PARENTAL PERSPECTIVES ON CHILDCARE AND THE TAKE-UP OF CHILDCARE SERVICES AMONG ROMANIAN HOUSEHOLDS
PARENTAL PERSPECTIVES ON CHILDCARE AND THE TAKE-UP OF CHILDCARE SERVICES AMONG ROMANIAN HOUSEHOLDS

Summary/Abstract: Family policy changes over the last decade in many European welfare states, Romania included, supported by EU policy discourses, have been driven by an increasing attention paid to “investment” in children, particularly during the early years. Underpinned by competing policy objectives, early years childcare services and policy instruments supporting formal childcare have been expanding Europe-wide. However, the success of such “investments” should be seen at the confluence of high quality service provision and parental decisions around take-up. This paper focuses on a sample of Romanian parents’ understandings of childcare and, in doing so, locates the role that non-familial carers – particularly crèche nurses and kindergarten teachers – are seen to play in children’s upbringing in an attempt to explain differences in these parents’ take-up of formal childcare services.

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