Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T22:45:20.149Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gendered moral rationalities in later life: grandparents balancing paid work and care of grandchildren in Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2020

Myra Hamilton Open the ORCID record for Myra Hamilton [Opens in a new window]  and
Bridget Suthersan
Myra Hamilton*
Affiliation:
Australian Human Rights Institute, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Bridget Suthersan
Affiliation:
Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In recent years there has been increasing policy focus on keeping mature-age people engaged in the labour market. At the same time, grandparents play an important role as regular child-care providers for many families. Yet, little research has explored how grandparents negotiate these dual, often competing demands of paid employment and intergenerational care. Drawing on focus groups with 23 grandparents and an online survey of 209 grandparents providing regular child care for their grandchildren in Australia, this paper addresses this gap in the literature by examining how Australian grandparents experience and negotiate competing responsibilities as older workers and intergenerational care providers. The paper draws on the concept of gendered moral rationalities to examine the way in which grandparents’ decisions about participation in paid work are deeply embedded in idealised forms of parenting and grandparenting that are highly gendered. The paper suggests that, as the rate of both maternal and mature-age participation in the paid labour market continues to rise, inadequate attention is being paid to how time spent undertaking unpaid care is compressed, reorganised and redistributed across genders and generations as a result.

Keywords

grandparentschild caregendered moral rationalitieswork–care reconciliation
Type
Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 41 , Issue 7 , July 2021 , pp. 1651 - 1672
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors, 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adamson, E (2017) Nannies, Migration and Early Childhood Education and Care: An International Comparison of In-home Childcare Policy and Practice. Bristol, UK: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (2018) Childhood Education and Care, Australia, June 2017. Canberra: ABS.Google Scholar
Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) (2013) Investing in Care: Recognising and Valuing Those Who Care, Vol. 1, Research Report. Sydney: AHRC.Google Scholar
Baxter, JA, Hand, K and Sweid, R (2016) Flexible Child Care and Australian Parents’ Work and Care Decision-making. Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies.Google Scholar
Cass, B, Hill, T and Thomson, C (2012) Care to Work? Expanding Choice and Access to Workforce Participation for Mature Aged Women Carers. Canberra: HC Coombs Policy Forum.Google Scholar
Chomik, R and Piggott, J (2012) Mature-age labour force participation: trends, barriers, incentives, and future potential. Australian Research Council Centre for Population Ageing Research, Sydney, CEPAR Briefing Paper 2012/01.Google Scholar
Condon, J, Corkindale, C, Luszcz, M and Gamble, E (2013) The Australian First-time Grandparents Study: time spent with the grandchild and its predictors. Australasian Journal on Ageing 32, 21–27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Craig, L, Hamilton, M and Brown, J (2018) The composition of grandparent childcare: gendered patterns in cross-national perspective. In Timonen, V (ed.), Grandparenting Practices Around the World. Bristol, UK: Policy Press, pp. 151–170.Google Scholar
Craig, L and Jenkins, B (2016a) The composition of parents’ and grandparents’ childcare time: gender and generational patterns in activity, multitasking and co-presence. Ageing & Society 36, 785–810.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craig, L and Jenkins, B (2016b) Grandparental childcare in Australia: gender differences in the correlates of providing regular grandparental care while parents work. Community, Work & Family 19, 281–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duncan, S, Edwards, R, Reynolds, T and Alldred, P (2003) Motherhood, paid work and partnering: values and theories. Work, Employment and Society 17, 309–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glaser, K, Price, D, Di Gessa, G, Montserrat, E and Tinker, A (2013) Grandparenting in Europe: Family Policy and Grandparents’ Role in Providing Child Care. London: Grandparents Plus.Google Scholar
Goodfellow, J (2003) Grandparents as regular child care providers: unrecognised, under-valued, and under-resourced. Australian Journal of Early Childhood 28, 7–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gray, A (2005) The changing availability of grandparents as carers and its implications for childcare policy in the UK. Journal of Social Policy 34, 557–577.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grbich, C (1999) Qualitative Research in Health: An Introduction. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Hamilton, M and Hamilton, C (2006) Baby boomers and retirement: dreams, fears and anxieties. The Australia Institute, Canberra, Discussion Paper 89.Google Scholar
Hamilton, M and Jenkins, B (2015) Grandparent Childcare and Labour Market Participation in Australia (Social Policy Research Centre Report No. 14/2015). Melbourne: National Seniors Australia.Google Scholar
Hamilton, M and Thomson, C (2016) Recognising unpaid care in private pension schemes. Social Policy and Society 16, 517–534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochschild, A (1989) The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. New York, NY: Viking Penguin.Google Scholar
Holloway, S (1998) Local childcare cultures: moral geographies of mothering and the social organisation of pre-school education. Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 5, 29–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horsfall, B and Dempsey, D (2015) Grandparents doing gender: experiences of grandmothers and grandfathers caring for grandchildren in Australia. Journal of Sociology 51, 1070–1084.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horsfall, B and Dempsey, D (2016) Grandfathers in Australia. The gendered division of grandparent care. In Buchanan, A and Rotkirch, A (eds), Grandfathers: Global Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 147–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, B (2010) Grandparent childcare in Australia: a literature review. Elder Law Review 6, 1–19.Google Scholar
Kanji, S (2018) Grandparent care: a key factor in mothers’ labour force participation in the UK. Journal of Social Policy 47, 523–542.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kwon, H-J (2005) Transforming the Developmental Welfare States in East Asia. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDowell, L, Ray, K, Perrons, D, Fagan, C and Ward, K (2005) Women's paid work and moral economies of care. Social & Cultural Geography 6, 219–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oakman, J and Wells, Y (2013) Retirement intentions: what is the role of push factors in predicting retirement intentions? Ageing & Society 33, 988–1008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2006) Live Longer, Work Longer. Paris: OECD Publishing.Google Scholar
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2015) Pensions at a Glance 2015: Retirement-income Systems in OECD and G20 Countries. Paris: OECD Publishing.Google Scholar
Phillips, B (2014) Childcare Affordability in Australia. Canberra: National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling.Google Scholar
Timonen, V and Arber, S (2012) Introduction: a new look at grandparenting. In Arber, S and Timonen, V (eds), Contemporary Grandparenting: Changing Family Relationships in Global Contexts. Bristol, UK: Policy Press, pp. 1–25.Google Scholar
Wheelock, J and Jones, K (2002) Grandparents are the next best thing: informal childcare for working parents in urban Britain. Journal of Social Policy 31, 441–463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whelan, S (2012) Work or Care: The Labour Market Activity of Grandparents in Australia. Canberra: NATSEM.Google ScholarPubMed