Normas de valoración

Fathers

It is notable that we find a larger proportion of lone fathers within the group of respondents in this subtype than in the other ones. These fathers are the main carers of their children for various reasons. Two of them were given legal custody of the children after the break because their ex-partners were evaluated as unable to bring the children

up (UK 14, Fin 27). The two others were left widowers recently (It 23, Fin 8). One father is sharing the care of his children with their mother (Fr 20).

Most of these fathers have nicely flexible hours and they have reduced (UK 14) or negotiated their working hours to fit with the care of their children. As all of them have good wages, reducing working hours does not cause them a financial problem. In addition, they are well-supported by their own families and even by the children’s maternal families. They also regularly receive practical help and emotional support from friends. They conceive home help to be a major element of the well-being of their children in two ways. First, domestic employees help them to get free from domestic obligations and thus spare time be used with children. Secondly, the presence of young women at home is experienced as a good way to balance the absence of the mother.

Some fathers also underline their good relationships with municipal service providers. Tapani (Fin 27), for example, a Finnish lone father, has good relations with the family day care supervisor as well as with the social worker of his living area. He and his seven-year-old daughter receive exceptionally extensive and flexible public care services that cover all care needs raising from his shift work. In the interview, Tapani wanted to stress that he does not get good service from the municipal provider because he is a man but because his own attitude is very positive and because he finds out about matters on his own initiative. He told that he got a good training for using municipal services when his wife started to have mental problems and when he took part in the planning of care for her wife and it together with the health professionals.

Effects of the strong family support in the Portuguese cases

Although there can not be seen any distinctive national pattern of family support in this subtype, the Portuguese sample is interesting because all the cases are based on a strong informal extra support - more often family support.

Maria (P 15), a 31-year-old woman, works as an air hostess on irregular schedules. Her ex-husband, a cameraman, travels often as well. He supports the arrangement more financially than practically. However, his parents are much involved in large segments of care during the mother's travels. When the mother is off work, she takes care of her son, but most days, her son sleeps at his grandparents house and they take care of him. If she arrives early at night (2 or 3 a.m.), she wakes up early in the morning and goes to her ex-parents-in-law to pick up her son and to take him to school. Her own parents, who are retired, usually take the boy to Algarve for two months during the summer holidays. The care arrangement is thus made of extensive segments of family support that are needed because of the work schedules of the mother. However, on a daily basis, the boy is also much cared by public services, as he is at school from 9 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., having there lunch, tea, and extra activities that cost altogether 300 €/month. Furthermore, also a domestic employee is a strategic part of the daily arrangement, because she is available for fetching him from the school-bus and looking after him in evenings. Friends may also do that if the domestic employee is off. This care arrangement is not very far from the subtype "high family support to adult lone mothers". However, the interviewee is financially much more independent and able to afford extra-family services. She leaves the child at the grandparents’ by choice and she says that alternative arrangements with her friends and her employee are possible.

Imelda (P 23) is 43 years old. She works as a university teacher, like her ex-husband. He helps her financially (paying 360 €/month) and also practically. He picks up their 9- year-old daughter two days a week at the school-bus stop and cares for her at his home until the next day. He cares for her during some weekends as well, and, uring summer

holidays, goes to the beach with her. Even though this father provides much extra support that could be linked to the "post-break shared care" subtype, he fills only one part of the multiple segments of extra support, contrary to most shared care arrangements. On a daily basis, the daughter goes to a private primary school, where she has lunch, tea, and other activities such as music, which cost altogether 350 €/month. Beyond this formal support, the mother gets help from many people. She wakes up at 6.45 a.m., prepares herself, then makes the breakfast and wakes up her daughter at 7 a.m. and helps her to dress. Then she goes with her daughter to the school-bus stop. After this, she goes to work. Imelda arrives from her workplace between 5.30 and 7 p.m. At 5 p.m., either the grandfather, the domestic employee or, exceptionally, a friend, takes the child home, except twice a week, when the father does it. The mother has no problem with this gap, because she can choose who is going to fetch the girl and look after her. She could easily ask the employee to do it every day, but she prefers the girl to have various contacts during the week. She has managed to contain the daily gap because she works flexible hours. She often works by night, after 10 p.m., when the child is already in bed.

In these cases, the domestic employees seem to be less involved in the child care strictly speaking. Their major role is housework but they are always available for emergencies. Thus, care arrangements are polarised between many little helpers for a few hours a day and a few big helpers for many hours a day, many days a week. The care arrangements may seem, at the first glance, to be based on family support but in these arrangements, though family support is high, it does not substitute for services. Domestic employees bring a decisive and comfortable support by freeing the carers from many tasks and filling some gaps in the care arrangement. In these cases, the multiplicity of extra supporters increases the independence of the main carer. Actually, we find that other people, like French health auxiliaries, are much more dependent on domestic services, because of their work schedules.

Health auxiliaries in France

Those lone parents within the French sample who work as nurses and health auxiliaries do not have very comfortable conditions. They may be supported occasionally on an informal basis. However, the irregularity of their work schedules oblige them to call for domestic services, as no formal alternative exists. These workers, who are mostly women, are not really high earners and domestic services are proportionately expensive for them. Even though they are able to manage the care arrangement, they feel stressed and think that they do not earn enough money. The high cost of child care for these professionals may be an element that explains partly their frequent strikes and salary claims in France.

Odile (Fr 6) is 30 years old. She works as an auxiliary nurse in an old people’s home in an average size town. Her job imposes specific working hours, according to two shifts: 7.00-15.15 or 8.45-12.30/15.15– 19.15. These are daily hours which are organised not weekly but monthly. She has three children. The first two, aged 11 and 9, are from the first marriage, which ended three years ago. The third one, 14 months old Clément, is from a common law marriage, which ended one week after the birth of the child, due to the conflicting process of acknowledgement of the child by the father. At the end of her latest maternity leave, she was working in a hospital shifts, often night shifts. She quit this position to take on work at the old people’s home:

“I’m here for now. I don’t work nights anymore. It’s not a professional choice: it’s for the family. Professionally, I prefer working nights. My job is still interesting, but

at night, the responsibilities are totally different, much more interesting, especially team work. So, it’s true that if I work days, it’s for the comfort of the family.” (Fr 6) When Odile went back to work after the birth of her third child, night child care had to be provided by her ex-partner, which raised a lot of problems for him and for her. Her mother would come and take over while she slept in the morning and part of the afternoon. This support from her partner and family was very temporary. The sacrifice was too great for everyone, as she explains:

“At the time, Clément’s father was still coming, even though we were separated. It was a choice we made, to have him come and take care of Clément at night. He would leave around 6:00 am, when I was just arriving. Clément was a baby, so he slept with me. Then my mom would arrive at 9:00 am and watch Clément ‘til 12:30 p.m. At 12:30, she would put Clément back to bed with me and we would sleep ‘til 3:00 p.m. So, it was a bit crazy. It worked well, though... When I think about it, for Clément, it was great, because he... well, he didn’t... But well, it couldn’t work for... It lasted what? Two, three months. Because, well, it didn’t work for a relationship that’s over, you know. It wasn’t... It was very, very difficult: it was painful for us all, adults.” (Fr 6)

Odile has never lost touch with her friends, and even reinforced the bond with them through the restoration work organised by her father. They constitute an important source of exchanges. She pays strong attention to a balance of relations that does not make her feel that she is being assisted:

“They’re people who are... not in my everyday life because they don’t live with me, but they’re very close friends. So they... If there’s any kind of problem, it’s true that they’re there to help out. It’s the type of person who... well, I never want to be the sad woman with the three kids. Never, ever. So, in fact, the relationships I have with my friends are always very much balanced, like I can also do them favours, so it’s not like... I have a friend, you know, who takes care of Clément on Sundays. When I work on Sundays, he takes care of Clément in the afternoon. That way my mother can be free. Otherwise I have friends who take them from time to time, for a couple of hours. They take the older ones because they’re friends of their own kids. So, you know, some people do that. It’s hard to be specific. They’re people who are very, very good friends.

- And what type of favours do you do them?

- Well, mostly the same. They call me at the last minute telling me: look, I’ve got Emilie sick here, she’s not well, do you think you can take care of her? I need your concrete mixer, can you lend it to me? Well... Can you come and help me do some cement rendering? It’s a bit special, but it’s true that now I have skills I never

thought I would have one day.” (Fr 6)

It is because there is a need for balance that the support from friends is explicitly defined as occasional. Today she calls for domestic services to manage her specific schedules. Contrary to the Portuguese cases, the employee fills all the decisive gaps like mornings and evenings. Though some of the social security contribution is compensated by the state, the recruitment of this employee represents a big part of her monthly budget, about 15 %.

Justine (Fr 21) is a 33-year-old hospital auxiliary. She works on two shifts: 6.30-14.30 or 13.00-21.00. Her ex-husband, who is a bus driver living in the same town, cares for the two children (10 and 5) only on two weekends a month. Depending on Justine's

shifts, the care arrangement is different. When she works on mornings, the baby-sitter comes home at 6.00, wakes up the children at 7.00 and takes them to school at 8.30. Then the children stay at school until 16.30, when their mother picks them up. When Justine works on evening shifts, the children stay at the after-school study room and come back home later with the baby-sitter, who cares for them until their mother comes back. Sometimes, when the baby-sitter is not available, a neighbour looks after them. The baby-sitter is recruited for 40 hours per month, which costs about 200 € and is partly compensated by the state. This arrangement represents 10 % of her budget.