FREIA - Aalborg University
The development of public child care and preschools in Europe.
Path Dependencies and change.
Hildesheim University, Germany
19.-21. October 2006
Danish child care policies between path dependent and pathbreaking developments
Anette Borchorst
Associate Professor
Department of History, International and Social Studies
Aalborg University
Denmark
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
1. Key characteristics of the Danish child
care system
2. Path dependent policies?
3. Restructuring child care policies.
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
Key characteristics of the Danish child care system
A. Financing: Extensive public commitment
B. Guiding principle: Universalism –
Child care as a right of the child
C. Social Pedagogy:
Integration of care and education
D. Administration: Ministry of Social Affairs→
Ministry of Family and Consumer Affairs/Municipalities
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
A. Financing: Extensive public commitment
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The market plays a limited role in child care
1/3 of the facilities are self owned (often with a special
profile like Christian, Rudolf Steiner a. oths.)
Denmark has comparatively high expenditures for
families with small children and for child care
provisions. Particularly for the under 3s.
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Number of children in publicly supported child care
in percentage of all children 1980-2002
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
age 0-2
age 3-5
age 6-9
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
1980
1990
1995
2000
2001
2002
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
Types of child care provisions
• Crèches
• Family day care
• Kindergardens
• Age integrated institutions
• Leisure time facilities
• School based leisure time facilities
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
B. Universalism –
child care as a right of the child
• 1964 universalist legislation
• Dual motivation: child centered and
considerations of women’s employment
• Legislation – stipulates the rights of the
children
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
C. Social Pedagogy (Sozial Pädagogik):
Integration of care and education
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Social is not residual,
Pedagogical has not got a negative connotation,
Pedagogy is not education in a strict sense
Ideas about the upbringing and cultural formation of pre-school
children (German, Italian influence)
Care and education was integrated in the people’s Kindergardens
1901Social pedagogical traning of the staff
Social pedagogical curriculum
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
D. Administration
•
Has been kept together under the auspices of the
Ministry of Social Affairs for many years, recently
transferred to the Ministry of Family and Consumer’s
Affairs
•
Decentralization to the municipalities, responsible for
establishing, running and supervising the facilities.
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
2. Path dependency
Which version?
• Strict rational choice/economic appraoch
increasing returns (Pierson)
• Broad history matters
• Timing, sequence, opportunity structures,
discourses, actors and alliances
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
Path dependancy: social pedagocial ideas and public commitment
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Integration of care and education: social pedagogic facilities
1919,1933, 1949, 1964 regulations
Timing: universalism was adopted, before child care highly
politizised
Broad political consensus
Influential actors: Fröbel pedagogues and professionals (till the
early 1970s)
Path breaking developments did not occur in the mid 1970s in
spite of drastic changes in economic and political opportunity
structures
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
3. Restructuring child care policies?
• Common challenges to welfare policies:
globalization, ageing, multiculturalism
• Strong dominance of neo liberal discourse
• The state has put an economic strain on
the municipalities
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
¨Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
En kvindevenlig velfærdsstat
“A woman-friendly state would not force harder choices on women
than on men, or permit unjust treatment on the basis of sex. In a
woman-friendly state women will continue to have children, yet there
will also be other roads to self-realization open to them. In such a
state will not have to choose futures that demand greater sacrifices
from them than are expected of men. It would be, in short, a state
where injustice on the basis of gender would be largely eliminated
without an increase in other forms of inequality, such as among
groups of women.”
Helga Hernes, Helga (1987). Welfare State and Woman Power. Essays in State Feminism,
Vojens: Norwegian University Press: 15.
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
A strong bread-winner state
• Comparatively high activity- and employment rates
• Comparatively low share of part timers
• Women perform more household work than men, but
comparatively less than women in most other EU
countries, Danish men do comparatively more
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
Dilemmas and paradoxes:
• A highly gender segregated labour market
(public – private)
• A child penalty (the more children women get,
the less income increases, career chances and
pension earnings)
• Well developed rights to receive care, but not
strong rights to give care
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
Child friendly policies?
• Child centered perspective
• Provisions improve cognitive skills
(Esping-Andersen)
• Challenges the social heritage
• Success in eradicating child poverty
• But: trade-off between quantity and quality
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
The Danish Welfare Commission
• Set up in 2003
• 7 out of 9 members neo classical
economist
• A narrow utilitarian approach to welfare
• Welfare policies are the problem
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
Average net contributions to the public sector, men and women, 2001
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
New-born girls can – without adjustment of the
financial policies – expect to receive 2.4 million DKK
(net) from the public sector while a new-born boy is
anticipated to contribute with 0.8 million DKK. This
redistribution takes place because the welfare society
compensates women for receiving lower salaries on an
average than men due to the fact that women in
connection with maternity leave are away from the
labour market and that they on an average live longer
than men.
Velfærdskommissionen (2004). Fremtidens velfærd kommer ikke af sig
selv. Analyserapport, maj.
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
(Translation of the story in a Danish newspaper)
Women cost bick buggs- men pay the lion’s share
Women’s maternity leave, lower salaries and longer
life expectation, makes them costly for society;
men pay the bill.
Over a life span, women receive more in public
benefits than they pay in taxes.
Men, on the contrary pay more taxes, than they get in
return in the form of cash benefits and service benefits.
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
Experts for the European Council
• Recommendations for the implementation
of the Lisbon strategy
• Women friendly policies a social
investment and a win-win solution
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
Expert recommendations for the implementation of the Lisbon strategy
It is uncontroversial to promote better opportunities for women, not only
because they respond to women’s demands but also because their
employment may yield increasing social returns.
In many countries women constitute a massive untapped labour
reserve that can help narrow future age dependency rates and reduce
associated financial pressures. Moreover as, women’s educational
attainment exceeds men’s, clearly there exists an often large, untapped
productive reservoir. We also know that female employment is one of the
most effective means of combating social exclusion and poverty.
All this implies that ‘women-friendly’ policy is, simultaneously, familyand society-friendly. If it yields a private return to individual women, it also
yields substantial collective return to society at large. It should, accordingly,
be defined as social investment.
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Gösta Esping-Andersen et al. (2001). Why we need a new welfare state, Oxford: Oxford University press, pp. 94.
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark
Danish child care polices - between
path dependent and path-breaking developments
What is the most likely scenario?
- Neo liberal discourses hegemonic – nationally
and internationally?
- Celebration of the Danish flexicurity success
(flexible labour market, high level of security,
women high and stable employment)
- Actors, alliances, competing discourses
Anette Borchorst, FREIA,Aalborg University
Fibigerstraede 2,9200 Aalborg East
Denmark