a few lone mothers within this sample,primarily from Portugal and Italy, who received all thechildcare they needed from family members. In severalof these cases, the mother lived in her own parents’household, forming an extended family and receivingchildcare particularly from the maternal grandmother.A Portuguese 20-year-old lone mother of a 6-month-oldchild saw several advantages in this kind of arrange-ment, although it was also ultimately a source of someambivalence:

There are many [advantages]. Trust in the personinvolved, the money aspect, I don’t know, I think thegreatest advantage is truly the trust in the people,and being at home, everything is there [. . .] I lookafter her in my own way, and my mother has a waywhich is completely different from mine, she has herold-fashioned way [. . .] I think she [the daughter]has to be brought up my way, and I’m fed up withtelling that to my parents. (Por9)

None of the French families belonged to this group,and there were only two lone mothers outside Portugaland Italy, one from the UK and one from Finland, whorelied exclusively on informal childcare (Fin25 andUK11). Both these two lone mothers worked atypicalhours. Their young children were enrolled in nurseryschools but the hours of operation did not cover anypart of the mothers’ working times. In addition to thecontributions of a grandmother and an aunt, these lonemothers received a major part of their total childcarefrom a close friend. This was an exceptional situation in

2 [Text in brackets] = notes added by the author; [. . .] = part ofthe text has been deleted; Fin = Finland, Fra = France, Ita =Italy, Por = Portugal; I = interviewer, R = respondent; thenumber refers to the original number of the interview.

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all the data analysed, as friends often provided occa-sional childcare but seemed not to be expected to offerregular care.

Mixing the formal and the informal

Almost half of the entire sample arranged childcareduring working hours by utilising both formal andinformal resources. Mixing formal and informal child-care was a common arrangement in the samples fromall five countries, particularly among those lonemothers who worked atypical hours. Informal childcarewas often used to supplement formal care, i.e., to coverthe gaps left by school and child daycare.

Grandparents were the primary source of informalchildcare in these families, providing for many a vitalpart of the everyday care arrangement. They fetchedchildren from school or daycare and took care of themduring afternoons, evenings, nights, weekends andschool holidays. And it was not only maternal grand-mothers who provided the childcare, maternal grandfa-thers and paternal grandparents were also sometimesinvolved. Several lone mothers, like this 27-year-oldItalian woman, mother of a 3-year-old child, whoworked atypical hours, were very pleased with thissupport:

Things today are too good to be true [. . .] We arereally close. They help me very, very much. Plus,since I work in the evenings, they take care of thebaby for me every evening. (Ita11)

However, a number of interviewees found dependingon the help of their own parents to be more contradic-tory. For example, the 42-year-old manager fromBritain and 40-year-old service worker from Italy werenot so satisfied:

Mum is very supportive but very critical. We don’thave a good relationship and it’s stressful for me.(UK2)

It’s a situation that I don’t like at all, because gettingthem more involved means that they come into mylife even when it’s not necessary, so sometimes it’shard to establish the boundaries of my private life.(Ita22)

Within many of the Italian and Portuguese families,there was a considerable amount of tension surroundingthe provision and reception of regular childcare.Several lone mothers felt that receiving grandparentalchildcare diminished their own autonomy and indepen-dence, and, from the other perspective, not all grand-mothers (or grandfathers) were able or willing toprovide daily care in accordance with the lone mother’sterms. There were also some grandmothers who werethemselves in paid employment, which made providingchildcare more complicated.

On the other hand, grandparents seem to be a majorand widely used childcare resource even in countrieslike Finland and France. In particular, atypical workinghours and school holidays highlighted significant gapsin public childcare provisions in these two countries,and there, too, the maternal grandmother was theprimary source of supplementary childcare (see also LeBihan & Martin, 2005). However, according to theinterviews, grandparental care did not seem to be assignificant a source of tension in these countries as itwas in Italy and Portugal.

In addition to grandparents, another major source ofsupplementary informal childcare in the sample wasthe father of the child(ren). In a number of lone motherfamilies, the contribution of the father formed a signifi-cant part of the everyday care arrangement. In many ofthese families, the father fetched the child(ren) fromschool or daycare or provided care during the lonemother’s atypical working hours. This contribution wasusually valued, and many lone mothers said that theywould prefer even greater paternal participation. Forexample, a French lone mother (Fra12) had herex-husband come to her home every morning to carefor their 2- and 4-year-old children for 21/2 hours beforethey went to daycare and school. Unlike grandparentalcare, paternal childcare is nowadays increasinglyencouraged by policy measures in many welfare states(see Hobson, 2002). Nevertheless, a precondition ofregular paternal participation in the data was that theparents had maintained a predominantly conflict-freeand trusting relationship.

In several families, both the father and the grandpar-ents were involved in filling the gaps between the lonemother’s working hours and the hours of operation offormal services. Furthermore, it was found that in somecases even older siblings, other relatives and friendsprovided some back-up care. For example, there werethree great-grandmothers between the ages of 78 and83 who provided occasional childcare (Fin12, Ita2,Por25). On the other hand, managing such a complexnetwork of informal helpers and successfully combin-ing it with formal provisions could become compli-cated. A professional lone mother of a 3-year-old,whose work took place in several cities, commentedthat:

The care arrangement is a jigsaw puzzle. When onepiece moves, I have to move the rest of the pieces inrelation to it. (Fin16)

Between the formal and the informal: using a nanny

Several of the lone mothers were using a domesticemployee in covering the gaps that remained even afterinformal childcare and formal services. As such,domestic employees can be seen as forming a part of



private services and understood as a form of formalcare. However, most of the domestic childminders inthe data were paid informally, their work remainingundeclared and non-registered. This particular formof childcare is situated between the formal and theinformal economy, which is why it is here reportedseparately.

In the data, it was particularly the French lonemothers who used nannies to supplement their child-care. There was, however, at least one such case in eachnational sample. Domestic employees were used par-ticularly by lone mothers who worked atypical hours.For example, this 37-year-old clerk and mother of twohad worked night shifts:

When Jeanne [the child] was small, I worked shifts,and I did not want to take my daughter to a child-minder for the night. I had taken in a student, whomI provided with food and lodging, and she also didher laundry here. In exchange, she took care of mydaughter for me [. . .]. This made it much easier forme to go [to work] at the time. (Fra2)

In several of the families interviewed, the nannycovered primarily early mornings and afternoons. In acouple of cases, they were students living with the lonemother and her children. The costs that some lonemothers in France paid for this service were alleviatedby a benefit from the welfare state.

Lacking adequate childcare

In addition to the four aforementioned groups of lonemothers who were able to use various formal and infor-mal resources in constructing an arrangement thatcovered the care needs of their children – althoughmany of them did face considerable difficulties andwere not always able to fulfil their own preferences withregard to childcare – there is one more group in thedata. This group is comprised of those lone motherswho did not receive adequate support from eitherformal or informal sources. Some of them used formalservices, some informal childcare, some received both.However, in none of these families did the amount ofavailable childcare cover the needs caused by the lonemother’s participation in paid work. Such situationsappeared in all five countries, including Finland andFrance. Most – but not all – had atypical working hours.A Finnish 43-year-old service worker working atypicalhours described her situation:

I: I’m trying to find out about your care circle. Whobelongs to it?

R: Me and the daycare centre [. . .] I don’t have anyother care arrangements available to me. Actually, Icannot afford any services that cost money. And Idon’t have a support network either. (Fin24)

A common phenomenon in this group was that, for anumber of different reasons, grandparental care was notavailable. For example, the maternal grandmother of a4-year-old British boy had been in an accident (UK3).Sometimes geographical distances made it impossiblefor grandparents to offer regular childcare (Por18,Por27). Several lone mothers did not have access tochildcare from grandparents because of disagreementsand/or conflicts. For example, the father of a youngPortuguese lone mother had thrown her out of thefamily home when he learned that she was pregnant(Por18). The parents of a French lone mother of 8- and5-year-old children also stopped providing her withchildcare after arguments about financial compensation(Fra7). One Finnish grandmother who lived right nextdoor to her grandchildren did not provide them carebecause she was busy with her own life (Fin22).

Similarly, regular paternal childcare contributionswere also rare in this group. Some fathers lived far away(Fin22), some were completely absent from the lives oftheir children (Fra7, Ita10), and some lone mothersreported that they did not trust their ex-partners to carefor their children because of their excessive use ofalcohol (Fin23, Fin24). There were a few fathers whotook care of their children on weekends (Por5, Por14,Por27), but this rarely coincided with the working hoursof the lone mother. In a couple of families, the fatherprovided night-time childcare during the night shifts ofthe mother, but this kind of arrangement was far fromunproblematic. A Portuguese mother of three doingpoorly paid night work expressed this as follows:

For the children’s sake, I have had to humiliatemyself and accept his conditions, because he isbetter-off than I am. But it’s humiliating to have tokeep going there [to the house of the ex-husband],seeing this person every day, it just hurts. (Por16)

Night shifts posed a real problem for many lonemothers. For others, it was the early mornings thatbrought difficulties. For example, one lone mother fromFrance had to leave for work as early as 4:30 am, andthere were no formal services or nannies available thatearly (Fra7). Several other lone mothers also reportedthat it had been impossible for them to organise full-time adult attendance and care for their children (Fin23,Por5, Por14, Por16). Others reported having to occa-sionally take their children with them to work (Fra6,Ita20, UK3). Particularly in Portugal, these difficultiesseemed to be connected to a culture of very longworking hours.

Several lone mothers reported being extremely tiredall the time. For example, a Portuguese mother (Por27),whose children went to and from school by themselvesand also spent some nights and weekend days alone athome, reported that she was always very tired, having toconstantly worry about the children’s wellbeing. At the

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time of the interview, one Finnish mother (Fin24), whodid not have a permanent work contract, was working aperiod of 16 days in changing shifts without any daysoff. She could not sleep after a night shift because shehad to take care of her 3-year-old child. Two otherwomen had children living elsewhere because of theirdifficulties in caring for them (Ita10, Por27). Someothers had experienced mental health problems duringtheir life as a lone mother. One 43-year-old Italiancleaner spoke about having to seek psychiatrictreatment:

Yes, I spent 20 days in the hospital and they helpedme, they made me sleep a whole lot. My daughterstayed with her grandparents. I had to be hospital-ised because I was starting to have thoughts that justweren’t healthy [. . .] There are lots of women like mewho bring up a child by themselves, with heaps ofproblems: really, it can drive you out of your mind.(Ita20)

None of the women in this group was satisfied withher current situation. Either their children were at timesfully lacking care or the conditions of their care wereunacceptable. This kind of situation is referred to hereas ‘care poverty’. Care poverty implies that there is animbalance when it comes to the needs and resourcesrelated to childcare at the level of individual families. Inthis respect, care poverty can be seen as being related toconcepts like ‘care deficit’ and ‘care gap’, which havebeen used to signify the shortage of care resourcesmostly at the societal level (Hochschild, 1995; Knijn &Kremer, 1997). The price paid by these lone mothersand their children was considered emotionally or finan-cially too high. It was also repeated from interview tointerview that the lone mother had no choice and thatshe could see no alternative solution available to her.Neither formal services nor informal networks offeredher the childcare resources that she and her childrenneeded.

Conclusions

Overall, the interviewed 111 European lone motherswere using various kinds of resources in creating child-care arrangements that would fit in the best possibleway to their individual family and work conditions. Butdo their situations reflect care regimes and were theirarrangements prescribed by those regimes?

The universal childcare services for young childrenin Finland and France provide a foundation upon whichmany lone mothers, even without a high income or astrong personal support system, can build a life thatsuccessfully combines paid employment and mother-hood. However, the findings from these two countriesdo not uniformly support the hypothesis according towhich the system-level care regime prescribes certain

(and only certain) childcare arrangements for lonemother families. Even in Finland and France, therewere distinct gaps in the service system; in particular,there were no formal services available for youngschool children during school holidays or evenings,nights and weekends, i.e. during the working hours ofan increasing number of lone mothers. To cover thesegaps, lone mothers needed supplementary childcarethat comes mainly from either grandparents or thefather. Not even the ‘Parent/Worker’ and ‘Paid Workerand Carer’ regime models seem able to functionwithout family and social networks and their informalresources. However, also in Finland and France, therewere a number of lone mothers who did not have suchresources and were thus in a difficult situation, facingcare poverty.

Southern European countries have traditionally nothad coherent policies related to the support of lonemothers. Their formal provisions have been inconsis-tent both in terms of coverage and quality. Almost allinterviewed Italian and Portuguese working lonemothers were in full-time employment, which entailedthe need for an extensive childcare arrangement. Thefindings both support and do not support the image of aSouthern European care regime that is based on fami-lies, rather than on formal support for lone mothers.Some Italian and Portuguese lone mothers in the dataactually had access to formal childcare services.Formal services are thus not completely non-existent asthe ‘lacking policy’ care regime suggests. In any case,access to quality services seems to depend on luck orfinancial resources. Private childcare services in par-ticular are too expensive for many lone mothers. Grey-market childminding is used extensively but its qualityis often questioned.

Rossana Trifiletti (1999) noted that ‘without grand-mothers the Italian welfare state would fall immedi-ately’. Constanza Tobío (2005), on the other hand, hasemphasised that grandmaternal care is actually a quitenew arrangement in many Mediterranean countries, asthe current generation of mothers is the first to be inpaid employment in large numbers. However, the datain this study suggest that there were only a few cases inany country where grandmaternal care formed thewhole childcare arrangement. Also concerning thosecases in the care mix category where grandparents didhave a major role, the findings of this study hint thatextensive grandmaternal childcare is becoming a vexedquestion for both generations – for lone mothers andtheir own mothers. In many of those Italian andPortuguese families in which grandparents played aprominent role in childcare, the situation caused a sig-nificant amount of tension between the generations. InFrance and Finland, however, there was virtually noindication of this kind of tension related to grand-parental care. A complementary role seems to suit



grandparents better than a more demanding substitutiverole (cf. Tobío, 2005). As a result, not all Italian andPortuguese lone mothers had access to grandparentalchildcare or to any alternative source of care. InPortugal, in particular, several of the interviewed lonemothers were lacking adequate care for their children.

The UK has recently implemented a distinctivepolicy change with regard to lone mothers. While itpreviously provided lone mothers with a kind of care-giving wage through income support, it has nowincreased its formal childcare and pre-school provi-sions, aiming towards the ‘Parent/Worker Model’. TheLabour government hopes to have as many as 70 percent of lone mothers employed by 2010 (Skinner &Finch, 2006). The data upon which this study is basedindicate, in keeping with the original hypothesis, thatthere is a significant amount of variation in the child-care arrangements of British lone mothers. Part-timework combined with the use of formal services likepre-schools and schools is a strategy used by several. Itallows lone mothers to retain a strong mothering role,which was something many British intervieweesexpressed as being important to them (see also Millar &Ridge, 2009). On the other hand, formal provisionswere often combined with informal care, the ‘glue thatbinds formal arrangements together’, as Skinner andFinch (2006: 821) phrased it. Fully informal arrange-ments were rare, but the same goes for care poverty.Only some high-earning lone mothers were able to usethe rather expensive private childcare.

Did the respective care regimes of the five countriesmatter for the daily childcare arrangements of the inter-viewed lone mothers? The answer is both yes and no.Yes, lone mothers and their children can be said to havea more favourable starting point in Finland and France,where most pre-school-age children have access topublic childcare compared with lone parent families inBritain, Italy and Portugal, where coverage is patchierand where informal childcare, economic resourcesand a large measure of good luck are necessary forworking lone mothers to avoid care poverty. But alsono, childcare arrangements are not very dissimilarwithin different care regimes. There are children inItaly and Portugal who are served by good public ser-vices like after-school clubs with long hours of opera-tion and, on the other hand, many children in Finlandand France receive supplementary informal care from,for example, their grandparents.

The data actually highlight the similarities in thesituations of lone mothers across different care regimes.Formal provisions have their limitations in all the coun-tries, including Finland and France, and as a resultheavy expectations are placed on informal childcare.Grandparents and ex-partners in particular oftenprovide essential contributions of supplementary child-care, covering the gaps that formal services leave.

However, the availability of grandparental care cannotbe taken for granted in any country, not even in South-ern Europe (Brannen, Moss & Mooney, 2003; Wall,Aboim, Cunha & Vasconcelos, 2001). The same holdstrue for childcare from the father. The defining charac-teristic of informal care is that it exists if it exists. It isdependent on factual social and intergenerationalrelationships between real people and these cannotbe created by coercion or legislation.

Within each national sample, irrespective of the careregime, there were lone mothers whose informal andformal resources did not adequately meet their child-care needs. A lone mother who does not have access toinformal resources to cover the gaps in the childcarearrangement may be faced with care poverty in anycountry, in any care regime. This testifies to the fact thatcare regimes are more alike than is often thought; theyshare an inability to recognise and address the needsof a disadvantaged group of lone mothers and theirchildren.

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful for the useful comments from thereferees and the members of the Research Group onCare and Social Policy at the University of Tampere onthe different versions of the paper. Earlier versions havebeen presented at the ESPAnet 2005 Conference inFribourg, the 6th FORSA Conference in Helsinki in2006 and the 2007 IFSW & EASSW European Con-ference in Parma, and I am thankful for all the feedbackthat I received during these conferences. The writing ofthis article was funded by a grant from the Academy ofFinland under the title ‘Care in Context: The EverydayFormation of Care within European Welfare Systems’(No. 113340).

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Table A1. Characteristics of interviewed lone mothers.

Lone parent Age Work part-or full-time

Typical/atypical workinghours

No. children under13 years

Age of youngestchild

Occupational classification Carearrangement

Fin1 43 FT Typical 3 4 Professional NannyFin2 43 FT Atypical 3 9 Clerk MixFin3 31 FT Typical 2 6 Associate professional FormalFin4 28 FT Atypical 1 4 Service worker MixFin5 33 FT Atypical 1 2 Salesperson FormalFin7 43 FT Typical 1 10 Professional FormalFin9 32 FT Typical 2 6 Professional MixFin10 43 FT Typical 2 6 Clerk FormalFin12 29 FT Atypical 1 2 Professional MixFin13 49 FT Atypical 2 6 Professional NannyFin14 32 FT Atypical 1 4 Professional MixFin15 37 FT Typical 1 9 Manager FormalFin16 37 FT Atypical 1 3 Professional MixFin17 40 FT Typical 1 11 Associate professional MixFin18 36 FT Typical 2 8 Associate professional FormalFin19 29 FT Typical 2 6 Clerk MixFin20 30 FT Typical 1 6 Associate professional FormalFin22 38 FT Typical 2 6 Clerk Care povertyFin23 42 FT Typical 1 12 Associate professional Care povertyFin24 43 FT Atypical 1 3 Care worker Care povertyFin25 23 PT Atypical 1 1 Elementary occupation InformalFin26 32 PT Typical 1 1 Salesperson FormalFra1 33 PT Atypical 1 3 Craft worker MixFra2 37 FT Typical 2 2 Clerk NannyFra3 38 FT Typical 2 7 Elementary occupation MixFra6 29 PT Atypical 3 1 Care worker NannyFra7 29 FT Atypical 2 5 Transportation worker Care povertyFra8 37 FT Atypical 2 4 Associate professional NannyFra12 29 PT Atypical 2 2 Clerk MixFra13 33 PT Typical 2 0 Professional MixFra14 24 FT Typical 1 1 Service worker MixFra15 44 FT Typical 1 2 Professional MixFra17 45 FT Atypical 1 6 Professional MixFra18 42 FT Atypical 2 5 Associate professional NannyFra19 32 PT Typical 1 2 Clerk FormalFra21 33 FT Atypical 2 5 Care worker NannyFra23 43 PT Typical 1 9 Professional FormalFra24 31 PT Atypical 1 5 Clerk MixFra25 36 PT Typical 2 5 Professional NannyIta2 33 FT Typical 1 8 Associate professional MixIta3 32 PT Atypical 1 10 Service worker MixIta4 26 FT Typical 1 0 Clerk InformalIta5 39 PT Atypical 2 6 Salesperson MixIta7 33 FT Atypical 1 7 Salesperson InformalIta8 33 FT Atypical 1 0 Elementary occupation FormalIta9 34 FT Typical 1 2 Associate professional InformalIta10 42 PT Atypical 1 6 Elementary occupation Care povertyIta11 27 FT Atypical 1 3 Service worker MixIta12 30 FT Atypical 1 4 Salesperson MixIta13 40 FT Typical 1 7 Associate professional MixIta14 40 FT Atypical 2 8 Associate professional FormalIta15 35 PT Atypical 2 6 Craft worker MixIta16 40 FT Atypical 1 2 Service worker MixIta17 38 FT Atypical 1 4 Clerk NannyIta18 49 FT Typical 1 11 Professional FormalIta19 39 FT Typical 2 7 Craft worker MixIta20 43 PT Atypical 1 8 Elementary occupation Care povertyIta21 39 FT Typical 1 4 Clerk MixIta22 40 FT Typical 2 9 Service worker MixIta24 35 FT Typical 1 5 Service worker FormalIta25 42 FT Typical 1 10 Manager MixPor1 23 FT Typical 1 5 Clerk FormalPor2 33 FT Atypical 2 2 Clerk MixPor3 32 FT Typical 1 7 Clerk Mix

Kröger



Table A1. Continued.

Lone parent Age Work part-or full-time

Typical/atypical workinghours

No. children under13 years

Age of youngestchild

Occupational classification Carearrangement

Por4 34 FT Typical 1 6 Manager MixPor5 40 PT Typical 1 10 Professional Care povertyPor6 35 FT Atypical 1 2 Professional MixPor7 36 FT Typical 1 4 Technician MixPor8 36 FT Typical 1 9 Associate professional MixPor9 20 FT Atypical 1 0 Service worker InformalPor10 25 FT Typical 2 1 Service worker FormalPor11 33 FT Atypical 1 4 Service worker MixPor12 20 FT Atypical 1 0 Salesperson InformalPor13 44 FT Typical 1 6 Professional FormalPor14 40 FT Typical 1 9 Clerk Care povertyPor15 31 FT Atypical 1 8 Service worker MixPor16 29 FT Atypical 3 4 Elementary occupation Care povertyPor17 28 FT Atypical 2 4 Service worker MixPor18 22 FT Atypical 1 0 Salesperson Care povertyPor19 22 FT Typical 1 2 Clerk InformalPor20 35 FT Atypical 2 7 Associate professional MixPor21 27 FT Typical 1 4 Clerk FormalPor22 35 FT Typical 1 9 Associate professional FormalPor23 43 FT Typical 1 9 Professional MixPor24 34 FT Typical 1 7 Clerk FormalPor25 34 FT Atypical 2 5 Clerk MixPor26 44 FT Typical 1 11 Professional NannyPor27 34 FT Atypical 2 6 Elementary occupation Care povertyUK1 42 PT Typical 1 7 Service worker FormalUK2 42 FT Typical 1 11 Manager MixUK3 28 PT Typical 1 4 Care worker Care povertyUK4 40 FT Atypical 1 11 Manager FormalUK5 31 FT Atypical 2 1 Associate professional FormalUK6 31 PT Atypical 2 11 Clerk MixUK7 45 PT Typical 1 6 Care worker FormalUK8 28 PT Atypical 1 2 Care worker MixUK9 26 PT Atypical 2 1 Service worker NannyUK10 35 PT Typical 3 4 Care worker FormalUK11 22 PT Atypical 1 3 Care worker InformalUK12 29 PT Typical 1 8 Elementary occupation FormalUK13 23 FT Typical 1 4 Associate professional MixUK15 24 FT Typical 2 2 Clerk FormalUK16 24 PT Atypical 2 1 Elementary occupation MixUK18 37 FT Typical 1 4 Clerk FormalUK19 37 FT Typical 1 11 Professional MixUK20 22 PT Atypical 1 5 Care worker NannyUK21 30 PT Atypical 2 4 Care worker FormalUK22 29 FT Typical 3 4 Care worker MixUK23 27 PT Atypical 1 4 Clerk MixUK24 27 FT Atypical 1 4 Service worker MixUK25 39 PT Typical 1 10 Clerk Mix



lone mothers and the puzzles of daily life: do care regimes really matter?

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