Care and Career in the Life Scripts of Young People—Gendered Cases from The Czech Republic and Norway

Abstract

Based on a qualitative study of young people’s visions of their future, this article explores tensions emerging between care work and professional success in the life-scripts of young girls and boys in the Czech Republic and Norway. The two countries both have a high level of female labour market participation but have developed distinctively different welfare policies as concerns the emphasis placed on family vs. institutional care. In Norway, there has been a strong increase in subsidized public child care, and simultaneously fathers’ roles as caretakers have been stressed both in public policies and discourse. The Czech Republic has experienced an opposite trend; maternity leave has been extended, public crèches have almost vanished and public discourse has focused on the superiority of motherly care over public care. Framing our discussion within debates around naturalization, gendered subject positions and balance, we ask how – or to what extent -– such distinct discourses and policies influence the ways that young people come to envision their future life. Two different models of balance are applied: one which sees the individual as the balancing unit and the other taking relational dimensions into account. Some expected differences between the young Czechs and Norwegians are found, for example, with regards to articulations of male involvement in care work and female economic independence. Through the relational model of balance, we are also able to discover striking similarities between the two contexts, which demonstrate enduring gendered inequalities in perceived divisions of work-care responsibilities. Firstly, the girl career seeker – one who gives priority to career over family -– does not appear as an imaginable position neither among girls nor among boys. Moreover, there is a striking silence around the particularities of care-work as performed by women, something which suggests that aspects of care are still naturalized as female.