German and French childcare policies under the impact of the European Union (ePub)

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: 2,0, University of Twente , language: English, abstract: In most European societies, it is women who are considered responsible for raising children and caring for dependent family members, whereas men's task is to cater for the family financially. On the one hand, this prevents mothers from participating actively in the labour market, while on the other hand, it gives fathers little time to spend with their children. Traditionally, national welfare states have regulated this kind of inequality in accordance with society's norms and values, by providing a framework of services (e.g. public childcare facilities), monetary transfers (child-rearing benefits), and leave regulations (parental leave), thus creating incentives and disincentives for mothers (and fathers) to work and/or to look after the children at home. National arrangements vary considerably across the different states, whether they be geographically and culturally close or remote, whether they belong to the same or to a different welfare state regime. A good example for such differences are child-care arrangements in Germany and France. Although neighbours and both conservative-corporatist welfare states, they have developed very different approaches in dealing with the problem of labour market participation of women with children.
In the past 20 years, welfare states, and with them family policies, have faced considerable pressures of different types. External as well as internal changes have played a role here. Macroeconomic changes have brought about a need for states to increase their competitiveness in order to combat rising unemployment, cutting down or restructuring social welfare. Moreover, attitudes towards childcare have changed, with women increasingly wanting to take up work. Another type of pressure arose with European integration. With the EU, a new player has emerged to interfere with the design of family policies in the Member States, especially after recognising that competition and market integration alone do not automatically lead to social justice.