CHILDREN & SOCIETY (in press)
Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/CHI.800
Mothers and Child Care: Policies,
Values and Theories
Government expansion of child care services is based on the
assumption that both parents are employed (the adult worker model)
and make cost-benefit calculations in choosing child care (the rational
economic choice model). This paper addresses this assumption, based
on research examining mothers’ assessments of appropriate child
care. These assessments involve complex moral and emotional
decisions around their own and their children’s needs, and differ
between social groups. On this basis, we conclude that the
assumptions underlying current child care expansion policy are
inadequate, and that the mere expansion of services is not enough.
Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Introduction: New Labour’s vision for child care and its
assumptions
New Labour’s ‘vision for childcare’, according to the Strategy
Unit’s (2002)‘Delivering for children and families’, sees a
Britain where ‘every parent can access affordable, good quality
child care’. This is to be achieved by providing financial help
for parents through the child care tax credit component of the
Working Families Tax Credit (incorporated into the Working
Tax Credit from April, 2003), by direct government investment
in child care services through Sure Start and Childcare Centres
in poorer areas, by supporting local authority provision and by
improving the supply of carers. This vision carries forward the
five year National Child Care Strategy (NCS) launched in 1998,
and increasing financial support was ensured through a
ministerial level Inter-Departmental Child Care Review set
up in 2001 as part of the 2002 Spending Review. This increased
support for child care provision accompanies extensions to
maternity leave and pay, the introduction of parental and
paternal leave, unpaid entitlement to time off for dependants
in care emergencies, and the right for employed parents with
young children to ask employers to allow them to work parttime.
All this is in some contrast to previous postwar British
governments, which have been reluctant to take any responsibility
at all for parents’ ability to combine caring for children
with working for pay.
Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Simon Duncan*
Social Sciences and
Humanities, University
of Bradford, Bradford
BD7 1DP, UK
Rosalind Edwards, and
Tracey Reynolds
Humanities and Social
Sciences, London South
Bank University
Pam Alldred
University of
Greenwich
*Correspondence to: Prof. Duncan,
Social Sciences and Humanities,
University of Bradford,
Bradford BD7 1DP, UK
E-mail: s.s.duncan@bradford.ac.uk
There are at least two problems with this vision. The first is one of implementation. The
Childcare Tax Credit only covers about a quarter or less of typical child care costs, largely
excludes the informal care for which many parents express a preference, and applies only
to families where all adults are in employment. Only 13 per cent of those eligible had taken
up the credit by 2002, while investment in Childcare Centres seems to be below the level
required to cover the envisaged 20 per cent of most disadvantaged areas (House of
Commons Work and Pensions Committee, 2003; Papworth, 2003; Toynbee, 2003).
Similarly, the right to unpaid leaves, or to reduce to part-time work, will probably mostly
benefit the better off who can afford a substantial drop in income (House of Commons
Work and Pensions Committee, 2003). Even Patricia Hewitt, as Trade and Industry
Secretary, admitted that the programme was ‘not having the transforming impact that we
thought it would have and that it should have’ (The Guardian, 19.12.02). As Hilary Land
(2002) has pointed out, a fundamental problem is that child care provision, unlike school
education or the NHS, is not provided as a free, universal service (see also House of
Commons Work and Pensions Committee, 2003).
The second problem concerns the aims and assumptions of the government’s child care
‘vision’, even if more adequately implemented. There are two issues here. First, child care
provision is seen largely in economic terms. A basic starting point, as the House of
Commons Work and Pensions Committee noted, is that affordable child care is seen as a
matter of enabling parents (for which read mothers) to take up paid work (2003, para 6; see
also DTI, 2000; Strategy Unit, 2002; HM Treasury/DTI, 2003). In turn, this will help reach
other economic and social objectives, such as improving productivity and competitiveness,
reducing child poverty, achieving greater gender equality, and reducing crime
(House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee). It is indicative that government
activity around child care is dominated by the Treasury, the Department of Trade and
Industry, and the Department of Work and Pensions. The role of child development is
acknowledged, but this issue appears to be delegated to the Department of Education and
Skills (House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee, para 11), which in turn seems
to be less important in the formulation of child care policy.
Second, government policy assumes that parents share this predominantly economic
perspective on child care. There is an official assumption of an ‘adult worker family
model’, where both fathers and mothers are seen as primarily workers in the labour
market, who pool their earned income in supporting themselves and their children (for
example Cm. 3805, 1998, 13; HM Treasury/DTI, 2003; see also Lewis, 2002). This position
is supported by reference to the increasing involvement of mothers in the labour market
and to a greater social acceptance of gender equality. Together with an assumed growing
individualisation of society, women are seen as taking on the identity of independent paid
workers rather than ‘dependent’ carers. Choosing child care, then, will be one part of
parents’ cost-benefit calculations in taking up employment. They will exercise ’rational
choice’ in taking individualistic decisions about how to maximise their personal gain. Paid
work is assumed to be the optimum means of doing this. The mere provision of child care
will therefore allow parents to more successfully combine family caring and employment.
There is little consideration of the wider social, moral and emotional components of
parenting or child care, although there is evidence to suggest that this is one reason why
many parents prefer informal child care. Relatives and friends, in many parents’ eyes,
better provide the emotional security and involvement that young children require (Land,
2002; Wheelock and Jones, 2002). Similarly, the adult worker model usually collapses into
Simon Duncan and Others
Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY (in press)
a ‘one and a half worker model’ for couples with children, where the half is normally a
mother working part-time, whose paid work is temporally and emotionally organised
around caring for children.
The government’s vision for child care may be an example of what we have called the
‘rationality mistake’ (Duncan and Edwards, 1999; Barlow and Duncan, 2000). For evidence
about how people make family decisions—including how parenting might be combined
with paid work, and how children should be cared for—shows that people do not act in
this individualistic, economically rational way. Rather, they take such decisions with
reference to moral and socially negotiated views about what behaviour is right and
proper, and this varies between particular social groups, neighbourhoods and welfare
states (Duncan and Edwards, 1999; Barlow and Duncan, 2000; see also Himmelwiet, 2002;
Glover, 2002; Neale and Smart, 2002). In particular, people do not view care simply as a
constraint on paid work. Rather they feel morally obligated to care and often wish to do so.
Furthermore, when it comes to dependent children, there can be non-negotiable, and
deeply gendered, moral requirements to take responsibility for children’s needs and to
place these first (Ribbens and others, 2000; Weeks and others, 2001). The perceived
economic costs and benefits of taking or not taking employment and paying for child care
may be important once these social and moral understandings are established, but remain
essentially secondary. Decisions are still made rationally, but with a different sort of
rationality to that assumed by the rational choice and adult worker models. To paraphrase
Patricia Hewitt, this rationality mistake may be an underlying reason why the NCS and
accompanying reforms have not had the transforming impact that government thought
they would, and should have. Or as the House of Commons Committee noted, ‘the
Government may be placing too much emphasis on a labour-market driven strategy as the
basis of childcare policy’. Rather, ‘an alternative vision of childcare’ would be’ based upon
the choices made by parents and families themselves’ (2003, para 29).
In this article we examine further this apparent disjuncture between government
suppositions and parents’ views of child care. We do this by analysing the beliefs of
partnered mothers about what qualities they sought in finding appropriate child care,
sampling among different social groups of mothers defined in terms of class,
conventionality, ethnicity and sexuality. (We also analysed mothers’ beliefs about how
mothering should be combined with paid work, and about the division of labour with
partners. See Duncan and others, 2003.) In the light of this empirical research, we then
examine the theoretical assumptions underpinning current government child care policy:
new household economics (which underlies rational economic choice) and individualisation
in late modernity (which underlies the adult worker model). We begin, however, with
a brief account of our research methodology.
Methodology
For this study, we adopted an ‘intensive’ research design. Our concern was not to produce
a statistically representative sample, but to find out how social processes actually happen
through an in-depth focus on people’s beliefs and actions. In contrast, ‘extensive’ research,
as with a population survey, aims to describe overall sample patterns and distinguishing
features. Each design has its particular strengths and weaknesses, and can best be seen as
complimentary (Sayer, 1992). Thus in the discussion we have combined our interview
results with information provided by nationally representative samples.
Mothers and Child Care
Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY (in press)
Research on mothers and employment, especially extensive research, tends not to
distinguish between social groups of mothers, nor between different sorts of partner
relationship. In contrast this research focused on six different groups of partnered
mothers, varying on dimensions of class, conventionality, ethnicity and sexuality,
who lived in two specific places. (Numbers of interviewees in each group varied
according to ease of access and reallocation between groups.) Fifty-six semi-structured
interviews were conducted during 1998–2000 with mothers who were in an exclusive
couple relationship, and who had dependent children up to 11 years (the age at which
most parents see children as old enough to be on their own at times, Ford, 1996). This
sample included:
in Southwark and Lambeth, in inner London:
 Eleven African-Caribbean mothers living with a male partner;
 Nine African-Caribbean mothers with a ‘visiting’ relationship’, where the male partner
does not live within the household on a permanent basis but both maintains a
relationship with his partner and children, and can contribute to the household
economy;
 Ten ‘alternative’ White mothers, living with a male partner, who advocated and
attempted to practise feminist and/or green/anti-capitalist lifestyles;
 Six White lesbian mothers living with a female partner.
In Hebden Bridge, in West Yorkshire:
 Twelve ‘local’ working-class White mothers, in peripheral or unskilled jobs, living with
a male partner;
 Eight ‘offcumden’ (incomer) middle-class White mothers, with professional or
managerial jobs, living with a male partner.
Theoretically, we saw these six groups as important because there is strong evidence that
mothers from different ethnic and class groups, and with different political and sexual
orientations, view issues concerning the nature of coupledom and parenting in different
ways, and have differential employment patterns. The two locations allowed us to further
distinguish these groups where the geography of partnering and parenting is also highly
variable (Duncan and Smith, 2002; see Edwards and others, 2002 for details of the
locations). Lambeth and Southwark were both slightly above the national average rate for
day nursery places, although they were well down for childminder places. Calderdale, the
local authority for Hebden Bridge, was well above the national average on both scores and
also had particularly high provision in school nurseries for three year olds. While still far
from universal provision, parents in both areas will have had some choice in taking up
formal child care, and many will have had at least some acquaintance with other’s
experiences in doing so.
We accessed interviewees using already established informal and formal contacts as
starting points, and then snowballed within the contacted mothers’ social networks. We
used semi-structured interviews to elicit the mother’s feelings and understandings as well
as their factual circumstances and practices. In analysing the interview material we took a
‘grounded’ approach, which started from interviewees’ own understandings (see Duncan
and others, 2003 for details).
Simon Duncan and Others
Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY (in press)
Gendered moral rationalities about child care
We found that partnered mothers’ reasoning about the suitability of different sorts of child
care, as inducted from our data, were expressed along three main dimensions. These were
(1) how they understood their own needs; (2) how they understood their children’s needs;
and (3) the link or balance they saw between their own and their children’s needs in
arranging different types of child care. We consider these dimensions in turn below.
Child care and mothers’ own needs
In terms of their own needs, mothers could stress practical, emotional or group issues.
Practical issues were those of cost, timetabling and accessibility, while emotional issues
included the need for trust, for peace of mind, to avoid obligations and reciprocity, and/or
to preclude any ‘competing mother’ for the child’s affections. Group issues included the
need to fulfil obligations to others (like family) or to gain social acceptance in terms of
ethnicity, class or sexuality.
The ‘conventional’ White working-class Hebden Bridge group were mostly concerned
with practical issues about the cost and convenience of child care. This was perhaps
because their options were already shaped by their belief that it was best for mothers to
stay at home with their children, coupled with traditional household divisions of labour
(see Duncan and otehrs, 2003). As Liz put it:
Children up to school age should have their mother at home, to be quite honest I can’t
understand how these mums have babies and they’re shoved in a nursery . . . why have them?
I can’t see the sense . . . I mean, I’d love to work but it’s important for kids to have their mother
at home.
Often both partners took it as given that mothers were homemakers and fathers were
breadwinners. Several mothers reported that their partner simply wanted to agree with
what they had worked out for themselves within the given role of homemaker and carer. If
these roles were overstepped male partners might then refuse to cooperate, or claim they
were unable to do so because of employment demands. In contrast the White middle-class
mothers in Hebden Bridge were more concerned with the emotional need for peace of
mind about their children’s security and comfort, and how this fitted in with their own
timetables which usually included substantial paid work.
The African-Caribbean mothers in inner London shared these emotional ‘peace of mind’
concerns, but this included a ‘group’ dimension where they were concerned that their
children were not marginalised or discriminated against because of their ethnicity. A class
distinction was apparent here however, with those in lower income/status employment
more concerned with practical issues about access and costs than those with professional
and entrepreneurial jobs. The higher income group still mentioned these issues, but
interpreted them more in terms of child care provision that fitted with their schedules and
lifestyles. Au pairs—also Black—were a popular option for this group. Finally, most
White ‘alternative’ heterosexual and, especially, lesbian mothers were also concerned with
group relationships—about how others would accept them. Phoebe felt that:
The younger [child care] staff have found it quite difficult the fact that we’re lesbian parents
. . . But then, we have the main, the leader of her room, the main person of that room, is
Mothers and Child Care
Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY (in press)
fabulous. She’s great. So she’s really—and has been really positive and has actually made
really positive moves you know for us. So that’s good. And so that makes quite a difference
and it gives us a bit more confidence to go in there.
Child care and children’s needs
Turning to how mothers viewed child care in terms of their children’s needs, these could
stress emotional, development or group issues. Emotional issues centred around the need for
a child to have a secure emotional tie with a carer, while development issues included both
formal education and child development as well as more general socialisation. Group
issues were those of social acceptance of the child’s class or ethnic characteristics or, more
positively, consolidating heritage.
There are clear class emphases in how children’s needs were seen for the conventional
white mothers in Hebden Bridge. Most of the unskilled White working-class mothers saw
child care in terms of the emotional quality of the attention their children might receive.
Mothers themselves were regarded as best placed to provide this, and there was a strong
sense of the necessity to ‘be there’ at home for your children. Other child carers were seen
more as substitute mothers who should have responsibility for, and care about, the
children’s emotional well-being, as well as providing practical care. Relatives were often a
preferred option, while childminders were distrusted and nurseries were seen as too
formal and communal. Thus Carol would not use a nursery because: ‘they’re not getting
their home environment . . . it’s too constituted . . . there are things they wouldn’t see if
they were at home being cared for . . . it’s about quality of care’.
In contrast, most of the White middle-class mothers in Hebden Bridge saw child care
provision in terms of educational and social development. Gill commented that:
I know some children who have spent all their time with their mothers . . . and they are spoilt,
cannot socialise with other children. I think it’s very dangerous, they shouldn’t be at home
with their mothers. Some mothers are crap at doing playdough or painting and things, so they
need somewhere to learn to be separate and to be an individual.
Consequently, these mothers tended to prefer formal nurseries and were often dismissive
of relatives (excluding the father) for regular child care. As Lena put it:
The worst [type of childcare] would be with a neighbour or friend or even a relative because if
they’re going to have time away it’s better to have a clear relationship with a person who is a
carer . . . a professional person in a nursery would be better.
Nonetheless, as Carol Vincent and Stephen Ball (2001) also found in a small sample of
middle-class mothers using nurseries in London, these mothers still tried to push the
purely market components of child care into the background and pull love and care to the
forefront.
Most of the ’alternative’ White mothers in inner London, especially when they worked in
education and social care, and some of the African-Caribbean lower income mothers,
shared this developmental perspective. The higher income African-Caribbean mothers,
however, resembled the (low income) white working-class mothers in Hebden Bridge in
Simon Duncan and Others
Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY (in press)
stressing their children’s emotional needs, tied in with group concerns about belonging
and how others would treat their children. Thus they used Black au-pairs, childminders or
family members to provide this. Two mothers even likened au-pairs to the traditional
‘auntie’ system in the Caribbean where a poor relative joined the household to look after
the children. As Christine said:
The thing that made me decide on my childminder was that she was a Black lady and had lots
of experience. With a White childminder it’s always in the back of your mind whether they
really accept your children.
This combination of emotional with group concerns in child care choice was also
important for some of the lower income African-Caribbean mothers, and for most of the
white lesbian mothers. However, the sources of these group concerns were different. For
the lesbian mothers the concern was over their child being accepted because of parental
characteristics (that is the parents’ sexuality), while for the African-Caribbean mothers this
was because of the child’s characteristics (that is ethnicity shared with the parent).
Balancing mothers’ and children’s needs
The six groups’ understandings about the balance between their own and their children’s
needs connected with their views about how motherhood should be combined with paid
work, as discussed in previous work (Duncan and others, 2003). Thus African-Caribbean
mothers, who saw themselves primarily as paid workers, or who thought that full-time
employment was in itself a component of good mothering, saw their own needs as just as
important as their children’s when thinking about child care provision. This assessment
has to be placed in the context that cultural values emphasise African-Caribbean women’s
responsibilities as provider (Duncan and others, 2003; Reynolds, 2001). Thus, in this
formulation, there is no easy distinction between your own needs and those of your
child—they are integrally linked. Again, there were class differences within this group:
the higher income, entrepreneurial and professional interviewees spoke more about their
own needs compared with those in lower income, lower status service jobs.
In contrast, without the integration between meeting their own and their children’s needs,
the ‘conventional’ white mothers in Hebden Bridge mostly placed their children’s needs as
more important than their own. The unskilled working-class group, who saw mothers
themselves as the ideal carers, were particularly child-centred. White ‘alternative’ and
lesbian mothers in inner London were more poised between their own and their children’s
needs, although they were less concerned with child care provision than most AfricanCaribbean
mothers; indeed some of the ‘alternative’ mothers were not particularly
concerned with child care provision issues at all. This often followed a view that stressed
caring values as an alternative to the ‘capitalist work ethic’, where formal employment and
formal child care were seen as part of the capitalist world. Jane provides a good example:
When I left university, almost you could make two decisions in life. You could go and get a full
time job and get married and have a mortgage, or you could sort of do what I did, which was
live in communal houses and work in bits and pieces and do lots of community unpaid stuff
. . . [For childcare] I used, part time, Susie, who was an unemployed actress friend of mine
who used to look after half the kids in [the communal houses] at one stage. And then when she
decided she had enough, Paul, another friend [took over] . . . You can’t have a purely
commercial relationship with people [who care for your children].
Mothers and Child Care
Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY (in press)
Survey evidence
How do these results compare with recent survey information on mother’s attitudes to
child care, as carried out in 1998 by Social and Community Planning Research (SCPR)
(Bryson and others, 1999) and by the DfEE in 1999 (La Valle and others, 2000)? As part of
nationally representative samples, respondents in both surveys would be overwhelmingly
White and ‘conventional’, and the survey results support our own for this group. Both
studies showed that informal child care is the main source for employed mothers in
Britain, irrespective of the age of the children involved, with partners and the child’s
grandparents most important. Less than a quarter used nurseries (mostly for immediately
pre-school children, where they were joined by the children of mothers who stayed at
home) and few used childminders.
This dominance of informal care was not just a matter of the relatively low levels of formal
provision in Britain. When asked about ‘ideal’ child care arrangements, when cost and
availability were not constraints, there was little change. Nor would many mothers alter
their employment times in such ideal circumstances, indeed about a fifth would work less.
This valuing of informal care, usually by family members, was largely because parents
needed not only to trust the carer but, over and above this, many required ‘someone who
would show the child affection... [and] look after a child in the same way as parents’
(quoted in Land, 2002). Overall, in the SCPR study, about two-thirds of respondents saw
emotional reasons (trust, affection) as most important in choosing child care, with around
a quarter stressing practical issues and only small minorities seeing developmental and
group issues as most important (although these were more often chosen as subsidiary
issues). Indeed, the 1999 DfEE survey showed that nearly a fifth of mothers would prefer
to work school hours only (and not at all where they had pre-school children) so that they
could look after their children themselves. Implicitly (and logically) mothers themselves
were the best people to provide the maternal affection that young children required. As
Jane Wheelock and Katharine Jones (2002) have shown in another survey, given these
values, if child care cannot be undertaken by the mother then ‘grandparents are the next
best thing’. These results parallel our own for the conventional white mothers in Hebden
Bridge, although our research does suggest some class emphasis with middle-class
mothers more likely to value child development through formal provision (compare
Vincent and Ball, 2001).
Partnered mothers’ reasoning about the suitability of different sorts of child care show
both diversity and uniformity. They appear uniform in that mothers have a view of child
care that is relational to their children, rather than simply exercising ‘rational economic
choice’ over costs and benefits. What this view consists of varies, however. We can
therefore distinguish alternative moral rationalities in choosing appropriate child care.
These alternatives are also associated with different social groups in terms of class,
conventionality, ethnicity and sexuality.
Theories and values
The British government’s vision for child care rests on two theoretical models of parents’
behaviour in choosing child care. In theoretical terms, policy amalgamates an
individualisation model (describing the preferences and values of individual adults in
Simon Duncan and Others
Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY (in press)
the adult worker model) with new household economics model (describing how people
operationalise these values through rational economic choices). Our empirical results
suggest that this amalgamation produces a ‘rationality mistake’, in that the processes by
which mothers actually do make decisions about choosing child care do not follow these
assumptions. This conclusion also concurs with recent extensive survey research.
‘New household economics’ (Becker, 1981, 1996) extends the rational choice explanations
of neo-classical economics to gendered divisions of labour. Within this theory, the
gendered division of labour results from men and women within households specialising
in the functions with which they can best capitalise their human capital: women in
domestic work and child care, and men in labour market work. Heterosexual couple
partnership thus involves an instrumental and economically rational ‘trading’ in the fruits
of these different and complementary specialisms. The recent increase in mothers’ labour
market participation does not negate rational economic trading between couples—they
will still make cost-benefit decisions about the gendered division of labour inside and
outside the home, but this time factoring in mothers’ employment. Choosing child care
becomes one part of this modernised household economics, where the practicalities of
availability and cost will be traded off against mothers’ income from paid work. Although
often implicit, features of this model are recognisable in much government policy, as
noted in section 1.
In terms of the empirical results reported here, this model is restricted. First, it missspecifies
the central social process by which mothers combine caring for their children
with paid work (including ‘staying at home’); they do so in terms of moral rationalities
rather than comparative trading. Cost-benefit analyses of consequent child care and
labour market possibilities may be important once moral and normative assessments
about children’s and mothers’ needs, and how these were linked or balanced, have been
made. However, this exercise of ‘rational choice’ remained secondary, rather than a prime
behavioural determinant as the model assumes. Such practical considerations were only
overtly dominant for certain groups in certain situations, like the unskilled White working
class mothers in Hebden Bridge, where moral choices were effectively shaped by group
mores about gender roles. Generally, however, cost-benefit analysis of alternatives is used
by some mothers some of the time. Overall, our assessment of this model supports
criticisms that it comes nowhere near addressing the processes of socially negotiated
moral understandings and relational commitments in family decision-making.
The second theoretical underpinning for government policy places causal emphasis on a
growing and significant individualisation of gender relations in late modernity. In part
this is driven by mothers’ increasing labour market participation (Beck, 1992). This process
of individualisation gives women in particular a greater sense of rethinking and choosing
their own lifestyles, rather than following predetermined gendered roles. Couples are no
longer tied together in a complementary domestic and market specialisation. Rather,
couple relationships are increasingly governed by, and contingent upon, ideas of mutually
satisfying intimacy, and the constitution of late modern family life has to be individually
negotiated (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995; Giddens, 1992). Women thereby see an
identity as a paid worker as part of the development of their ‘self’, both parents are
primarily paid workers, and child care by others will be essential to this. This theory
underlies assumptions of the adult worker model.
Our empirical results show that this theory is also limited. Choosing child care was subject
to strong moral norms about children’s needs (compare Holloway, 1998; Vincent and Ball,
Mothers and Child Care
Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY (in press)
2001) and most of the mothers in our sample were more concerned about their children’s
needs than their own. Even their own needs were expressed in terms of their children (for
example trusting carers to look after their children properly). For many, their own needs
were reduced to practical issues of cost and accessibility which seemed secondary to the
emotional, developmental or group needs of their children. While the African-Caribbean
mothers did stress their own needs equally or more than those of their children, this needs
to be understood in terms of their integration of self and child in seeing employment as
part of ‘good’ mothering. At the least, individualisation is a highly context dependent
process and, like new household economics, inadequately captures the processes of
socially negotiated moral understandings and relational commitments. This is perhaps not
so surprising because this sociological model has much in common with the economic
trading model in emphasising individualised rationality (Irwin, 1999).
Conclusions
Our empirical results contain theoretical and policy implications. Both the new household
economics and individualisation theories underpinning current government child care
policy are limited in terms of the range of empirical child care situations that they cover.
Some mothers will act like cost-benefit economists, or will be developing their
individualised ‘self’, for some of the time in choosing child care—but most will not. In
addition the emphasis that both theories place on individualised rationality neglects the
importance of social ties and socially negotiated moral and emotional responsibilities in
choosing child care.
Reformers sometimes argue that child care preference is a circular process where, if
mothers had more experience of formal provision, they would rate it more highly (for
example Bryson and others, 1999). There may be some truth in this, although both our
interviews and the survey data suggest that the opposite—that parents would use
informal child care all the more if it were subsidised through the tax system and supported
institutionally—might be equally true. Rather, an important point from our results is that
preference for informal care does not so much stem from lack of experience of anything
better, but from a deeper assessment of the nature and quality of the care provided,
however ‘good’ the ‘quality’ of formal, group-based care provision. For example some
mothers, particularly in some social groups, believed that day nurseries simply could not
provide the ‘one to one’ emotional care they wanted for their children. Conversely, many
of the mothers who did prefer nursery care did so because they saw this as better for their
children’s socialisation and learning. Our results thus suggest that child care choices result
from complex moral and emotional processes in assessing both children’s needs, and the
mother’s own, and the balance between the two. As Carol Vincent and Stephen Ball put it,
‘These [child care choice] narratives require the mothers to navigate their way through
some very potent and very immediate normatives of ‘good mothering’’ (2001, 649). Our
findings also show that different social groups navigate differently through alternative
‘normatives’. Child care evaluations are one part of mothers’ value systems, and in turn
these emerge in specific social and geographical contexts. It is not just a question of the
quantity of child care, but also of its quality and nature, and these judgements about
quality and nature will vary socially and geographically. The mere provision of child care
is not adequate as a policy response to the problems of combining caring for children with
employment.
Simon Duncan and Others
Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY (in press)
Acknowledgements
The London based part of the study was funded by South Bank University, and the
Hebden Bridge interviews were funded through a Hallsworth Fellowship held at
Manchester University. Sarah Baker, Ruth Booth and Sophie Helm made contributions to
the research project. Simon Duncan also acknowledges the support of the ESRC as part of
the Care, Values and the Future of the Welfare research group (ref. M5664281001).
References
Barlow A, Duncan S. 2000. Family law, moral rationalities and New Labour’s communitarianism.
Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law Part 1 22(1): 23–42.
Beck U. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Sage: London.
Beck U, Beck-Gernsheim E. 1995. The Normal Chaos of Love. Polity Press: Cambridge.
Becker G. 1981. A Treatise on the Family. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.
Becker G. 1996. Accounting for Tastes. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.
Bryson C, Budd T, Lewis J, Elam G. 1999. Women’s Attitudes to Combining Paid Work and Family Life.
Women’s Unit Publications, Cabinet Office: London.
Cm. 3805. 1998. New Ambitions for Our Country. A New Contract for Welfare. Stationery Office: London.
DTI (Department of Trade and Industry). 2000. Work and Parents: Competitiveness and Choice. A Green
Paper. HMSO: London.
Duncan S, Edwards R. 1999. Lone Mothers, Paid Work and Gendered Moral Rationalities. Macmillan:
London.
Duncan S, Smith D. 2002. Geographies of family formations: spatial differences and gender cultures
in Britain. Transactions Institute British Geographers 27(4): 471–493.
Duncan S, Edwards R, Reynolds T, Alldred P. 2003. Motherhood, paid work and partnering: values
and theories. Work, Employment and Society 17(2): 309–330.
Edwards R, Duncan S, Reynolds T, Alldred P. 2002. A Mother’s Instinct? Paid work, Partnering and
Child Care. Working paper series. Centre for Research on Family, Kinship and Childhood,
University of Leeds.
Ford R. 1996. Child Care in the Balance: How Lone Parents Make Decisions About Paid Work. Policy
Studies Institute: London.
Giddens A. 1992. The Transformation of Intimacy. Polity Press: Cambridge.
Glover J. 2002. The balance model: theorising women’s employment behaviour. In Analysing
Families: Morality and Rationality in Policy and Practice, Carling A, Duncan S, Edwards R (eds).
Routledge: London; 251–267.
Himmelweit S. 2002. Economic theory, norms and the care gap or: why do economists become
parents?. In Analysing Families: Morality and Rationality in Policy and Practice, Carling A, Duncan S,
Edwards R (eds). Routledge: London; 231–250.
HM Treasury/DTI (Department of Trade and Industry). 2003. Balancing Work and Family Life:
Enhancing Choice and Support for Parents. HMSO: London.
Holloway S. 1998. Local child care cultures: moral geographies of mothering and the social
organisation of preschool education. Gender, Place and Culture 5: 29–53.
House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee. 2003. Child Care for Working Parents: Fifth Report
of Session 2002-3. Vol. 1, The Stationery Office: London.
Irwin S. 1999. Resourcing the family: gendered claims and obligations and issues of explanation. In
The New Family?, Silva EB, Smart C (eds). Sage: London; 31–45.
La Valle I, Finch S, Nove A, Lewin C. 2000. Parents’ Demand for Child Care. Department for Education
and Employment: London.
Land H. 2002. Spheres of care in the UK: separate and unequal. Critical Social Policy 22(1): 13–32.
Mothers and Child Care
Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY (in press)
Lewis J. 2002. Individualisation, assumptions about the existence of an adult worker model and the
shift towards contractualism. In Analysing Families: Morality and Rationality in Policy and Practice,
Carling A, Duncan S, Edwards R (eds). Routledge: London; 51–56.
Neale B, Smart C. 2002. Caring, earning and changing: parenthood and employment after divorce. In
Analysing Families: Morality and Rationality in Policy and Practice, Carling A, Duncan S, Edwards R
(eds). Routledge: London; 183–198.
Papworth J. 2003. Suffer little children. The Guardian 8 February.
Reynolds T. 2001. Black mothering, paid work and identity. Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies 24(6):
1046–1064.
Ribbens McCarthy J, Edwards R, Gillies V. 2000. Moral tales of the Child and the Adult: narratives of
contemporary family lives under changing circumstances. Sociology 34(4): 785–803.
Sayer RA. 1992. Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach (2nd edition). Routledge: London.
Strategy Unit. 2002. Delivering for children and families [online]. Available: www.strategy.gov.uk/
2002/childcare/report/01.htm [2002 December 21].
Toynbee P. 2003. Help toddlers, and then let students pay their own way. The Guardian 22 January.
Vincent C, Ball S. 2001. A market in love? Choosing preschool child care. British Educational Research
Journal 27(5): 633–651.
Weeks J, Heaphy B, Donovan C. 2001. Same Sex Intimacies: Families of Choice and Other Life
Experiments. Routledge: London.
Wheelock J, Jones K. 2002. Grandparents are the next best thing’: informal child care for working
parents in urban Britain. Journal of Social Policy 31(3): 441–464.
Contributors’ details
Simon Duncan is Professor in Comparative Social Policy at the University of Bradford and member
of the Care, Values and Future of the Welfare State (Cava) ESRC Research Group.
Rosalind Edwards is Professor in Social Policy and Director of the Families & Social Capital ESRC
Research Group at London South Bank University.
Tracey Reynolds is Research Fellow in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science at London
South Bank University.
Pam Alldred is Lecturer in Childhood Studies in the School of Education and Training at the
University of Greenwich.
Simon Duncan and Others
Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY (in press)