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Socially Inclusive Parenting Leaves and Parental Benefit Entitlements: Rethinking Care and Work Binaries
[journal article]
Abstract How can parental leave design be more socially inclusive? Should all parents be entitled to parental benefits or only those parents who are eligible based on a particular level of labour market participation? To think through questions of social inclusion in parental leave policy design, particularl... view more
How can parental leave design be more socially inclusive? Should all parents be entitled to parental benefits or only those parents who are eligible based on a particular level of labour market participation? To think through questions of social inclusion in parental leave policy design, particularly issues related to entitlements to benefits, I make three arguments. First, aiming to extend Dobrotić and Blum's work on entitlements to parental benefits, I argue that 'mixed systems' that include both citizenship‐based and employment‐based benefits are just and socially inclusive approaches to parental leaves and citizenship. Second, to build a robust conceptual scaffolding for a 'mixed' benefits approach, I argue that that we need to attend to the histories and relationalities of the concepts and conceptual narratives that implicitly or explicitly inform parental leave policies and scholarship. Third, and more broadly, I argue that a metanarrative of care and work binaries underpins most scholarship and public and policy discourses on care work and paid work and on social policies, including parental leave policies. In this article, I outline revisioned conceptual narratives of care and work relationalities, arguing that they can begin to chip away at this metanarrative and that this kind of un‐thinking and rethinking can help us to envision parental leave beyond employment policy - as care and work policy. Specifically, I focus on conceptual narratives that combine (1) care and work intra‐connections, (2) ethics of care and justice, and (3) 'social care', 'caring with', transformative social protection, and social citizenship. Methodologically and epistemologically, this article is guided by my reading of Margaret Somers' genealogical and relational approach to concepts, conceptual narratives, and metanarratives, and it is written in a Global North socio‐economic context marked by the COVID‐19 pandemic and 21st century neoliberalism.... view less
Keywords
parenthood; family policy; gainful employment; child care; work-family balance; parental leave; parental involvement in education; social integration; social policy
Classification
Family Policy, Youth Policy, Policy on the Elderly
Family Sociology, Sociology of Sexual Behavior
Free Keywords
care; care and justice; conceptual narratives; historical sociology of concept formation; parental leave; parenting leaves; social care; social citizenship; transformative social protection
Document language
English
Publication Year
2021
Page/Pages
p. 227-237
Journal
Social Inclusion, 9 (2021) 2
Issue topic
The Inclusiveness of Social Rights: The Case of Parental Leave Policies
ISSN
2183-2803
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed