What Drives National Differences in Intensive Grandparental Childcare in Europe?

Grandparents play an important role in looking after grandchildren. The provision of intensive grandparent childcare varies considerably across Europe, with figures ranging from less than 4% in Sweden and Denmark, to almost one quarter in Greece. This paper investigates whether contextual-structural factors (such as formal childcare and labour market structures) and family cultures influence the level of informal childcare support from older parents to their adult children, using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. Multilevel analyses suggest that grandparental childcare variations are mostly driven by macro-level factors. Both parent and grandparent socio-demographic and economic characteristics were associated with intensive childcare and were consistent with existing literature. However, even accounting for socio-economic and demographic differences between national populations, country-level variations in the level of provision of intensive grandparental childcare remain. Most of such variation can be explained by structural and cultural factors. In particular, in those countries where both parents and grandparents are expected to work, formal childcare is generally well provided and appears to be the norm; thus, there is a lower level of grandparental childcare. In contrast, in countries where there is a high percentage of women who are not in paid employment, maternal care for pre-school children appears to be the preferred norm. In such countries, provision of formal childcare is limited as care is expected to be provided by family members, and mothers in particular rather than grandmothers. If, however, a mother is in paid work in a country where mothers are expected not to work (but to look after children), she tends to rely on grand-maternal support on an almost daily basis. Recent European policies which encourage older women to remain in the labour market are likely to impact on mothers’ employment, particularly in Southern European countries where there is little formal childcare.