‘I’m kind of in a dilemma’: the challenges of non-standard work schedules and childcare

ABSTRACT

Canada has long been criticized for its patchwork of childcare policies and programmes. In this context, parents who work non-standard hours face additional challenges finding, affording, and maintaining stable childcare. Drawing on a purposive sample of twenty Canadian parents of young children who have non-standard work schedules, we explore the challenges these parents face, the strategies they use, and the impacts of current childcare policies, especially for mothers. We draw on qualitative findings to show how childcare services, labour standards and employment practices must adapt to better serve Canadian families. In the context of the COVID pandemic, it is more critical than ever that policy makers and service providers appreciate that non-standard work results in extremely limited access to childcare services, even as childcare is increasingly recognized as essential to economic recovery, women’s equality, and child and family well-being.

KEYWORDS:

• Childcare policy
• non-standard work
• mothers and work
• family policy
• childcare packages

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This paper is part of a larger project funded by Employment and Social Development (ESDC) Canada. The full report includes a comprehensive literature review on non-standard childcare, a statistical analysis of trends in non-standard work in Canada, an environmental scan of provincial non-standard childcare policies and services, and a profile of selected non-standard hours childcare programmes currently operating in Canada.

2 Because access to care is influenced by provincial policies and differences in access in different locales, we endeavoured to obtain a sample that was both geographically and socially diverse, including single-parents, and parents with a variety of occupations.

3 Our best estimate is that fewer than two percent of childcare centres provide any form of non-standard hours care, although there is considerable provincial variation in rates (Lero et al., 2021). Non-standard hour service in regulated family home care may be more available, but is even more difficult to quantify. See Lero et al., 2021, Chapter 5 for a fuller discussion.

Additional information

Funding

Non-Standard Work in Canada: A Challenge for Parents, Policy Makers, and ELCC Provision”. This project was funded by the government of Canada under the Social Development Partnerships Program, Children and Families Component – Early Learning and Child Care within the Department of Employment and Social Development. The project number was 1588935.

Notes on contributors

Brooke Richardson

Brooke Richardson, completing a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) funded Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2019, Brooke Richardson was recently appointed Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Sociology at Brock University. Brooke completed her SSHRC-funded Doctoral Studies in Policy Studies at Ryerson University in 2017 where she focused on the discursive representation of the childcare policy ‘problem’. Her current work and research examine childcare policy and practice through a feminist ethics of care lens. She is currently editing two books, one examining mothering in the context of child protection practices and the second critically examining conceptualizations of the early childhood educator through different feminisms. Brooke has also taught in the undergraduate and graduate Early Childhood Studies programme at Ryerson since 2012.

Susan Prentice

Susan Prentice is Professor of Sociology at the University of Manitoba, where she specializes in historical and contemporary childcare policy. She was appointed the Duff Roblin Professor of Government in 2020. She has nearly thirty years of experience teaching university undergraduate and graduate classes, and is author of dozens of articles and chapters on social policy, family, social movements, childcare and gender equality, as well as on discrimination and equity in higher education. She has received multiple SSHRC grants, and her work has also been supported by applied funders, including Child Care Visions, Status of Women Canada, and Employment and Social Development Canada. Most recently, she has co-edited Caring for Children: Social Movements and Public Policy in Canada (2017), published by the University of British Columbia Press.

Donna Lero

Donna Lero is University Professor Emerita at the University of Guelph, where she co-founded the Centre for Families, Work and Well-being and led a programme of research in public policy, workplace practices, and community supports. Her research interests focus on how labour and social policies affect the integration of work and care for women, parents, and employees with caregiving responsibilities for adults and seniors.