Solving the Childcare and Flexibility Puzzle. How Working Parents Make the Best Feasible Choices and What That Means for Public Policy 12+

🔖 This book shines a light on the dynamics of parental decisions and discovers a remarkable ability. Disputing idealized professional measures as irrelevant to the everyday life of most families, Professor Emlen describes detailed evidence from his own research and arrives at a simple but profound conclusion: that parents have a propensity to make the best choices possible. It all depends on how much flexibility they can marshal from work schedules, shared family efforts, and helpful providers of childcare. Based on successful measurement of childcare quality from a parent's point of view, the findings show that as parents solve their flexibility puzzle, the more flexibility from any or all sources, the better the quality of care. Emlen gives the familiar concept of flexibility new scope and depth, as a necessity for any planned activity, as a resource that comes from multiple sources within the immediate environment, and as a creative problem-solving ability that parents possess.This satisfying explanation of parental choice contradicts prevailing opinion and has pivotal importance for policy. Emlen traces how an influential vanguard within the childcare profession gave parents a bum rap that led to bad policy, as advocates sought a system of childcare that left parents behind and ignored the vulnerability of families. Emlen charts a new direction, with policies that will increase the wellsprings of flexibility, while respecting freedom of parental choice of childcare.Many...