Family, class and gender strategies in mother’s employment and childcare

1. Family, class and gender strategies in mother’s employment and childcare Rosemary Crompton and Clare Lyonette City University

2. Class reproduction: economic, cultural? • Agreement that class reproduction occurs largely via family (Goldthorpe, Bourdieu). • Goldthorpe argues that economic constraints determine class ‘choices’ (RAT) • Bourdieu (and e.g. Reay, Ball, Devine) argue that cultural resources are also significant. • Both will contribute to class reproduction, in this paper we (tentatively) explore their relative significance.

3. Pitfalls of cultural and ‘individualisation’ explanations • ‘Blaming the victims’ – e.g. ‘underclass’ theories (Murray) that claimed that poverty was a consequence of the moral deficiencies of the poor. • More generally, social outcomes are seen as a consequence of individual ‘choices’ (Hakim) – ‘individualisation’ (Beck) individuals ‘forced to choose’ in ‘reflexive modernity’. • Danger of displacing accounts of inequality from structure to individual.

4. Methods • BSA/BHPS data sets • 90+ work-life interviews carried out as part of GeNet Project 7 (with male and female doctors, accountants, and employees in finance and retail, all with a child under 14). • Professional and managerial respondents over-represented amongst our interviewees. The major class comparative strategy we employ is between professional/managerial and intermediate/routine and manual.

5. ‘Choosing’ a family strategy • No difference between professional/managerial and intermediate/rm as to whether they had ‘planned ahead’ in advance of having a family. BUT • Differences in reasons given for the mother going ‘back to work’. Intermediate/RM emphasised material need: ‘We knew, she knew she had to go back to work because that’s what happened, that’s what you had to do, because there was no money’ (R5, male retail, intermediate). • Professional/managerial emphasised the mothers’ self-fulfilment: ‘I do sometimes feel guilty myself… but I know I’d be a dreadful stay at home mum. I’d be really awful, and I’m a much better mum for not being there… And my mum didn’t work, and I think I always resented her for that whole martyr being at home, running around after the men all the time … and I just looked at her and went “I don’t want any of that, thank you”’ (F12, female finance, professional/managerial).

6. Childcare and grandparental help • Professional/managerial – 66% used nursery/nanny; intermediate/RM – 66% used grandparental help (multiple response) • For Intermediate/RM grandparental help was often absolutely essential to enable the mother to take up paid employment: ‘So on the three days that she (wife) works, one set of grandparents has her two days and one has her for one day, and on Saturday mornings while (wife’s) doing nails (a second part-time job as a manicurist), I have her, so we’re spoilt really…. If we were paying for childcare, I don’t know that we would have a child to be honest… Childcare probably wouldn’t have made it worthwhile my wife carrying on working’ (R10, male retail, intermediate). • for Professional/managerials, grandparental help was ‘family time’: ‘And do your parents-in-law help out at all? I mean you said they live just... Not on that basis. They did take two of them on a Wednesday morning just for, I don’t know, it was just for sort of special granny time. And they also certainly help out with babysitting in the evenings and things like that if we ever go out’ (M1, male GP, professional/managerial).

7. ‘A pre-school child suffers if his or her mother goes out to work’. BHPS 2005, 5-category ONS-SEC classification (men and women in a partnership with a child under the age of twelve) (Weighted %)

8. Class and gender difference in attitudes to non-maternal care • Women: class differences in ‘expected’ direction, prof/man women significantly less likely to think a child suffers (chi-square 37.027; d.f.=8; p<0.001) • Men significantly (p<0.001) more traditional than women, but no consistent class pattern. Check revealed that same cross-cutting class/gender pattern discernible in 1991, although over time attitudes have become more ‘liberal’ for both sexes. • Prof/man women who stay at home (a minority) with young children are very similar in attitude to intermediate/routine man women. Class differences suggest that prof/man women are better able to exercise ‘choices’.

9. Does a pre-school child suffer? (continued) • Asked the same question of all our interviewees. • Gender differences very apparent – many more male than female interviewees thought that a child would ‘suffer’ without maternal care. • Numbers too small to explore class differences. • But interesting differences in class rationales concerning pre-school care. Major similarity in that social value of childcare emphasised across classes: ‘I mean I would say he’s a very confident little boy, argues like mad and he’s only four, it drives me mad. And he’s got his confidence I would say 50% from nursery really, from interacting with the other kids, and he’s been in nursery since he was four months old’ (M20, female GP, professional/managerial). ‘I look at, I look at (daughter), she’s always been around my child minder and her three kids. … and I look at like my brother’s kids before they went to school, they were very shy, you know, they were at home at lot whereas (daughter’s) very social, you know, she’s not a shy girl and she interacts very well’ (R1, female retail, intermediate).

10. Professional/managerial ‘scientific’ childcare rationales ‘I think it’s a very bad thing to be where the mother at home who’s depressed or who isn’t able to stimulate children or doesn’t have a choice, you know I think that can be as worse. I think if you got a depressed mother – I don’t want to stereotype – a mother who’s not equipped at the current time for whatever reason not to be a great mum, I think there some nursery support or nursery education can be very positive’ (F12, female finance, professional/managerial). ‘But I also think the child suffers if, if somebody is full time at home, it’s vital that whoever’s at home recognises the child’s needs for social development and, and probably slightly more creative play because I know that we would not get the paints out for (daughter) as often as she does at nursery and I’m reassured by the fact that, that she does actually do painting at nursery. … I think, I think, I’ve seen a lot of stay at home mums who I think do actually choke their child’s development by not exposing them to a sufficient variety of environments’ (M15, male GP, professional/managerial).

11. Conclusions • Evidence of class variation in discourse(s) surrounding family strategies in mother’s employment and childcare. • BUT the major factors shaping outcomes in respect of both were the structures of opportunities and constraints faced by the couple – ‘economic’ rather than ‘cultural’ explanation • Implications for policy: • report of the Equalities Review: Fairness and Freedom; individual emphasis: ‘A large part of what will unseat entrenched inequalities will lie in what communities and families do for themselves’, and ‘barriers to aspiration’ must be removed (HMSO, 2007: 45). • But high quality, universal childcare most likely to reduce class inequalities in this area. • Gender differences on these topics important, need to explore more. These are especially noticeable as between professional and managerial men and women.