Constraints and resources

The resources and constraints which seem to be most significant in structuring daily child care arrangements are, on the one hand, those of a financial nature and, on the other, those relating to the degree of availability of the various types of both formal and informal support of a practical nature. It seems to us that the way child care arrangements are organised is mainly determined by the combined workings of these resources/constraints, and that they take on different forms according to the different

types of support that are or are not available (family members, neighbours, friends, activities outside school, etc.).

Our analysis of the interviews indicates that, to some extent, family income influences the way child care arrangements are organised. Low-income families usually face the largest practical problems in reconciling their working lives with child care arrangements and therefore also have greater emotional stress. Nevertheless, these problems are not originally just financial: they derive from the combination of financial and other types of constraints, in particular the degree of availability of practical forms of formal and informal support. For example, lone parents who are much supported by their family do not have to face as many practical problems, even though they may suffer from a fair degree of monetary restrictions.

As far as the type of working hours is concerned, some lone parents have atypical working hours (e.g. they work very long or very irregular hours, or they work in shifts), which may also involve working at weekends (at least on Saturday mornings). However, atypical working hours are not a predominant significant variable in the way child care arrangements are structured, given that the common typology leads us to find parents in that situation in all types except the “self-sufficient lone parent” model. This type of model is not compatible with work situations involving atypical working hours, in as much as the opening hours of the educational institutions are incompatible with this kind of working hours. For this reason, lone parents with atypical working hours have to combine informal and formal support in order to reconcile their jobs with their responsibility for providing child care. Therefore, their success closely depends on the level of income they expect from work. This means that only well-paid jobs can compensate the resort for services. Otherwise, we find that many lone parents make the alternative choice to reduce their working hours. Thus, gender may be important: a large majority of lone fathers are well-integrated in the labour market and are more often average or high-earners. Therefore, gender inequalities seem to be dramatically accentuated within the category of lone parents. On the other hand, lone fathers represent only a minority among this category, though they sometimes, like recently in France, have claimed or obtained extended rights in child care.

These financial constraints, which should be added to the very broad diversity of the financial support received from the state and the general weakness of the alimonies received from ex-partners (except in Finland), structure the major financial constraints of lone parents. The qualitative analysis confirms the trends of general impoverishment of lone parents that has already been stressed by many statistics (see part 1 of this report). What the study of cases makes us understand is the differentiated effects of this process on care arrangements according to its combination with other variables such as family resources, support from social networks, etc.

We also observe that many other kinds of constraints have a strong impact on the care arrangements, among which the children's age is the most evident: the growing autonomy of the children makes a big difference between lone parents caring for babies and lone parents caring for preadolescents. The number of children and the age gaps between them also structure specific constraints. Besides, health problems may have dramatic effects on the care arrangements, even when the parents have high income. Health problems may also affect the carer her-/himself. Particularly, the Italian and French (and partly, Finnish) analysis stress the impact of nervous breakdowns on the care arrangements. Lone parents have to reorganise their work, most of the time by means of therapeutic leaves or social assistance. They hardly manage to organise

everyday life and suffer from a strong feeling of guilt in their relation to their children. All these individual constraints and resources are at least as important as the financial ones, and they are not automatically linked to the family economy.

Moreover, the study of actual arrangements leads us to point out that geographical constraints are also a major key to inter-individual differences. The residential mobility provoked by the changes in the conjugal and professional lives have strong effects on the structure of social networks that can be mobilised for informal care. The distance to work and to these networks is a real difficulty in the organisation of the care arrangement. It may become even more acute when lone parents live in localities where formal care is poorly provided, and / or when they have no driving licence, nor convenient public transport, etc.

All of these conditions are not only constraints, but may be turned into resources as well. As previously said, the family support appears to be the major source of financial and practical help. Even though they may have a psychological cost, all the other sources of help may also be considered as resources for the care arrangement. However unfavourable the balance between constraints and resources, however strong the personal effort to mobilise them, one should bear in mind the essentially relational nature of these resources and constraints.