Danish child care polices - between path dependent and path-breaking developments

FREIA - Aalborg University

The development of public child care and preschools in Europe. Path Dependencies and change. Hildesheim University, Germany

19.-21. October 2006

Danish child care polices - between path dependent and path-

breaking developments

Anette BorchorstAssociate Professor

Department of History, International and Social StudiesAalborg University

Denmark

Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg UniversityFibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East

Denmark


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Danish child care polices - between path dependent and path-breaking developments

1. Key characteristics of the Danish child care system

2. Path dependent policies?

3. Restructuring child care policies.


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Key characteristics of the Danish child care system

A. Financing: Extensive public commitmentB. Guiding principle: Universalism – Child care as a right of the childC. Social Pedagogy: Integration of care and educationD. Administration: Ministry of Social Affairs→ Ministry of Family and Consumer Affairs/Municipalities


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A. Financing: Extensive public commitment

• The market plays a limited role in child care• 1/3 of the facilities are self owned (often with a special

profile like Christian, Rudolf Steiner a. oths.)• Denmark has comparatively high expenditures for

families with small children and for child care provisions. Particularly for the under 3s.


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Number of children in publicly supported child care in percentage of all children 1980-2002

0102030405060708090

100

age 0-2 age 3-5 age 6-9

1980 1990

1995 2000

2001 2002


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Types of child care provisions

• Crèches

• Family day care

• Kindergardens

• Age integrated institutions

• Leisure time facilities

• School based leisure time facilities


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B. Universalism –

child care as a right of the child

• 1964 universalist legislation

• Dual motivation: child centered and considerations of women’s employment

• Legislation – stipulates the rights of the children


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C. Social Pedagogy (Sozial Pädagogik): Integration of care and education

• Social is not residual, Pedagogical has not got a negative connotation, Pedagogy is not education in a strict sense

• Ideas about the upbringing and cultural formation of pre-school children (German, Italian influence)

• Care and education was integrated in the people’s Kindergardens 1901-

• Social pedagogical traning of the staff• Social pedagogical curriculum


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D. Administration

• Has been kept together under the auspices of the Ministry of Social Affairs for many years, recently transferred to the Ministry of Family and Consumer’s Affairs

• Decentralization to the municipalities, responsible for establishing, running and supervising the facilities.


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2. Path dependency

Which version?• Strict rational choice/economic appraoch

increasing returns (Pierson)• Broad history matters

• Timing, sequence, opportunity structures, discourses, actors and alliances


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Path dependancy: social pedagocial ideas and public commitment

• Integration of care and education: social pedagogic facilities• 1919,1933, 1949, 1964 regulations• Timing: universalism was adopted, before child care highly

politizised• Broad political consensus • Influential actors: Fröbel pedagogues and professionals (till the

early 1970s)• Path breaking developments did not occur in the mid 1970s in

spite of drastic changes in economic and political opportunity structures


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3. Restructuring child care policies?

• Common challenges to welfare policies: globalization, ageing, multiculturalism

• Strong dominance of neo liberal discourse

• The state has put an economic strain on the municipalities


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¨Danish child care polices - between path dependent and path-breaking developments

En kvindevenlig velfærdsstat

“A woman-friendly state would not force harder choices on women than on men, or permit unjust treatment on the basis of sex. In a woman-friendly state women will continue to have children, yet there will also be other roads to self-realization open to them. In such a state will not have to choose futures that demand greater sacrifices from them than are expected of men. It would be, in short, a state where injustice on the basis of gender would be largely eliminated without an increase in other forms of inequality, such as among groups of women.”

Helga Hernes, Helga (1987). Welfare State and Woman Power. Essays in State Feminism, Vojens: Norwegian University Press: 15.


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A strong bread-winner state• Comparatively high activity- and employment rates• Comparatively low share of part timers• Women perform more household work than men, but

comparatively less than women in most other EU countries, Danish men do comparatively more


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Dilemmas and paradoxes:

• A highly gender segregated labour market (public – private)

• A child penalty (the more children women get, the less income increases, career chances and pension earnings)

• Well developed rights to receive care, but not strong rights to give care


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Child friendly policies?

• Child centered perspective

• Provisions improve cognitive skills (Esping-Andersen)

• Challenges the social heritage

• Success in eradicating child poverty

• But: trade-off between quantity and quality


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The Danish Welfare Commission

• Set up in 2003

• 7 out of 9 members neo classical economist

• A narrow utilitarian approach to welfare

• Welfare policies are the problem


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Average net contributions to the public sector, men and women, 2001


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New-born girls can – without adjustment of the financial policies – expect to receive 2.4 million DKK (net) from the public sector while a new-born boy is anticipated to contribute with 0.8 million DKK. This redistribution takes place because the welfare society compensates women for receiving lower salaries on an average than men due to the fact that women in connection with maternity leave are away from the labour market and that they on an average live longer than men.Velfærdskommissionen (2004). Fremtidens velfærd kommer ikke af sig selv. Analyserapport, maj.


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(Translation of the story in a Danish newspaper)

Women cost bick buggs- men pay the lion’s share

Women’s maternity leave, lower salaries and longer life expectation, makes them costly for society; men pay the bill. Over a life span, women receive more in public benefits than they pay in taxes. Men, on the contrary pay more taxes, than they get in return in the form of cash benefits and service benefits.


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Experts for the European Council

• Recommendations for the implementation of the Lisbon strategy

• Women friendly policies a social investment and a win-win solution


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Expert recommendations for the implementation of the Lisbon strategy

It is uncontroversial to promote better opportunities for women, not only because they respond to women’s demands but also because their employment may yield increasing social returns.

In many countries women constitute a massive untapped labour reserve that can help narrow future age dependency rates and reduce associated financial pressures. Moreover as, women’s educational attainment exceeds men’s, clearly there exists an often large, untapped productive reservoir. We also know that female employment is one of the most effective means of combating social exclusion and poverty.

All this implies that ‘women-friendly’ policy is, simultaneously, family- and society-friendly. If it yields a private return to individual women, it also yields substantial collective return to society at large. It should, accordingly, be defined as social investment.

• Gösta Esping-Andersen et al. (2001). Why we need a new welfare state, Oxford: Oxford University press, pp. 94.


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What is the most likely scenario?- Neo liberal discourses hegemonic – nationally

and internationally?

- Celebration of the Danish flexicurity success (flexible labour market, high level of security, women high and stable employment)

- Actors, alliances, competing discourses

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Danish child care polices - between path dependent and path-breaking developments