Reconceptualizing Parental Leave Benefits in COVID-19 Canada: From Employment Policy to Care and Social Protection Policy.

Although the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has spurred critical and much-needed attention to re-thinking policy approaches to child care and long-term elder care, little focus has been given to its implications for parental leave policies and parental benefits for the care of infants and young children. This article is about reconceptualizing and reconfiguring employment-based parental leave policies in Canada both during and after COVID-19. Informed by theoretical insights from the fields of care economies, feminist political economy, and care and social reproduction and by national and international parental leave research, we argue that it is time to reconceptualize parental leave benefits not only as employment policy but also as a care and social protection policy. To make this shift, we explore three topic areas: a mixed system of parental benefits that combine employment-based and citizenship-based entitlements, connections between policy design and gender equality, and the need for robust intersectional data to track which Canadian families are receiving parental benefits.

Bien que la pandémie causée par le coronavirus 2019 (COVID­19) ait largement attiré l'attention, comme le réclamaient impérieusement les circonstances, sur la réévaluation des approches politiques à l'égard des soins aux enfants et des soins de longue durée aux aînés, les répercussions de la pandémie sur les politiques de congé parental et les prestations parentales relatives aux soins aux nourrissons et aux jeunes enfants ont suscité peu d'intérêt. Les auteures se penchent sur la révision de la conception et de la configuration des politiques de congé parental basées sur l'emploi au Canada, tant pendant qu'après la COVID­19. En s'appuyant sur les connaissances théoriques relatives aux économies de soins, à l'économie politique féministe et à l'économie solidaire et la reproduction sociale, ainsi que sur les travaux de recherche sur les congés parentaux à l'échelle nationale et internationale, elles affirment que le moment est venu de repenser les prestations de congé parental à titre non seulement de politique en matière d'emploi, mais de politique de soins et de protection sociale. Elles proposent, pour opérer ce virage, trois sujets d'étude qu'elles explorent : un système mixte de prestations parentales conjuguant des droits fondés sur l'emploi et sur la citoyenneté, l'établissement de liens entre la conception des politiques et l'égalité des sexes, et la nécessité de données intersectionnelles solides pour déterminer quelles familles canadiennes reçoivent des prestations parentales.

"I don't have the energy": Racial stress, young Black motherhood, and Canadian social policies.

Significant socio-economic, health, and mental health disparities due to highly entrenched and systemic anti-Black racism in Canadian institutions, policies, and practices are now well documented in research and policy reports. Yet, few in-depth studies have addressed the mental health impacts of anti-Black racism on Canadian populations. This article is rooted in a community-based, qualitative research project with young first and second-generation Black Caribbean-Canadian mothers and is informed by Black Feminist epistemologies and intersectional theories and methodologies. Our research demonstrates how participants' childhood experiences with xenophobic and racist immigration policies and educational, child welfare, and childcare systems caused their future mental health challenges as young Black mothers, and how these struggles were exacerbated by their encounters with the racist, ageist, xenophobic medical, social, and mental health services they had to access as young mothers. Based on these findings, we recommend enhancements to current social policies to minimize the differential mental health impacts on young Black Canadian mothers.

Les rapports de recherche et de politique documentent d'importantes disparités socio-économiques, sanitaires et mentales dues au racisme anti-Noir systémique et fortement enraciné dans les institutions, les politiques et les pratiques canadiennes. Pourtant, peu d'études approfondies se sont penchées sur les effets du racisme anti-Noirs sur la santé mentale des populations canadiennes. Cet article s'appuie sur un projet de recherche qualitative communautaire mené auprès de jeunes mères canadiennes noires des Caraïbes de première et de deuxième génération, et s'inspire des épistémologies féministes noires ainsi que des théories et méthodologies intersectionnelles. Notre recherche démontre comment les expériences de l'enfance des participantes avec les politiques d'immigration xénophobes et racistes et les systèmes d'éducation, de protection de l'enfance et de garde d'enfants ont causé leurs futurs problèmes de santé mentale en tant que jeunes mères noires, et comment ces luttes ont été exacerbées par leurs rencontres avec les services médicaux, sociaux et de santé mentale racistes, âgistes et xénophobes auxquels elles ont dû avoir accès en tant que jeunes mères. Sur la base de ces résultats, nous recommandons d'améliorer les politiques sociales actuelles afin de minimiser les impacts différentiels sur la santé mentale des jeunes mères noires canadiennes.

Familydemic Cross Country and Gender Dataset on work and family outcomes during COVID-19 pandemic.

Here we present the Familydemic Cross Country and Gender Dataset (FCCGD), which offers cross country and gender comparative data on work and family outcomes among parents of dependent children, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. It covers six countries from two continents representing diverse welfare regimes as well as distinct policy reactions to the pandemic outbreak. The FCCGD was created using the first wave of a web-based international survey (Familydemic) carried out between June and September 2021, on large samples of parents (aged 20-59) living with at least one child under 12 in Canada, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, and the US. While individual datasets are not available due to country-level restriction policies, the presented database allows for cross-country comparison of a wide range of employment outcomes and work arrangements, the division of diverse tasks of unpaid labour (housework and childcare) in couples, experiences with childcare and school closures due to the pandemic and subjective assessments of changes to work-life balance, career prospects and the financial situation of families (234 variables).

Gender equality and gender differences: parenting, habitus, and embodiment (the 2008 Porter lecture).

Drawing on a four-year research project on Canadian primary caregiving fathers, as well two recent projects on the first year of parenting, this article highlights several theoretical and substantive issues in the study of gender equality and gender differences in parenting. First, I call for shifts from a focus on domestic tasks toward domestic and community-based responsibilities. Second, I argue that the political terrain underpinning the study of mothering and fathering calls for clarity on how researchers interpret the constant interplay between equality and differences. Third, while there has been some change over time, parental responsibilities remain gendered because they are deeply rooted in habitus and embodiment across specific spatial and temporal contexts.