Uptake of Childcare Arrangements—Grandparental Availability and Availability of Formal Childcare

Karel Neels,Layla Van Den Berg,Naomi Biegel

doi:10.3390/socsci10020050

Abstract

Grandparents constitute an important source of childcare to many parents. Focusing on the Belgian context, this paper improves our understanding of childcare decision-making by investigating how formal childcare availability and availability of grandparents affect childcare arrangements. By means of multinomial regression models we simultaneously model uptake of formal and informal childcare by parents. Combining linked microdata from the Belgian censuses with contextual data on childcare at the level of municipalities, we consider formal childcare availability at a local level, while including a wide array of characteristics which may affect grandparental availability. Results indicate that increasing formal care crowds-out informal care as the sole care arrangement, whereas combined use of formal and informal care becomes more prevalent. Characteristics indicating a lack of grandmaternal availability increase uptake of formal care and inhibit to a lesser extent the uptake of combined formal and informal care. While increasing formal care substitutes informal care use, the lack of availability of informal care by grandparents may be problematic, particularly for those families most prone to use informal care.

Highlights

Research into grandparental childcare provision has recently gained more academic interest in Europe
We address the question whether limited local access to formal childcare makes grandparents more responsive to parents’ needs, or whether informal caregiving is mostly determined by grandparents’ availability regardless of local availability of formal care to parents
First we present the multinomial regression results on uptake of different childcare arrangements, distinguishing formal care only, informal care only, combined formal and informal care as opposed to having no care arrangement

Summary

Introduction

Research into grandparental childcare provision has recently gained more academic interest in Europe. Grandparents are the most important source of informal childcare (Fergusson et al 2008; Ghysels and Van Vlasselaer 2007), and despite variations in the frequency and intensity of care, grandparents have proven to be a non-redundant source of help to parents with young children across European countries (Fergusson et al 2008; Hank and Buber 2009; Igel and Szydlik 2011). Given past demographic trends and current policy changes, concern is rising that the availability and willingness of grandparents to provide informal childcare may decline significantly in the near future The increase in legal retirement ages, and labor force participation in older age groups (European Commission 2002), may give additional conflict with their role as informal caregivers

Results

Discussion

Conclusion