So, welcome everybody to today's lecture.
It is always a bit of difficult period, pre-Christmas period, end of the year period, so everybody
is very stressed, but I'm very, very glad that some of you came here to listen to Birgit
for everything else lecture today.
My name is Patricia Freelix, I'm a member of the research council of the Center for
Globalization and Governance, and I will chair the session today, so I will introduce Birgit
in a second, and I will also lead the discussion today.
First, it is my honor to introduce Birgit for a second.
Birgit is professor for sociology here at the University of Hamburg for social structure
analysis, and she is also honorary professor of the Southern Denmark University, and she's
the director, one of the three directors, and also one of the founding directors of
the Center for Globalization and Governance, and she's leading two research areas, which
is research area two on welfare state, on welfare state change, and research area five
on, I don't really know the name, family and work.
Yeah, you may, of course, tell the right name.
This already shows you that Birgit is doing a lot of research in different kinds of fields.
She started with sociology of work, where she became an expert, and then she thought,
well, let's try something else, so she developed the next research area, the research interests
and expertise in welfare state change, and also in family, how is the family situated
in the societies, and all these she always links to culture, this is the specialization
of Birgit for Effinger, and she's also doing other things, which I will not refer to at
the moment.
She's very active also, not only in the area of her research, but also in the activities.
She's publishing a lot in high ranked international journals and with publishers of high reputation,
and she's also very active in the collaboration in research projects, which are collaborative.
For instance, on the European level, she at the moment has a big research project with
11 partners all together all across Europe.
So with this little introduction, I would like to welcome Birgit to give her lecture
today on blurring boundaries between public and private, the case of care.
So thanks very much, Patricia.
In my lecture today, I would like to present some findings from my research in the last
years from a specific stream of my research that I did also together with my team, and
I made some reflections and tried to introduce a new perspective on the findings of the research
in this direction, and this is the research about care within the family, care that is
provided by family members for other family members.
They include parents who care for their children themselves, or they include people who care
for their older senior relatives within the family, like the spouses of those who are
in need of care, or the children, the daughters or sons, who are the children of the person
who is in need of care and who is a senior.
And this is my subject, and I did some reflections on what this means, that there was a change
in this field, that welfare states have changed their policies to care by family members,
and that there has developed something new in the families that is not well researched
and was not much reflection on in the current debate.
So I start with the history of the family.
In pre-modern Europe, there was a unity of the family and the economy.
So imagine the family farm.
This was a very common unit in European societies.
In this farm, the family members were at the same time economically productive.
There was not a distinction between the place of the family and the place where the work
took place in society.
After transition to modern industrial society, this has changed.
A distinction has developed between two different spheres of society.
One of these two spheres is now the family, and this is conceptualized also in the tradition
of sociological thinking as a field without work.
It's conceptualized at the private sphere for the intimate relations between the members
of the family and also the sphere for the upbringing of children, but it's not conceptualized
in the tradition of many sociological thinkers and philosophers as a field of work.
On the other hand, work is organized outside the family on the basis of formal employment.
The employment system, and this is conceptualized at that part of the society in which work
is provided, in which people work, and it's connected with much regulation around this
and many institutions which are around this employment system.
However, this concept was strongly criticized by feminist thinkers already in the 1970s
and 1980s.
Their argument, their theoretical argument is and was that work is clearly also provided
within the family, and this is work which is done mainly by women and which means childcare
and care for senior citizens besides also housework.
Their argument is that particularly care work is important in this regard, and they argue
that care work in the family is provided, but it is invisible.
It is hidden, it is unpaid, it is informal, and it is not recognized as work.
And this is possible only because the family is organized around this care work in that
way, that the man, the husband of the wife in the couple, had the duty, is expected
to be employed in the employment system and earn the money as a male breadwinner, and
that the wife stays at home and that she is doing the care for the children and for the
senior relatives without pay, unpaid, but that her husband, from his wages, pays also
her subsistence.
And with his social security, he also covers, can cover her social security.
So this is a feminist analyzes of that what happens in the family.
And this analyzes is also a bit older.
The theory was developed already, as I said, in the middle, in the late middle of the 20th
century.
However, since then, since this theory was introduced and very popular, change in welfare
state policies has happened that has considerably changed the conditions under which women
or in general people in their family provide care.
On one hand, they have supported the public provision of childcare and senior care on
the basis of public paid care work by professional employees.
And this means they have, in a way, emptied out the family from this role, from this role
to be obliged to give the care.
And they have, this has supported women to enter the labor market, the employment system,
to be professional employees in many different fields, while at the same time, external to
the family, the childcare and the senior care is provided publicly.
On the other hand, and this is much less regarded in the social policy discussion, welfare states
also have increasingly supported the care by family members inside the family.
So they have, welfare states, in a way, have introduced a dual type of policy towards care.
On one hand, they have supported the formalization, the externalization of the care towards fields
outside the family.
And on the other hand, they have supported the care by family members inside the family.
And now I come with my main question.
What interests me here in this regard?
This is firstly, how did welfare state policies towards care work by family members change?
Just to analyze, in a descriptive way, the change of the policy.
And then my question is, what are the consequences for the traditional distinction between family
on one hand and the employment system on the other, if we more carefully look into
the family and see what the welfare states have changed within the family?
And then the third question is, how can the change in welfare state policies be explained?
So I structure my presentation so that I first show you what is discussed in the literature.
What is the common approach to care?
How do they conceptualize care?
And how far do they take into account these changes in welfare state policies towards
care?
And then I introduce to you more elaborated introduction to the new welfare state policies
towards family care.
And the third step, I introduce my explanation why welfare states support family care.
And I give a final conclusion in the end.
So the common approach in the literature is a dualistic concept of care, but as an analytical
concept.
And this is still based on the very traditional perception of care as it was the earlier feminists
have introduced it.
So first I must define what I mean with care before I start.
And I connect with a common debate about care and I connect them with the definition.
So what is important in relation to care is care includes the provision of daily social,
psychological, emotional, and physical attention for people.
Caregiving is embedded in a social relationship.
And this is the nature of care, that it is based on a social relationship and takes place
within this social relationship.
And caregiving is a form of work.
And therefore I also talk about care work.
So I connect to this feminist argument that this is a form of work.
And what I found in the literature is that they still treat care as they did it as care
was organized 30 years ago in many European countries.
So they talk about family care on one hand and extra familiar care on the other still
in the traditional terms, even if there has much happened in between.
So family care is what is and they also treat family care care by family members as a kind
of bad type of care.
Yeah.
It's a bad type that is detrimental for women's labor market integration.
And they describe it so.
Care by family members is informal, unpaid, the societal field in which it takes place,
the private field, and it supports gender inequality.
On the other hand, extra familiar care, this is a good type of care in their thinking,
so to say.
It's a bit normative, the debate.
It is formal, it is paid, it takes place in the public area, in this one that I described,
the public area, in this case the employment system, and it supports gender equality.
And this dualistic concept is also reflected in the analysis of policies towards care.
So there is this more recently introduced concept of familiarizing and defamiliarizing
policies of the welfare state, and this is exactly organized along this distinction between
two types of care.
So the familiarizing or familiarizing type of care is the support of care by family members,
and this promotes gender inequality in this thinking.
And the defamiliarizing care policy is so to say the good policy, because this supports
care provision by employed care workers, and it promotes gender equality.
Even if it is the argument is that this defamiliarizing policy in many countries, in many welfare states,
does not go far enough because also the formalized care is often not so well paid, and it's not
so highly professionalized, and so these authors also see problems with the defamiliarized
type of care, but in their debate that family care, the traditional concept and the traditional
form that is not so good, that supports gender inequality and extra-familiar care is a new
and better type of care, and because also it supports gender equality.
And I contest a bit this clear distinction between these two types, because as I also
have mentioned, meanwhile, welfare states have introduced new paid forms of care within
the family, paid forms of care of family members when they care for their relatives.
And this is not considered in this dualistic concept that there is something new in between,
and I would like to introduce this.
So there was this change in welfare state policies, and some authors have considered
it or some studies.
And what was introduced from the welfare states, also from many welfare states, was support
and also new social rights to give care for family members.
And Knine and Monique Kramer pointed this out already, 1999.
And yes, it is important to see that new paid forms of care work by family members were
introduced, and I have written about this already in 2005.
And so far, there is very little literature which analyzes these new forms of family care
and how they were constructed by welfare state policies.
So Claire Angersen did some, started with some research in this regard, and she has
analyzed different forms of pay for care by family members.
And also Teppo Kruger and others have done comparative analysis of the situation of
carers who care for their family members and are at the same time employed.
It was more about their work situation.
They did not really consider the institutional framework and what is new here.
And I myself have with colleagues with Ralph Och is also here, and Per Jenssen from the
University of Albor analyzed the institutional legal framing of the work situation of caring
relatives.
And also in a more recent study together with Patricia Frerichs and Per Jenssen, I did another
research also on this.
And what is still missing is a theoretical framework and a systematic comparative analysis
of the new welfare state policies towards family care.
But these studies have already contributed to this, and I will show you how they contributed
our studies to this, to the elaboration in this regard.
So I now would like to go more in depth with these new welfare state policies.
And I distinguish here two new forms of care work by family members.
The one type is what I call the semi-formal care work.
This is care work that is not defined as formal employment, but that is to some degree connected
with pay and employment related rights.
And I distinguish inside this type two different subtypes.
In one, and I will introduce, I will show you a bit later the difference.
The one subtype is semi-formal care work based more on welfare benefits.
And the second one is semi-formal care work based on wages and employment rights.
And then I also introduce, the other concept is that also formal care work today takes
place in the family so that welfare states have introduced formal care work into the
care by family members, which is really very new and something very amazing in a way.
Because always so far we understand formal care work as work that is happening outside
the family and the family relations between family members.
This is care work that is based on formal employment and employment related rights.
So the empirical basis of this research that I will introduce to you is international comparative
research that I did with the European team on six European welfare states in the EU research
project FEVER, and that I have coordinated it myself, then it is international comparative
analysis of welfare state policies towards senior care in 11 welfare states in the EU
research project flows, and international comparative analysis of welfare state policies
towards parental leave in the field of family policy that I did together with Steven Sachsenberg,
a colleague.
So first I would like to show more in depth how we can find semi-formal care based on
welfare state benefits.
So this is mainly the case if we look at the paid family leave programs of European
welfare states.
These include maternity leave, maternal leave, parental leave, and paternal leave, so different
forms of leave, and in most or nearly all West European countries, paid leave programs
were introduced here.
And in these programs, it is so that parents of newborn children can decide to stay at
home and care for their children themselves, and they can take a leave from their normal
job, and when they stay at home, they receive pay from the welfare state.
And this pay, as far as it is a generous leave scheme, the pay is at least two-thirds of
the income that they usually get from their normal job, or otherwise it's a fixed amount
that they receive per month, a fixed amount of money in the context of these welfare state
programs.
So if we look more closely to these programs, this means that in a way the work of the parents
that they do when they care for their children is paid.
But if we look more closely to the nature of this pay, then this is not really linked
to the work.
It's not controlled if they really care themselves for their children.
The pay is not in any way connected with the working time that they need take for their
children, for care for their children.
It's just more if you look into the legislation, you will find that this pay that they receive
resembles more social security benefits, so that this is period in which they leave
the employment system in order to stay at home is treated more like a period when you
are retired, or when you are sick, or when you are unemployed, and during the time in
which you are not able to work in your normal job, you get a compensation, a financial compensation,
so that you can live on that.
And this is, I think this is really interesting, so that in a way this, what they are doing
is not really conceptualized as a type of work.
It's more conceptualized as a time where they are doing some specific type of activity,
and because of this activity are not able to work in their normal job.
And this is interesting here, and it is, yeah, and there are differences in the generosity
of the schemes, but this is what they have in common, that there is no scheme which explicitly
is, where the pay is explicitly related to the hours of work of the parents.
And this is very different in the next type of scheme that I introduced to you, and this
is a type of program you find, which is very common in the field of care for senior relatives.
The typical person who does the care work is more the wife than the husband, and it's
more the daughter than the son in the family, but there is a certain share also of men who
give care, but the most people who care are women.
And in this field, what was introduced here by the welfare states is pay for family members
who care for their relatives, and this is really constructed in many of these programs
as pay for the time that these persons need in order for the care.
In the German scheme, for example, in the German program, it's exactly defined if you
get, for example, if a person who is in need of care, a senior, if he is not buried, fail,
but passes the test for the health test and receives care from the German care insurance,
then there is a fixed price for the care if this person decides for a family member.
Then the family member gets, or it is, there is a contract that says that the family member
has to do, for example, two hours of care per day, besides Saturday and Sunday, and
that the pay is 200 euro, for example. It has increased a bit. So there is an exact
relationship between the time of the care work and the pay for it. So you can calculate
the hourly pay for those times that are calculated from the welfare state, not the real number
of hours is much more very often in Germany. But this is the principle. And then also elements
of employment-related rights are connected with the care work. This is in many of these
programs, like eligibility for pensions, protection against dismissal, right for paid holiday,
and so on. So these are rights that are connected to a normal employment also in these countries,
but sometimes they deviate a bit from those in the employment system. And what is characteristic
for the semi-formal forms is that they have to have the right to have the right to pay
and what is characteristic for the semi-formal forms is that there are less rights around
and the pay is less or not so highly regulated and there are less rights connected with this
care work. But this is very new and there are nearly no publications in the field which
have discussed this change. And also the distinction between these two different types
of semi-formal care work. And now also it is interesting here, when it comes to this
semi-formal care work that is based on wages and employment-related rights, if we look
at the contract, this is also based on a care contract and there are at least two different
forms of the contract. Or we must consider that the care relationship takes place in
a triangle. There is the institution that pays the care. Then there is the care recipient
and the care work provider. And the welfare state establishes a specific relationship
between these. So in the first example, the welfare state establishes a direct contract
to a relationship between the care recipient and the care provider. And this can be the
husband and the wife, his wife. If the husband is a care recipient in Germany, for example,
then you have this kind of nearly employer-employee relationship but only quasi or a contractor
freelancer contract. Whereas the cash that is here used to pay the caring family member
is paid by a public institution. It is an institution in Germany, for example, of the
public care insurance. But this can lead to the expectation in some of these programs
that even the husband in need of care and his wife who provides the care work that they
negotiate the conditions of her care work. How far does she have social security? How
high is her pay? And this is a completely new type of welfare state construction within
the heart of the family, which seems otherwise seen as to be free from such kind of relationships.
Or it is possible that there is a public regulation of the amount of pay and the working conditions
of the caring family member. And in this case, the contract may even be the contract
with this institution, with the public, with the municipality also. And it is not a direct
contractual relationship of the family carer and the care recipient. And then there is
even another type, what we also found in this case in Denmark. And this is the case in Denmark
and this is formal care work by family members. And this means, and this is also a very new
thing, if you would like to care for your older mother who is in need of care, you can
go to your municipality and tell them, I want to give care, to act as care worker for my
mother. Exclusively, I do not want to work as a professional care worker for many people
in need of care, just only for my mother. And they give you a formal employment contract
as an employee of the municipality. So you are then, during the time when you provide
the care, during those months or years, you can be an employee of the municipality whose
only task is to care for your own mother. And this is, I think this is really amazing.
And this is what we found in Denmark and also in Finland. But we did more elaborated analysis
about Denmark. And then the wages are based on common wages that are paid for care work.
And the working conditions are working conditions of standard employment. This includes even
a protection against dismissal so that it is not possible that you lose your job from
one day to the next one if the care recipient has to change into a hospital or residential
care. And this, I think this is amazing, an amazing new type of work. But why do welfare
states support family care? Even sometimes with formal, with this formal form, at least
with pay and some elements of social security, why do they do it? And a common explanation
is that, and this is many common in feminist thinking, welfare states support care by family
members because they use the family as a cheap resource, many of the women in the family
as a cheap resource for the care so that they can avoid public spending for care provision.
This is a very common argument. But we did research in this and we found that this is
not, the empirical evidence does not support this argument because it is so that those
welfare states who are relatively generous towards care by family members, if they would
be, if this would be right, this argument, then we would expect that those welfare states
who are relatively generous to the family and to caring family members, that they are
not generous in the supply of public care because they want to save money and give the
money, public spending into the family instead to the public sector. But the opposite is
the case. In childcare as well as in care for seniors, we find in both fields that those
welfare states which are generous towards care by family members are those welfare states
which are also more generous towards public care provision. And I show you the findings.
This is from a study that I did with Steven Sachsenberg about parent leave and how it
interacts with family policies towards public care for children. And what we found, you
see, if this feminist argument would be right, then we would find the opposite. We would
find that a high degree of generosity of parent leave schemes would go hand in hand
with a low degree of generosity of welfare state policies towards public childcare provision
and we would also find this field occupied. These are right above on the right side and
here below on the left side. But we find the opposite. Those welfare states who have generous
parental leave schemes, who support parents to stay at home and give care for their children
and receive at least two-thirds of their former employment income during that time, these
are the welfare states that also offer generous public daycare for children. And we find that
they offer an individual right for each child including children below three of age or that
they offer that the policy provides comprehensive childcare. And we did analysis about this.
You know, in brackets here you find the number of months of generously paid leave, parental
leave. Here you see these countries have generous, just those countries which are famous for
their very strong policy towards the integration of women into the labor market. This is Sweden,
Denmark, Norway and Finland. These countries also offer very generous options to stay at
home for mothers, for parents, for both parents usually and to care for their children themselves.
And those countries which do not invest into public daycare for children to a relatively
low degree, but they do also not invest into care by parents themselves for their children.
And now we have a similar picture when it comes to the field of care for senior citizens.
So these findings are really, I think both, they are amazing because nobody has argued
like this so far and did this analysis. Now we have the same in the field of, very similar
in the field of care for seniors. You know, we would expect the same here. We would expect
that either if the feminist argument would be okay, then we would expect that either
the investment of the welfare state into senior care by family members is strong and
then it's little investment into public care or the other way round, but it's only, it's
just the opposite again. We find those welfare states, and we see here very similar types
of welfare, the same welfare states in part that we found in the other study, they have
both, they have generous policy towards public care for seniors, at least at medium level.
We have made here, we have found here more a differentiation. So they are medium or high
in this regard and they have also medium or high provision of public care for seniors.
They are either generous in both fields or not generous in both fields. And this is really
the opposite compared to what we would have expected if this feminist argument would be
right, that the welfare states either support one field or the other. But then still we
have the, to answer the question, why do welfare states support care by family members? Some
do it in a stronger way, but also those with a relatively low degree, even those they put
some funds, some finances into both fields. So another explanation that I found in the
recent literature discussion is with individualization theory of Ulrich Beck, the famous theory. Ulrich
Beck has treated, has argued that individualization is a process that takes place in modern, yeah,
countries, in modern contemporary countries and also on the way from the industrial society
to the post industrial society. And he has argued individualization is a process doing
which the traditional ties, also the ties of the family are weakened. And also this
means also that the individual loses social security, so the social embeddedness in this
traditional ties, but that instead the welfare state and the labor market offer new kinds
of security so that this is an alternative. And he has described this process as a process
that is going on and on. So, and in this regard, and he has also written with, together with
Elizabeth Beck Gansheim about the role of the change within the family in this regard,
and he has argued, both have argued that the fact that we still find that there's care
by, that family members give to other family members, that is a kind of lag or gap or lagging
behind in the individualization process. And so that women are later on following the man
in the individualization. So this means that this would only be a period through which
we have to go until finally in the end all people are individualized. And individualization
takes place outside the family in the, well, in another conditions of the welfare state
and the labor market. So then we would, yeah, this would mean that what we see this family
care that is supported is that the welfare state just, that they are not really, that
they're acting is in a way dysfunctional because they support an outdated type of not
so modern, yeah, type of work or activity in the family. My argument, however, is that
individualization theory in this regard, and I do not follow individualization theory in
this regard, because individualization is not limited to outsourcing of care to formal
employment. Instead, what we see here is that welfare states also support individualization
within the family because the women who are, want to care for their newborn children or
their older family members, they are now freed from the male breadwinner. They can do this
as an autonomous carer. They do not, in previous time they had to wait until their husband
gave them the money for their lifestyle independent from the care, but now they either they get
a benefit, like when they are parents, a social welfare benefit, or they get a direct pay
for the work that they do for their relatives, yeah? And this is another type of individualization
within the family. But beyond this, we should consider, in order to answer the question,
why welfare states support family care, that these welfare states also, we act to a complex
cultural orientation of the populations in Europe, in European societies, because what
we find in the data and in the literature is that on one hand in European societies,
a broad support of the cultural value of gender equality and people accept and think that women
should be in the labor market, they should be employed, they should earn money and contribute
to the family household income. But on the other side, people still highly appreciate
close intergenerational ties and the relationship, and also that to give care within this relationship.
And this may have new, there may have a bit more new motivations. For example, in our
fever project we found that parents today, that in many countries parents would like
to give care themselves in the first years after a child is newborn, but in previous
time this was more seen as a duty of the mother, yeah? It was kind of moral duty. But today
it's more, parents more treat this as a, the child as a project for their own self-fulfilling
and for to give them joy and pleasure in life and to enrich their lifestyle. And then this
is a different motivation than it was in previous times, but a strong motivation. And these
new policies in that they support both care by the, in the public or on the other hand
care by family members, this, with this new, these new policies the welfare states offer
people inside the society the option to choose. So they do not only offer one type of lifestyle,
but people can decide between the different options. And this is related to this complex
and in some part even contradictory cultural surrounding in these countries. And you see
here in this diagram the attitudes in Europe towards parental care and the best way of
organizing care for children under three of age. And I just briefly explained what you
see here. So the red columns mean the percentage of the population who think that child care
should be provided by the child's mother and father in mainly if the child is under three
years old, yeah? And the blue column is that they think that child care should mainly be
provided by the mother. There were also other options to, to answer for public day care.
And so, but what you see here is that if people are asked what is the best form of care for
children under three, then they, in many European countries, a really a considerable part of
the population thinks that care should be provided, care for small children by the parents.
And even what is the most surprising is that the countries in which we find a very strong
support of this is the highest is a part of the population who supports this is in Sweden.
And we know that just Sweden is a country that is among those who have the best public
day care provision for children and the most comprehensive besides Denmark and the other
Nordic countries. Yes, but, and also Finland is among these countries. You see here, Finland
is here. Yeah, they are the, Finland is very high and here in Sweden it is very high. Yeah,
the share in the population, whereas in Denmark it's rather low. Yeah, but you see that in
many European countries, the share is really relatively high of those who think that this
is the best form of care for small, small children. And what is a bit, a pity this was
a multiple answers were possible so that we do not know exactly how many, if we take both
numbers together, the share of those who opt for care by the mother mainly and those who
opt for care by both parents. Yeah, we cannot summarize these, but you see that there is
this complex cultural situation and the rest of the people in these countries, they prefer
other types of care for those children. So then now I come to my conclusion. So I think
first I asked how the change, how the welfare state policies towards care by family members
have changed. And what we have seen is that welfare states have introduced new forms of
care work by family members. These include new semi formal forms and even formal care
employment for care by family members. And therefore it is no longer possible to make
this clear distinction to say employment formal employment takes place in the employment system
in the public and informal unpaid care takes place within the family. But now we have a
mixture within the family. And this means that the traditional distinction is that the
I have introduced between public and private in relation to the family and the employment
system has meanwhile blurred or has been blurred, has been eroded by the welfare state policies.
And then it is also possible to say that with pay for care work by family members, the welfare
states more or less differ concerning the generosity, more or less support the financially
autonomous family carer. And when it comes to the explanation of change, my main argument
is that with these welfare state policies, the welfare states react to the increasing
popularity on one hand of the cultural value of gender equality and on the other hand to
the fact that still considerable parts in the European societies of the population support
or have the idea that it is good to give care within the family so that this is part of
a new lifestyle and not just some remainder from the traditional housewife marriage that
now is vanishing increasingly. It seems that it does not vanish, that still people want
to give family care. So many thanks for your attention.