Who matters, for better and for worse? Personal networks in an international perspective

Jacques-Antoine Gauthier, currently visiting CRFR from the University of Lausanne, summarises the research he presented at a recent CRFR Informal Seminar.

What do we know about the conditions that favour or hamper the ways in which individuals get connected to each other in a significant way? Are personal networks influenced by life course transitions such as marriage and parenthood (or their absence)? Do they change from one country to another?  

A recently published book (Wall, Widmer, Gauthier, Česnuitytė, & Gouveia, 2018) based on a study carried out in Lithuania, Portugal and Switzerland offers some new insights on these issues by asking the question Who are the individuals who, over the past year, have been very important to you, even if you do not get along well with them? First, despite variations over time and place, the research underlines that close relationships continue to form the base of personal networks, challenging the idea of a global decline of the family through the process of individualisation.

This study shows that the closeness between individuals is the result of multiple influences. It is often built over time through co-residence, couple and intergenerational relationships. It also depends on the way cohabitation, birth outside wedlock, childlessness or same sex-marriage are socially perceived and by the place given to friendship and colleagueship. More generally, gender, generation and social class remain influential regarding how close one feels to somebody else. An additional effect may be also attributable to welfare states when considering how their singular historical, social, and normative contexts influence the construction of their citizens’ personal networks.

In Switzerland, long-term stable and wealthy living conditions are associated with liberal policies and ideologies supporting individualised behaviours. At the same time, enduring conservative forces support a rather traditional dynamic of family life and gendered division of labour. Hence, high importance is attributed to friendship and colleagueship within more traditional interdependencies associated with marriage and parenthood.

In Portugal, a long period of low welfare provision associated with a right-wing dictatorship favoured strong intergenerational solidarities and patriarchal models of the family, later thoroughly transformed by the emergence of new family forms and more gender-equal representations. As a result, personal networks are now more adaptable and differentiated. While open to friends, kin and non-kin relationships are combined in a much less exclusive way compared to the other two countries.

In Lithuania, personal networks reflect the hardship and uncertainties associated with the former Soviet occupation and its aftermath. Political instability and economic unrest lead to mass migration and day-to-day struggles, favouring new normative frames focused on pro-traditional family values and policies. Compared with Switzerland and Portugal, personal networks in Lithuania are smaller and less open to non-kin relationships. Despite their smaller size and strong kin orientation, they provide weaker emotional support, which makes them also less cohesive.

The book sheds new light on the complexity of the contexts and conditions potentially influencing the ways in which personal networks are constructed. In particular it shows that their diversity is predominantly shaped by historical and social factors on which private individuals have only a limited influence. 

Jacques-Antoine Gauthier
Universities of Lausanne and Edinburgh

 Jacques-Antoine.Gauthier@unil.ch


Reference

Wall, K., Widmer, E. D., Gauthier, J.-A., Česnuitytė, V., & Gouveia, R. (Éd.). (2018). Families and Personal Networks An International Comparative Perspective. Palgrave McMillan. 
Full text version available at: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057%2F978-1-349-95263-2

Grandparents to the rescue…?!

The high and rising cost of professional childcare has been in the news recently, but there has been little mention of grandparents, who provide a substantial proportion of the child-care needed by young families.

At the simplest level, rising costs of childcare mean more children living in poverty. In March this year, Save the Children expressed concern that 3.5 million children in the UK are living in poverty, the majority of them in working households. Commenting on the recent welfare reforms in the UK (‘Universal Credit’), Save the Children pointed out that these would hit poorer working mothers hardest, whereas evidence from abroad suggests that enabling mothers to work reduces child poverty.

In reaction to the recent media focus on childcare costs, many commentators have noted that excessive increases in costs can mean the second income in two-income families is almost entirely spent on childcare, so that there is scant financial incentive to continue that employment. However, dropping out of employment during children’s early years can have enduring impacts, in terms of lost skills and/or failure to progress in a career structure, resulting in lower income and job satisfaction when resuming work. And of course it is most often women, as mothers, who are the ‘second’ workers. This scenario reinforces gender inequality in earnings in later life.

The Growing Up in Scotland (GUS) survey has been following the lives of thousands of children right across Scotland from infancy through to, currently, the end of primary school, but further sweeps of data collection are planned, up to teens. A recent GUS report looked at the role of grandparents in the lives of young families when the children were aged 6 years old, in 2010/11.

The report found that virtually all GUS children had at least one grandparent (99%), and 87% had at least one grandparent living nearby (within 20-30 minute drive). GUS has found that grandparents are a key source of regular informal childcare for parents throughout children’s early years, and that when children started school, reliance on grandparents increased markedly, to 67% among parents who used any childcare. Starting school, with the ensuing see-saw need for childcare depending on whether it is term time or holidays, poses a challenge for families, so this is a stage where grandparents can most support working parents by providing ‘flexible’ childcare. This generally requires grandparents to be not fully employed and, one would expect, to live reasonably close by.

One finding of the survey was that children in the highest income households were more likely to have no local grandparents (22%) than children in the lowest income households (8%). Nevertheless, in term-time, the proportion of children receiving ‘some hours’ of weekly grandparent care is highest among higher income groups, ranging from 43% in the highest income group to 24% in the lowest income group. And in the school holidays, receipt of childcare from a grandparent for more than 14 hours a week shows a similar pattern, ranging from 23% in the highest income group to 11% in the lowest. So, higher income families seem to be able to make more use of grandparent care, even when they are less likely be living ‘locally’. Perhaps is it to do with age (given that grandparents of children in higher incomes group tend to be older), and whether still employed. In this regard, the recent removal of compulsory retirement ages, and the prevailing economic situation and its impact on pensions, might mean that in subsequent survey sweeps it will be found that fewer families are benefiting from grandparent care, further exacerbating the adverse impacts of rising childcare costs.

Grandparents play an important and multi-faceted role in children’s lives, and in addition they are an invaluable childcare resource for parents, especially when children start school and flexible care is needed. It could be argued that this role is becoming more important with recent changes in welfare, and ever-increasing childcare costs, but clearly, working families will face challenges if more grandparents tend to continue in fulltime employment until older ages.

Pamela Warner, CRFR

Read the full GUS report at: Jamieson, L., Warner, P., and Bradshaw, P. (2012). Growing Up in Scotland: The involvement of grandparents in children's lives, Edinburgh: Scottish Government.

In addition to being a Co-Director at CRFR, Pam is Reader in Medical Statistics and is a member of staff at the University's Centre for Population Health Sciences (CPHS) teaching on their Master in Public Health.

Child Poverty - What about welfare benefits and making work pay?

The key elements of welfare benefits and making work pay appear to be off the table in the discussion about how to eradicate child poverty in the UK. The Scottish Government in its recent consultation paper Tackling Child Poverty in Scotland: A Discussion Paper stated that these were reserved measures and outwith the scope of the Scottish Government. The UK Coalition Government's consultation to inform its child poverty strategy states that 'tackling poverty is not about moving people above an arbitrary income line'.

While the evidence shows that the causes of poverty and disadvantage for people are complex, we know that money does make a difference. We know that low incomes families in Scotland believe that government has a role in addressing low income but have mixed views over the success of government intervention and those of its agents (1). Parents living in deprived areas were more likely than other parents to report low access to services like childcare, health and leisure facilities. Parents living in deprived areas and/or in social housing were also most likely to be dissatisfied with their local facilities (1,2).

Dealing with debt, issues related to long-term unemployment and ensuring access to good services and advice will have a positive effect on families with children. Mothers on low incomes combining paid work and caring for their families sometimes continue working even though it doesn’t pay, suggesting that work itself is important for them. They identify support for the costs of childcare as important but not always sufficient and also suggest that governments need to tackle the problem of making work pay (3).

It is essential that discussion of social security and income are put back on the table for this debate.


(1) CRFR, McKendrick J, Cunningham-Burley S and Backett-Milburn K (2003) Life in low
income families in Scotland: Research report. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive.
(2)Growing Up in Scotland Topic Research Findings No.3/2009 ‘Parenting in
the Neighbourhood Context’ Edinburgh: Scottish Government.
(3) Backet- Milburn K, S Cunningham-Burley and D Kemmer (2001) Caring and providing: Lone
and partnered working mothers in Scotland. Edinburgh: Family Policy Studies Centre and
Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

To see the full CRFR response to Tackling Child Poverty in Scotland: A Discussion Paper see http://www.crfr.ac.uk/reports/Tackling%20child%20poverty.pdf