Spanning the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, this comparative study brings maternal workers’ politicized voices to the centre of contemporary debates on childcare, work and gender. The book illustrates how maternal workers continue to organize against low pay, exploitative working conditions and state retrenchment and provides a unique theorization of feminist divisions and solidarities. Bringing together social reproduction with maternal studies, this is a resonating call to build a cross-sectoral, intersectional movement around childcare. Maud Perrier shows why social reproduction needs to be at the centre of a critical theory of work, care and mothering for post-pandemic times.

Spanning the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, this comparative study brings maternal workers’ politicized voices to the centre of contemporary debates on childcare, work and gender. The book illustrates how maternal workers continue to organize against low pay, exploitative working conditions and state retrenchment and provides a unique theorization of feminist divisions and solidarities. Bringing together social reproduction with maternal studies, this is a resonating call to build a cross-sectoral, intersectional movement around childcare. Maud Perrier shows why social reproduction needs to be at the centre of a critical theory of work, care and mothering for post-pandemic times.

The role that nurseries play in supplementing family care is an important subject – but in the UK, there is currently little consensus about what nurseries should provide, how they should be run, and who should pay for them. This topical book sets out to look at: • Who benefits from using nurseries? • Who can access nurseries? • Who should provide them? • How do children behave while they are in nurseries and after they leave them? • What do they learn as a result of these experiences in nurseries? • What are the myths and assumptions about bringing up children that make nurseries possible? Some countries, particularly in the Nordic regions, have managed to deal with these issues coherently, but the current blanket solutions in the UK, which are geared towards fiscal priorities, may need rethinking. In this book, Helen Penn attempts to answer the question: Is there a more considered way ahead?

Increasingly, governments are making family policy trade-offs, reducing support for some families but improving it for others. This book examines the political, demographic, and socio-economic factors influencing the restructuring of family-related programs in OECD countries.