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Sharing the Caring Responsibility Between the Private and the Public: Childcare, Parental Choice, and Inequality

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The Palgrave Handbook of Family Sociology in Europe

Abstract

It is increasingly recognised that early childhood education and care (ECEC) can contribute to equal opportunities. However, the conditions to realise this potential are far from being generally acquired as access to high-quality ECEC is unequal since children from poor families tend to be less often enrolled in ECEC than their better off peers. An overview of research examining this global phenomenon reveals that this inequality is not so much a matter of parental choice, but rather of structural barriers and therefore of policies. Countries that consider childcare as a public responsibility seem to do better than those that consider childcare as a private commodity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Michel Vandenbroeck & Jeroen Janssen

  2. Centre for Sociological Research, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Wim Van Lancker

Authors
  1. Michel Vandenbroeck
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  2. Wim Van Lancker
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  3. Jeroen Janssen
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Correspondence to Michel Vandenbroeck .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland

    Anna-Maija Castrén

  2. Faculty of Human and Social Studies, Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Vida Česnuitytė

  3. Department of Education, Cultural Heritage and Tourism, University of Macerata, Macerata, Italy

    Isabella Crespi

  4. University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Jacques-Antoine Gauthier

  5. Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Rita Gouveia

  6. EHESP, CNRS (National Centre of Scientific Research), Rennes, France

    Claude Martin

  7. Campus María Zambrano, University of Valladolid, Segovia, Spain

    Almudena Moreno Mínguez

  8. Institute of Sociology, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland

    Katarzyna Suwada

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Vandenbroeck, M., Van Lancker, W., Janssen, J. (2021). Sharing the Caring Responsibility Between the Private and the Public: Childcare, Parental Choice, and Inequality. In: Castrén, AM., et al. The Palgrave Handbook of Family Sociology in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73306-3_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73306-3_18

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