Child Care
Germany is a country within the EU that feels a strong sense of moral obligation to the household. This moral obligation, although more likely in West Germany than East, deals with two types of women, the “rabenmutter” or heartless, working mother or the “hausmutterchen” or caring mother. Women who enroll their children in childcare facilities are believed to be the “ravenmutter” because they are not caring for their children during the fundamental ages.
More women were employed in East Germany before 1990 than in West Germany. The shift in East Germany post-Unification to a dual earner/female part-time carer family model forced women to stay home and care for their children who previously had been cared for by state-run child care services.
In East Germany in 1990, 80% of children under three years old were in childcare. In West Germany in 1990, only 5% of children under three were in childcare. West German women follow a traditionalist, patriarchal-dominated family model, which obviously accounts for this significantly lower percentage of children in state-sponsored childcare. The low fertility rates of East German women compared to West German women show that there is a great need for childcare in West Germany.
Work-family policies in Germany are regulated through the benefits provided for households with children. Childcare in Germany is made available to parents by local governments, making private childcare scarce. The German government can control the benefits that parents receive because public childcare is so abundant. Many people who have traditional viewpoints claim that children should be raised at home during the early stages of life. To support this concept, the German government has issued policies that will not benefit the dual-earner model but do make part-time employment possible for women. Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in Germany support these traditional roles by assuring education or care for children over 3. The ECEC does not provide for children under the age of 3 consequently supporting the public ideas of childcare in the early stages of life. 88% of children ages 3-6 had availability to childcare whereas only 3% of children under 3 had this same opportunity. In 2002, the total amount of various childcare facilities in Germany summed to approximately 3.1 million throughout both East and West Germany. With such a large number of available choices it is rather hard for day care centers to compete privately in Germany. Although there exists good coverage in terms of availability for kindergarteners, (90 percent coverage), hours are extremely inflexible for working mothers, since the majority of schools require children to go home for lunch .
Unified Germany has comparatively good childcare in relation to more liberal democracies such as the United States, but public opinion still follows the ideal that it is wrong for mothers to rely on outside care for their young children.
References
http://www.childpolicyintl.org/ The Clearinghouse on International Developments in Child, Youth and Family Policies
Adler, Marina and April Brayfield. 1996. “East-West Differences in Attitudes About Employment and Family in Germany.” The Sociological Quarterly 37(2): 245-260.
