The social geography of childcare: making up a middle‐class child (original) (raw)
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Childcare, choice and social class: Caring for young children in the UK
Critical Social Policy, 2008
This paper draws on the results of two qualitative research projects examining parental engagements with the childcare market in the UK. Both projects are located in the same two London localities. One project focuses on professional middle class parents, and the other on working class families, and we discuss the key importance of social class in shaping parents" differential engagement with the childcare market, and their understandings of the role childcare plays in their children"s lives. We identify and discuss the different "circuits" of care (Ball et al 1995) available to and used by families living physically close to each other, but in social class terms living in different worlds. We also consider parents" relationships with carers, and their social networks. We conclude that in order to fully understand childcare policies and practices and families" experiences of care, an analysis which encompasses social class and the workings of the childcare market is needed.
Who Cares? The Classed Nature of Childcare
Gender and Education, 2005
In this paper I undertake a critical discourse analysis of the recent recruitment drive the Sure Start Unit has waged on Government web pages to encourage greater access to, and uptake of, careers in childcare. I argue that the messages inherent within the Sure Start Unit’s rhetoric are laden with classed notions about who should enter the childcare workforce. The simplistic and unproblematic presentation of several key issues are deconstructed and attention is drawn to the normative classed assumptions made about status, equal opportunities, pay and conditions and education and training which mask the reality of working in an unstable and poorly respected employment sector
The ‘childcare champion’? New Labour, social justice and the childcare market
British Educational Research Journal, 2005
Childcare as a policy issue has received unprecedented attention under New Labour, through various aspects of The National Childcare Strategy introduced in 1998. This policy focus looks set to continue, with childcare likely to be a major topic in the next manifesto. Early Years care and education is a productive area for New Labour as initiatives here can address several agendas: increasing social inclusion, revitalizing the labour market, and raising standards in education. The provision of childcare is seen as having the potential to bring women back into the workforce, modelling childrearing skills to parents understood as being in need of such support, and giving children the skills and experience they need to succeed in compulsory education. The existing market in childcare is a largely private sector one with the government recently introducing tax credits designed to make childcare more affordable and accessible to lower income parents. This paper draws on material gathered during a two year ESRC funded project looking at the choice and provision of childcare in London. It argues firstly that social justice in childcare is currently understood to be primarily a matter of access, and secondly demonstrates that even for privileged middle class consumers, the childcare market is a very 'peculiar' one, especially when compared to the markets of economic theory. We conclude by commenting on the lack of parental voice shaping the future direction and development of the childcare market.
Is Targeting Formal Childcare the Best Way to Meet the Needs of Families in Britain
The overall aim of this paper is to examine the types and combinations of childcare being used by parents in Britain, and to compare how this childcare usage may vary between families, in order to critically examine parental childcare needs. The three specific research questions were: 1) 'What types and combinations of childcare are being used by families?', 2) 'What are the socio-demographic comparisons between families using and not using childcare?' And 3) 'How do types of childcare vary between families?. These questions were addressed by carrying out a secondary analysis of large-scale nationally representative datasets which provide information about patterns of childcare usage in the UK. Two main datasets were used: the Family Resources Survey and the Childcare and Early Years Survey of Parents, with analysis carried out for the years 2008 to 2013. The analysis carried out comes from a wider study seeking to examine the provision and use of preschool childcare in Britain. The findings show that despite policies to increase the use of formal childcare, parents continue to be reliant on informal care, especially grandparents, to supplement their childcare needs. Furthermore, childcare use is not equally distributed, but is related to family circumstances. For example formal care is used more by employed, higher income families, whilst informal care is used more by mothers who are not employed, less well educated and by younger mothers. The results overall suggest that formal and informal childcare in combination will better support maternal employment. Future government policy needs to address supporting this mixed provision. The data however says nothing about parental childcare preferences which are needed to unpack the observed patterns of childcare usage in the UK.
Middle Class Fractions, Childcare and the ‘Relational’ and ‘Normative’ Aspects of Class Practices
The Sociological Review, 2004
The emphasis in class research remains on the structural aspects of class, class processes are neglected. This paper focuses upon some relational and normative aspects of class through an examination of social divisions produced and constructed within middle class families' choices of childcare. Working with data from two contrasting settings in London (Battersea and Stoke Newington) three issues are addressed in the paper; the extent to which childcare arrangements both substantively and structurally position children differently within long term educational careers; the ways in which the use of choice in a market system of child care and education, works to produce patterns of social closure that quietly discriminate via the collectivist criterion of class and racial membership; and the ways in which child care choices also point-up and perpetuate subtle distinctions and tensions of values and lifestyle within the middle class, between class factions. Concepts drawn from the w...
Parental choice of childcare in England: Choosing in phases and the split market
British Educational Research Journal , 2019
This article explores how parents choose childcare settings for their preschool children within a context of complex policy on eligibility for free provision and a developing market. Using data from interviews with 17 mainly middle-class parents in England, we explore in detail how parents go about choosing a childcare setting and the different phases of this process. This adds further nuance to the existing literature on choosing practices and the dysfunction and inequalities of a neoliberal childcare market, and also updates the discussion to include recent policy developments such as the provision of '30 hours free childcare' for 3 and 4-year-olds. We conclude that parental choosing involves a series of decisions in two or three phases, which start from practical considerations, followed by quality comparison and then back to practical constraints if a decision has not been made. The options open to parents are split between not only those able to accommodate shorter 'free' provision and those that require longer periods of childcare to work, but also between those with children under three and above. Contrary to previous findings in this area, this split may work to the disadvantage of some middle-class families, whose children attend lower-quality settings as a result.
Who cares for babies is an emotive topic that has challenged philanthropists, parents, policymakers, practitioners and researchers for decades . But as very young children’s care outside the family home becomes increasingly commodified and marketised in many countries of the world, moral arguments are often supplanted by others grounded in micro and macro-economic reasoning, using scientific evidence as justification. Attention then turns to a neoliberal preoccupation with affordability, accessibility and the structural dimensions of quality in provision for parents . Babies and their carers are positioned as service users and providers and the latter feel themselves to be subject to the impact of market forces and those for whom these provide the authority to dictate its conditions: politicians, regulators, employers and consumers (parents) . This chapter considers how perceptions of power can influence the nature of relationships between babies and their carers . It is based on research carried out in private and state-maintained day nurseries in southeast England since 2008 .
The Value of Childcare: class, gender and caring labour
Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 2012
Despite increasing attention being paid to early childhood services as the foundation for lifelong learning, one issue seems to be consistently ignored -staff wages. The authors argue that this constitutes ongoing exploitation of childcare staff, and that this exploitation is a result of gendered and classed discourses around caring labour. As with other feminised fields, this caring labour involves a high level of emotional management, of the self and others, which remains undervalued as a skill within discourses of professionalisation. The authors suggest that only by recognising the unequal distribution of wages across the education sector and significantly increasing the pay of early childhood staff will early childhood services deliver the educational advantages hoped for by governments.
A Market in Love? Choosing Pre-school Childcare
British Educational Research Journal, 2001
The article is an initial consideration of data collected for a project exploring working parents' choices of care for their preschool children. First, the policy developments in this area are reviewed. However, the heart of the article is an analysis of the ways in which the sample of mainly white middle-class mothers operates within the childcare market. The impact of class and gender upon their choices is considered, and the strategies the women use to personalise the market are mapped. The authors conclude that despite their relatively advantaged position as consumers, the women's control of the market-based relations that develop remains imperfect and incomplete as they negotiate the tensions between work and domestic responsibilities.
early childhood and care in England: when pedagogy is wed to politics
Journal of Early Childhood Research, 2008
The introduction to this article will seek to present a distillation of Sally Lubeck's achievements in order to provide a benchmark of existing knowledge in the field of early childhood care and education from her perspective and an indication of its likely future. Her work, it is suggested, provides an exemplification of the new sociology of childhood that is theoretically grounded as well as morally and ethically committed. The contributions and challenges she made that are offered in this article focus on childhood in different cultures, the impact of globalization and the role of cross-national perspectives in the critical examination of our own national contexts. Poverty levels and the choice made by the US and UK to avoid redistribution of wealth are identified as a major source of disadvantage. The tension between decentralization, choice and lack of co-ordination on the one hand, and uniformity, centralization and social control on the other, is emphasized. It is in this...