Lone mothers and the puzzles of daily life: do care regimes really matter?

Abstract

Kröger T. Lone mothers and the puzzles of daily life: do care regimes really matter?Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 390–401 © 2009 The Author, Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare.This article studies childcare patterns and day‐to‐day strategies of 111 working lone mothers from Finland, France, Italy, Portugal and the UK, and asks whether their arrangements are prescribed by care regimes. Lone mothers' arrangements are grouped into five based on the availability and use of different formal and informal childcare resources. The article argues that, even though lone mothers have a more favourable starting point in Finland and France compared with Britain, Italy and Portugal where formal childcare coverage is patchier, childcare arrangements are not very dissimilar within different care regimes. Instead, similarities across care regimes are highlighted. Formal provisions have their limitations in all the countries studied and in all cases significant expectations are placed on informal childcare. The availability of informal childcare cannot, however, be taken for granted in any country, and working lone mothers whose informal and formal resources do not adequately meet their childcare needs were located in every care regime, facing care poverty.