Kirsten Scheiwe

Labour Market, Welfare State and Family Institutions: the Links To Mothers' Poverty Risks A Comparison Between Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom

How do institutions increase mothers poverty risk? This is the leading question in investigat ing the potential impact in a comparative study of three countries, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. It is stressed that different institutional settings (labour market provision, social security benefits and family law regu lation) are closely interacting in sbaping mothers access to income resources. Together they structure the environment witbin which key decisions of actors are made about the combination of paid and unpaid activities and of public and private support for mothers and children. Important aspects affecting mothers poverty risk are the degree of privatization or socialization of direct and indirect cbild costs and of care times, as well as the hierarchy be tween subsidizing fatherhood, motherhood or marriage. To set out a framework for insti tutional analysis, a number of factors sbaping the entitlement to social security benefits are enlisted which may contribute towards driving mothers into poverty.

Equal Opportunities Policies and the Management of Care in Germany

At European level, debate over measures to assist couples in reconciling employment and family life has focused mainly on issues of childcare. Policies concerned with caring for people of all ages are, however, of central importance for equal opportunities politics for a number of interacting reasons. Firstly, women perform most informal caring activities — childcare, care for disabled or older people — both within the family and for other close relatives. Secondly, the way in which society conceptualizes caring activities affects the status, income and social security rights of women. If informal care is unpaid, as is generally the case, it has a negative impact on women’s earnings and makes them dependent on financial support from a spouse or partner, other family members, or the state. If women invest long hours in informal care, their labour market participation is adversely affected. If they spend several years carrying out informal caring activities, they have problems reestablishing themselves in the labour market. If they have specialized in caring activities and family work while their partner was the main income earner, they may suffer disproportionately in the case of divorce. If no, or only limited, social rights are granted to informal carers, they are at a disadvantage in terms of entitlements to social security compared to people in paid employment.

Introduction: Path-dependencies and Change in Child-care and Preschool Institutions in Europe — Historical and Institutional Perspectives

Public child care and collective forms of education in early childhood have already been well researched, not only from a national but also from a comparative perspective.1 It might not be very productive to add to this literature, were it not that the available research is strongly dominated by a relatively short-range social policy perspective. Where comparison is practised, it focuses on developments of the last decades, which are virtually all connected with the rise in mothers’ labour market participation and the ensuing increase in the need for public child-care arrangements.2 Broadening the temporal horizon of our view to include long-range developments since the nineteenth century allows us to see questions bound to be rendered invisible by the shorter-range perspective.

Caring and Paying for Children and Gender Inequalities: Institutional Configurations in Comparative Perspective

Both family law and social law have an impact on the situation of families. This has held true since the times of the “poor law” (when family law was certainly more relevant for the wealthy and mighty strata of the population). Nowadays, other rules (such as those of labor law and tax law) and welfare state institutions come into play. In analyzing legal change, this interaction between family law and welfare law has to be taken into account. From this perspective, this article endeavors to answer the following question: how do institutions distribute the costs of children in terms of money and work between various actors, and what is the relevance of the rules for gender inequalities? The changes in the similarities and differences of the institutional configurations in four countries (Belgium, Federal Republic of Germany, Sweden, and United Kingdom) are reviewed for the past decades.

Das Kindeswohl als Grenzobjekt - die wechselhafte Karriere eines unbestimmten Rechtsbegriffs

Das ‚Kindeswohl‘ ist in aller Munde – eine Google-Abfrage des Begriffs ergibt 532.000 Ergebnisse, von ‚Kindeswohl aus psychosozialer Sicht‘ uber ‚Kindeswohlgefahrdung‘ und ‚Auslanderbehorden und Jugendhilfe – Kindeswohl als Kooperationsmoglichkeit‘ bis hin zu zahlreichen skandalisierenden Medienberichten. Eine Website kommentiert: „Die Offenheit des Begriffs Kindeswohl birgt die grose Gefahr, dass die an einer Entscheidung fur ein Kind beteiligten Berufsgruppen selber festlegen, was ihrer Meinung nach Kindeswohl bedeutet, ohne sich, wie es notwendig ware, an den genannten wissenschaftlich uberprufbaren Kriterien zu orientieren.

Slow Motion — Institutional Factors as Obstacles to the Expansion of Early Childhood Education in the FRG

The development and expansion of early childhood education in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) — at least in the western part — has lagged somewhat behind that of other European countries. Although the number of children aged three years to school age attending kindergarten has increased considerably since 1991, when a right to a kindergarten place was introduced by law, and now ranges between 90.5 percent in Western Germany and 100 percent in the East,1 there are other indicators of slow development. All-day places offering lunch are rare in many parts of the country and accounted for only 23.6 percent of all places for children aged three to school age in the western Lander (but for 98.1 percent in the east). Kindergarten frequently ends around 12 pm without providing a meal. The situation for under-threes is particularly poor: places are provided for 2.4 percent of this age group in the western Lander (but for 37 percent in eastern Germany). Therefore Germany has to work hard to comply with the EU benchmarks to provide places for 33 percent of all young children by 2010 (the ‘Barcelona targets’).

Die soziale Absicherung häuslicher Pflege über Grenzen hinweg – Rechtliche Grauzonen, (Ir-)Regularität und Legitimität

Die Praxis irregularer Beschaftigungsverhaltnisse von Migrantinnen in Pflegehaushalten wird unter Verwendung theoretischer Annahmen aus Rechtssoziologie, Sozialwissenschaften, Arbeitsmarkttheorie und Gender-Theorien erklart. Ein weiter Begriff der sozialen Sicherung ermoglicht es, irregulare Beschaftigungsverhaltnisse als Ausdruck ungedeckter sozialer Sicherungsbedarfe der Beteiligten (Pflegebedurftige, pflegende Angehorige, beschaftigte Migrantinnen) zu bewerten, welche durch Kollusion ihre widerspruchlichen Interessen ‚in der Grauzone des Rechts‘ verfolgen. Die institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen des Teilarbeitsmarktes haushaltsnaher Dienstleistungen im Sozial- und Steuerrecht sind aus arbeitsmarkttheoretischer Perspektive (Insider/Outsider-Theorien) ein Beitrag zur Abwertung und Marginalisierung von care-Tatigkeiten; im Zusammenwirken mit EU-Ubergangsrecht und Auslanderrecht wird der Arbeitsmarkt abgeschottet. Die rechtssoziologische Sanktionsforschung erklart, warum Rechtsverstose nicht effizient sanktioniert werden. Die dominante offentliche Politik tabuisiert die Uberlastung pflegender Angehoriger sowie die Entrechtung der Beschaftigten und ‚privatisiert‘ soziale Sicherungsbedarfe, so dass Geschlechterhierarchien und soziale Ungleichheiten transnational verlangert werden.

The Development of Early Childhood Education in Europe and North America

1. Introduction: The Longue Duree: Early Childhood Institutions and Ideas in Flux Harry Willekens, Kirsten Scheiwe and Kristen Nawrotzki 2. The Spread of Infant School Models in Europe during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century Jean-Noel Luc 3. Religious Cleavages, the School Struggle and the Development of Early Childhood Education in Belgium, France and the Netherlands Harry Willekens 4. Development and Diffusion of Early Childhood Education in Italy: Reflections on the Role of the Church from a Historical Perspective (1830-2010) Eva Maria Hohnerlein 5. The Roles of the State and the Church in the Development of Early Childhood Education in Spain (1874-1975) (5) Carmen Sanchidrian 6. From Poverty Relief to Universl Provision: The Changing Grounds for Child Care Policy Reforms in Norway Arnlaug Leira 7. Split Paths: Early Childhood Education and Care in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic (1949-1990) Franz-Michael Konrad 8. Saving Money of Saving Children? Nursery Schools in England the USA Kristen Nawrotzki 9. Towards Early Childhood Education as a Social Right: A Historical and Comparative Perspective Kirsten Scheiwe 10. Professional Profiles in Early Childhood Education and Care: Continuity and Change in Europe Pamela Oberhuemer 11. Modernising Early Childhood Education: The Role of Germans Womens Movements After 1848 and 1968 Meike S. Baader 12. Womens Activism on Child Care in Italy and Denmark: The 1960s and 1970s Chiara Bertone 13. Early Education and the Unloved Market of Commercial Child Care in Luxembourg Michael-Sebastian Honig, Anett Schmitz and Martine Wiltzius 14. Preschool, Child Care and Welfare Reform in the United States Sonya Michel 15. The History of Kindergarten as New Education: Examples from the United States and Canada, 1890 to 1920 Larry Prochner

Familienorientierte Personalpolitik von Unternehmen — arbeitsrechtliche Rahmenbedingungen von Elternzeit und Teilzeit, Möglichkeiten und Grenzen

Thema dieses Aufsatzes sind die arbeitsrechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen einer familienorientierten Personal- und Sozialpolitik, die Gestaltungsmoglichkeiten eroffnen und zugleich begrenzen. Als familienorientierte Politik wird nicht nur eine Politik verstanden, die explizit Familien als Adressaten bestimmter Masnahmen und Regelungen betrachtet und die auf explizit familienbezogenen administrativen Strukturen beruht. Analytisch kann auch dort von Familienpolitik gesprochen werden, wo die politischen Akteure ihre Masnahmen mit anderen Motiven begrunden (z.B. mit Zielen der Sozialpolitik zur Armutsbekampfung, Arbeitsmarktpolitik, Bevolkerungspolitik oder Gleichstellungspolitik), aber sich deutliche Zusammenhange zwischen den Masnahmen und den familialen Lebenszusammenhangen konstruieren und nachweisen lassen. Dies wird als implizite Form der Familienpolitik bezeichnet (Kaufmann 2002: 433).

Strukturen und Rahmenbedingungen von Migration

Wenngleich Deutschland erst mit dem Inkrafttreten des Zuwanderungsgesetzes im Jahr 2005 den Status einer Zuwanderungsgesellschaft bewusst bekundete und die Rahmenbedingungen fur die Einwanderung und v. a. fur den dauerhaften Verbleib in Deutschland definierte, war eine durch die Politik initiierte Zuwanderung schon seit den 1950er Jahren ein wichtiges Merkmal der deutschen Gesellschaft. In der Bundesrepublik gestaltete sich der Zuwanderungsprozess dabei vollkommen anders als in der DDR.