Family Day Care: The Trilemma of Professionalisation, Sustainability and Fairness in Flanders, France and Germany

Abstract

Although they were probably the first form of day care for the youngest children, family day care (FDC) providers have long been mistrusted by governments and the leading bourgeoisie in Belgium, France and Germany (see for instance N.W.K., 1922 for Belgium). It is not until the 1980s that family day care provisions gained momentum in several countries (see for instance Mooney A, Statham J (ed), Family day care. International perspectives on policy, practice and quality. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London, 2003) in a period of economic downturn, as a cheap way to deal with the increasing demand for child care for the under-threes. Under the veil of a “home as haven” ideology (Rapp G, Lloyd S, Fam Relat 38(4):426–430. http://www.jstor.org/stable/585748, p. 426, 1989) or under the political assertion of “what women naturally do” (Urban M, Dalli C. A profession speaking and thinking for itself. In: L Miller, C Dalli, M Urban (eds) Early childhood grows up. Towards a critical ecology of the profession. Springer, Dordrecht/Heidelberg/London/New York, p. 519, 2012), childminders were brought to the forefront of early child care policies, despite earlier criticisms of the “home away from home” thesis that childminders did not need qualifications as they were mothers (Mayall B, Petrie P. Minder, mother and child. Institute of Education, London, 1977). As a result, two to three decades later, in another period of economic austerity, many regions and countries are faced with high attrition rates with over 3000 childminders stopping work in Flanders in the last 5 years and the percentage of early child care services in family-based provision in Sweden diminishing from 30 to hardly 5 % (e.g., Kind en Gezin. Jaarverslag 2014. Kind en Gezin, Brussel Jaarverslag 2014. Kind en Gezin, Brussel, 2015 (Korpi BM. The politics of preschool. Intentions and decisions underlying the emergence and growth of Swedish preschool. Ministry of Education and Research, Stockholm, 2007) The politics of preschool. Intentions and decisions underlying the emergence and growth of Swedish preschool. Ministry of Education and Research, Stockholm). Questions of professionalisation, sustainability and fairness are also gaining increasing political attention (Layland J, Smith A. N Z J Educ Stud 50(1):71–86, 2015) as it becomes clearer that qualifications matter more for the educational quality of FDC than years of experience (Fukkink RG, Lont A. Early Child Res Q 22:294–311, 2007). As a result, countries face quantitative and qualitative challenges (see for instance the European Qualification Framework in Working Group on Early Childhood Education and Care. Proposal for key principles of a quality framework for early childhood education and care. European Commission, Brussels, 2014) and it is far from evident that a new generation of family day care providers will emerge to fill this gap. In this chapter, we discuss this trilemma of professionalisation, sustainability and fairness in general and focus also on these issues within three non-English speaking regions – Flanders, France and Germany – which are regions where these issues have hardly been documented in the English language literature. We look at how the issue of working conditions, both financially and socially (and thus the issue of fairness) increases the tensions in the discussions of professionalisation and sustainability. We discuss these tensions and document how they are shaped in policy and practice