Who Will Mind the Baby?: Geographies of Childcare and Working Mothers

Description

Who Will Mind the Baby? offers geographic explorations of child care at a variety of geographic scales within the context of US and Canadian case studies. The book is organised around two themes: the government's role in child care provision, and the child care arrangements and everyday geographies of working mothers. Child care provision is geographically uneven in North America, reflecting the haphazard manner in which child care provision has evolved. Neither the US nor Canada has a national child care policy - thus they stand in stark contrast to European countries, where child care is a national concern. The book explores the socio-spatial implications of public policies in the US and Canada that relate to the provision, funding and regulation of child care, employing case-studies pitched at a variety of scales; national, regional, rural, metropolitan and local levels. The book also discusses how mothers' daily routines link the varied geographies of child care, home and paid work - geographies that invariably do not overlap as child care facilities are often in quite different locations than home or workplace. Using everyday geographies of working mothers, the author looks at journeys to child care, reasons for selecting particular child care arrangements and coping strategies of working mothers, finally placing child care in an international perspective and considering the future of child care provision.

Kim England is Associate Professor of Geography at Scarborough College, University of Toronto