Sharing care for young children: Learning from practitioners Agnes Andenæs Department of Psychology University of Oslo, Norway

New ways of organizing children’s early years of living The first year: Paid parental care, father’s quota included During the second year: Enrollment in a day care centre Shared care between parents, and shared care between parents and care providers at a day care centre as the norm

Two lines in the debate about new ways or organizing early childhood Educational effects of day care The vulnerable child

Empirical investigations Different kinds of parents were recruited to attain diversity (socioeconomic background, ethnicity) Parents were interviewed three times From the first year of their child to their 3rd birthday The interviews aimed at getting detailed information about practices and reflections of their child’s everyday life And as the child grew older and was inrolled in day care, even the care provider was interviewed, about the hours spent by the child at the day care centre.

Empirical investigations (contd.) Analysis: What characterises the everyday life that parents of small children organise and in what ways do practices of shared care unfold around their toddlers and involve them as social participants? How are relationships beween parents and other care providers negotiated, and how is responsibility for the cyclical regulation shared?

When more than one is involved in care on a regular basis, what is it like? Parental abdication from responsibility The child as a baton in a relay race Care as something to be divided into distinct pieces, one piece for each care provider ?

The distance between your child’s needs and the care provider’s capacity was not acceptable. Nora’s mother gives her account: One day they had taken all the children to a farm, without bringing the inhaler. It was too clumsy to carry, they told me afterwards. I was really shocked. What made me even more shocked was their explanation: They had been up to the same farm earlier, with another child suffering from asthma, and on that occasion it had not been necessary to bring the inhaler. So why bother this time? This is exactly what I have tried to emphasize; that children with asthma are different, and what worked for the former child with asthma would not necessarily work for Nora.

Continuum of the phenomenon Vulnerabilities differ, but the elaborated understandings are of relevance to different kinds of families The same mechanisms, strategies etc in the families with ‘just ordinary’ children, just easier to be aware of

Useful concepts Rather than sharing care is better understood as parental abdication the child as a relais baton, and care for a specific child as a ‘something’ that is divided into separate pieces, one piece for each care provider sharing care is better understood as parents’ efforts to build a chain of care, of which they are responsible for the links as well as the whole chain

If you want to read more: Andenæs, Agnes & Hanne Haavind (submitted). Sharing early care: Learning from practitioners. In Højholt, Charlotte (Editor), International Handbook of Early Childhood Education and Development. Singer, Elly (1993). Shared care for children. Theory & Psychology, 3(4), 429-449. Gullestad, Marianne (1979). Passepiken [The child minder]. Tidsskrift for samfunnsforskning.