Childcare/work/children plus job in other countries...

[fruitybread]

How do they do it?

I am posting here because I think there will be some well informed replies. I'm interested in differences in working hours, career patterns, maternity/paternity leave, the cost of childcare, type of childcare, who pays (subsidy or private) - career breaks, flexi-working - you name it, I want to know how it's done outside the UK.

I'm also interested in attitudes to working parents and childcare - whether there are significant differences other countries.

why? partly because I am struggling to work out the practicalities and emotions of my own situation as a self employed working mother, and I'm just interested in casting my net wide. Partly because so many conversations about children and work seem to be purely about fulltime childcare and making it cheaper.

Which is a huge issue in itself, I know - but given that I am not ecstatic about full time nursery care for children under two, I want to explore other options. I think just finding out what happens in other countries would be a good idea. Sometimes it's easy to be see things from one perspective, culturally speaking, without realising there are other solutions.

Any info v welcome, TIA.

A swedish friend of mine says that the culture their assumes that women will return to full time work after babies. She hasn't mentioned childcare.

A German friend says that there is more of an expectation that the dad will take some time off for childcare too.

In Bavaria (Southern Germany) parents are entitled to 13 months of parental leave split between them, the whole of which is paid according to a complicated scale, but it can equal full pay for the lowest paid and 2/3 salary for most middle income earners. The money is paid by the state not the employer. In practice, in my experience, fathers take between none of this time and 2 months (my husband did what is quite common and took a month at the time of the birth and a month several months later - it has to be taken within the 13 months post birth and in month long blocks), but the option is available to split it as the couple choose. mother is entitled to 3 years off work with her job protected but no money after the first 13 months.

Nursery places are very hard to come by but state run nurseries are subsidised and very cheap compared to the UK - it is getting a place that is hard. I was sent a letter when my youngest was a few months old inviting me to apply for a place for the following school year, places are filled at that point. Our local nursery doesn't usually take babies under a year old, though they had one 9 month old younger sibling of an older nursery child when I looked around for some specific reason. Private nurseries exist that will take children from 3 months, but they are 3 or 4 times as expensive without being any "better" (I really liked the state run one).

Although the financial and leave options are more generous and more equal in theory, in practice working mothers of under 3s are relatively uncommon - the usual pattern seams to be mother stays home til the youngest goes to Kindergarten, aged between 3 and 4 usually, and then does some part time work. Kindergarten is available for 3-6 year olds and can be almost full day ((ours is open 7.30am - 4.30pm) and is very affordable, with reductions for siblings too, but the full day places are only available for 1/3 of children, and you have to justify why you want a full day place when you apply, whereas everyone is entitled to a place til mid-day.

Once children start school it is very hard to work full time, as the school day finishes at 11.15 - 12.15am (different on different days of the week) for children until the 4th year of school, and still finishes at 1.30 for most secondary aged children. There is after school care for primary aged but places are very limited and it is comparatively expensive (ours was ?40 a month for a single day a week) and it only runs til 4am. Also it is mainly babysitting and children come home having not finished their homework etc. (homework is an integral part of education from aged 6 due to the short school day, not an optional extra even for the youngest).

This is a perspective from a British mum of 3 who lives in the Bavarian countryside - there are a lot more working mums in the big cities, but childcare is hard to find and staying home in the first 3 years (which is obviously longer if you have more than 1 child) is still the norm.

Germany varies by state - I believe in former Easter Germany returning to work is the absolute norm, as it is in most of the north of Germany but the benefit/ leave system is the same, only the child care provision and culture are different. School starting age and various other things also varies by state in Germany, it is quite hard to make a meaningful generalisation about the whole country on any topic.

For what it's worth I haven't met a single mother who went back to work before her child was a year old here, nor can I think of any mothers of children of primary age or younger who work full time, though lots who do 3-4 days or various types of flex working.

Sorry to add to a huge long post; obviously I meant after school care runs til 4pm

Also I actually can think of a family with a full time working mother; the father stays home. It is unusual and I think may have come about initially because the father's first language isn't German and the mother was therefore more easily able to find work, obviously the only barriers to this being more normal are cultural, however it is hard here not to have one parent or adult (grandparent, or theoretically nanny or au pair, at home).

Englishwoman - it's 14 months - but only if both parents take some of the leave (with the minimum being 2 months to be taken) - if only one parent takes leave (which by default will be the mother, because she is prohibited from working until 8 weeks post partum) then they only get 12 months pay. It's the same all over Germany.

Also the actual maternity leave is up to 36 month (unpaid after the paid period is over), with the right to work up to 30 hours per week (even for a different employer).

I think you're right that attitude varies between East and West, with much less pressure to stay at home on women in the East.

Here in Norway the situation is this:

Parental leave:
Parents get 100 percent of normal pay (up to a threshold of about 50000 pounds per annum) for a period of 47 weeks or 80 percent of normal pay for a period of 57 weeks.The last three weeks before the due date and the first six weeks after the child is born are reserved for the mother. 12 weeks are reserved for the father. The remaining benefit weeks can be shared between the parents. In reality most, but not all, men take the 12 weeks, some take more, but normally the mother will take at least half ot the leave.

oh, and you can have another 2 years unpaid I think.

Fulltime nursery (up to 9 hours a day) costs 230 pounds per month (there is usually a discount for siblings.) This is state-subsidised. You have the right to a nursery place from the age of about 12-20 months,depending of what time of year the baby was born.

It is fairly rare to use nannies or childminders.

All my friends have gone back to full time work after having babies, but in other social groups it is more common with mothers being part time workers and, more rarely, SAHMs.

Attitudes to parents in the workplace varies a lot. But for example you see male ministers (politicians) take at least the 12 weeks paternity leave, if not more.

I work in the civil service, and my male, as well as female, colleagues with young children will work flexi time ( all staff are allowed this, but there is some extra flexibility for parents), stay home with sick children (paid, for up to 10 days a year) and leave work at 3.pm to pick up from nursery.

In the private sector attitudes to this is probably more negative though. And for self-employed parents it can be tricky.

In general I think it is a lot easier for parents here, I would say we are maybe 10-15 years ahead of the UK. In the early 90s nurseries were very expensive here, there was no paternity leave, and paid maternity leave was only 4 months or so.

This is all really useful, thank you. All/more contributions welcome.

In Estonia, the mother first gets 140 days of socalled pregnancy leave, which you can start 70 to 30 days before the expected birth. You will get 100% your normal pay.

After this, either parent can use the parental leave. Lenght of parental leave is 3 years and you have the right to go back to work any time during this period. You will get 100% of your salary for 1,5 years (capped at 3 times of national average salary) and a small payment after that. It is quite normal for fathers to take at least some part of the leave, although mothers still take most of it.

The local governments have the obligation to provide subsidised childcare for all children older than 1,5 years - subsidised here meaning that it is practically free, you only have to pay a nominal fee, around 20-30 eur per month.
In reality it's a bit more complicated, as there are not always places available and in bigger cities you might be offered a place at the other end of the town. So if you want to get a place at a specific nursery, you still have to sign your kid up as soon as he or she is born. In case there are no child care places available, the local government will reimburse a part of your private nanny or childminder's fee, but as nannies are not very common, it can still sometimes be difficult to find child care.

Most children are home with a parent until they are around 2 years old and it is common that they will go to a nursery after that. More than 80% of children ages 3-6 are in nurseries (children generally start school when they are 7), only a small part uses alternative childcare like relatives or private nannies or is home with a parent, mostly if the parent is on parental leave with a younger sibling.

Most mothers will return to work after parental leave (Estonia has the highest employment rate for women in EU) and most people also work full time, only about 10% of all employees work part time. SAHMs exist, but are not common, it is assumed that everybody works. I have never heard anybody asking "But why do you have children if you don't want to look after them!"

Further to Bavaria, SIL went for a job interview and was told 'you should be at home with your baby'. She believes this is a common attitude, and doesn't know of a law banning people from saying something like this (as we have in the UK).

This is a really interesting thread, thanks OP.

Oh, I also know that in Brazil, there's no such thing as a right to maternity leave.

This thread is an eye opener - I've been looking at the differences between maternity leave/pay arrangements (admittedly on wikipedia and only really in european countries) -

and I am really struck by a couple of things. One is that the UK period of maternity leave on full pay or near full pay is really low compared to other countries, and the other is this period of 'unpaid' maternity leave, where your job is held open for you. In some countries it's 3 years!

There's a world of difference too between a child going into full time nursery when they are over 2 and a baby going into full time or near full time group care when they are 9 months old. Just as there's a world of difference between a mother going back to work 9 months after her baby is born, or after 2 years. Not to mention the degree of subsidy for nursery places.

I wonder what sort of comparable effect this has on women's careers. I know a lot of women who for financial and career reasons (being anxious about taking too much time out) returned to work between 6 or 9 months, with their babies going almost entirely into full time nursery (so group care) from that time onwards. Their arguments about improving a working mum's lot seem to be focused entirely on bringing down the cost of nursery care for the very young children, as well as making them good quality.

i think a lot of that is based on 'what would have made my life better at the time' - which is fair enough, but I would much rather see a bigger flexibility in parental leave, so the provision of nursery care could focus more on catering for older children. However, I don't know how that would impact on careers unless there was a radically different attitude towards a career structure? From employers, I mean. It would be bloody great for a lot of women to be able to take twice as long off work without negatively affecting their careers. Does this happen anywhere? (where presumably the jobs labelled as 'maternity leave cover' offer better opportunities too!)

I would be much happier if a definition of a successful career woman didn't imply someone who simply returned to full time work as quickly as they could after their child was born. I think any mum who actively and whole heartedly WANTS to do that would be completely right to do so! but as a societal norm, I think it's coercive and as a feminist mother, I believe we have to think more radically about work/family options.

I do see how hard it is to borrow piecemeal childcare and maternity practices from other countries - but I think seeing how it is done in other countries is the first step to seeing how we could do things differently here.

saralynn I agree, I think Norway is light years ahead of the UK.

I think the 3 years of job being kept open is a bad thing to be honest - as it just heaps the expectation onto mothers (as they're usually the lower earners, so those whose income is more dispensable) to stay at home for that long.

Also, in some professions I think it's an unfeasably long time to be away from the job without keeping up to date with rules, regulations, science etc. etc.

In reality, WidowWadman, it is very rare to make use of the two years of unpaid leave here in Norway. Most people will take the one year paid leave, and maybe some unpaid leave for a few months if they cannot get a nursery place.

I would't say there is a pressure at all to stay home for more than one year, rather the opposite, it is pretty hard to support a family on one salary here.

80 percent of 1-2 year-olds are in nursery, for the age group 1-5 it is 90 per cent.

We do still have the discussions about whether nursery is good for the under 3s though, it's just in reality almost all parents use them.

I don't see why, widow - I could argue (and do) that having a very short amount of maternity leave forces lots of women to return to work before they want to.

If you have the option of taking a lot more maternity leave, you can still go back earlier if you want. If you have no legal entitlement to leave, you have no choice, and I see nothing empowering about that.

And I know it's Wikipedia, but.... it tells me that in Austria, paid paternity leave is available for between 1 and 3 years, depending on the rate - in Bulgaria a father or grandparent can take the maternity leave instead of the mother, and the maternity leave is 1 year at full pay, and a 2nd year at 'min salary', whatever that is.....Norway, 12 weeks paid paternity leave with the option of another year unpaid....Those are all much more flexible and generous allowances than the UK. If in reality the leave is taken more by women than men, that's still not a reason not to introduce it. Rome wasn't built in a day, and attitudes towards paternity or other family leave won't change if there isn't any leave to take.

I take your point about not keeping up with 'rules, regulations and science' in some jobs - but again, do we have a cultural expectation that there is no such thing as a return to work which allows for an acclimatisation time, or a structured return to career path?

I know that we probably don't have that at the moment! But I wonder if this needs to be part of a more radical conversation about work and career in the UK anyway. The New Economics Foundation among others has argued very convincingly for a shorter working week, for example.

(none of this would benefit me personally, btw, I'm self employed....)

saralyn - May be like that in Norway - in (West) Germany there certainly is an expectation on mothers to stay at home for 3 years, and then not to do much more than a so called ?400 job (part time, up to ?400 is tax free) once the child is at Kindergarten-age.

I don't see the pressure in Estonia either. Yes, people do stay home a bit longer than in many other countries, but I also know a lot of people who have decided to return to work earlier. I actually think the longer parental leave helps parents to return to work after children - compare this to Switzerland, where I currently work and where the maternity leave is 14 weeks. As many people don't feel comfortable with leaving a 14-week old to nursery (not to mention the lack of places and the prices), women simply quit. Most people would be more comfortable leaving a 2-3 year old.

Hazel, this is one of the things I am wondering about.

If someone has the choice of taking a legitimate longer maternity break (I suppose arbitrarily, 'longer' here means 2 years), with a structured return to work, does it make them more likely to continue in a career across their lifetime?

More likely than if they want to take more time off than they are legally entitled to, where that entitlement is very short.

This might be a good place to make a distinction between 'work' and 'career' too.

I can think of plenty of women I know who had a baby, found they did not want to return to full time work as early as they would have to, and have been through a variety of big work/family rearrangements to allow them to stay off longer (I'm in the UK btw). That includes finding new work that allows them to work part time or flexibly, or simply having to find a new job when they do start working again. Wracking my brains, that new job is always lower status/less well paid than their previous work. And not 'career' work IYSWIM, in that there's little opportunity for progression.

(to be fair, a couple of people I know have started up their own 'work from home' businesses, but they are very small and early days so I can't tell if this is pin money or serious entrepeneurship)

If those women didn't have such a narrow window of opportunity to rejoin their career, I'm sure more of them would have gone back to what they were doing before (higher status better paid work). As Hazel says, there is a big difference between leaving a very young baby and a 2 year old plus in full time nursery.

To be clear, I am in no way criticising those mums who have 'downscaled' what they do workwise, as long as that is their CHOICE. In the same way I am not criticising the women who return to work early if that is what they WANT.

There must be someone somewhere doing research into this sort of thing - I wish I knew how to find it! Obvs I am just speculating. The more I think about it, the more I realise that I have been very trapped in the mindset of of 'career women have baby, take minimal time off, place young baby in full time childcare and go back to work as if they have never been away'. I can see that a different approach to family leave, state support and attitudes from employers means this might not be the only option. As an aside, from an employer's POV, I would rather employ someone to cover maternity leave for 2 years plus than 6 months, with all the hassle of recruiting and 'bedding in' to a job.

I am mindful of course that legal choice isn't meaningful if economic realities mean families can't take advantage of it, as saralynn has pointed out.

In Belgium, ML is 3 months paid, and each parent gets a further 3 month period of unpaid parental leave which can be taken all at once, or in blocks, or to work reduced days for a period of time eg 4/5ths. This can be taken anytime up til the child is 12. (I haven.t used mine yet). It is very common for one parent to work 4/5ths on a permanent basis. Lots of people have Wednesday's off for example as school finishes at lunchtime and lots of classes/activities take place then.

State approved creches are means tested, and you normally have to get your name down as soon as you fall pregnant. There are various private creches but these tend to be more expensive.

Children are given a free, full time school place in Maternelle/Kleuterclass from the term after they turn 2.5. This has a 99% take up rate. This seems to be a bit of cross between "school" and "nursery" as there is usually one "teacher" - a degree educated professional in early years education, with various assistants.

I was agog that my dd's first teacher managed to do anything productive with 25 under 3s that didn't involve spending all day in the toilet - but they did an amazing amount of stuff. Very much learning through play, with themes. They did outings, painted, did crafts, baking, singing, gym class etc.

Primary starts from the September the year they turn 6. Every school I have seen runs a before/after school club. Dd's school is open from 7.30am - 6pm. This costs a couple of euros per day. There is also a club on Wednesday afternoon. The commune also runs holiday clubs.

In France, mat leave is 16 weeks for dc1/2 then 26 for 3+. Up to the month before the child's 3rd birthday you can get state funded parental leave (a pittance but still) if you don't work at all. If you work part time you can also obtain a small amount-I work 16 hours per week and the government gives us245? per month.

A lot of French mothers only take about 3 months following the birth (fathers get 10 days iirc, but either parent can take parental leave).

French nurseries take babies from 3 months. Places are extremely hard to come by. (The creche were practically the first people I told about my pregnancy, ds2 is 19mo and has only just got a place.) L'ecole maternelle takes children from 2.9 ish though, and is free and available to all.

The Scandinavian way of doing things would be soo much better!

Oh yes, as in Belgium, there are before and after School clubs (free), and holiday/Wednesday clubs (means tested)

And the maternelle is great! They do so much stuff! And are amazingly all toilet trained before starting...

Fruity, having lived in several countries, (including also Sweden and France)I agree with this. I don't see similar reluctance to hire women in Estonia than I see in UK or Switzerland. (Of course, the fact that male employees can and will take parental leave helps as well) Yes, those women might have kids and might take a year or two off, but almost all of them will then return, usually full time.

Whereas in countries where the leave is short, child care expensive and school hours not compatible with working hours, the women will still take the leave, but either won't come back or if they do, after several years when the kids have started school, want a part time - school hours only job (of course this and general increased flexibility should still be an option). Quite a difference.