Impact of care responsibilities on women's employment: a comparison between European and East Asian welfare states^* Open Access

According to the Lisbon Agenda, promoting women's employment is a top priority for the European Union (EU) (European Commission 2009), and women's involvement in the labour market has also been an important issue for East Asian governments and women's movements (Chang 2011). However, difficulties can arise for women who combine working and mothering. Furthermore, the ageing of the population increases the need for social care, thus demanding new forms of reconciliation between work and care for older people in European as well as Asian countries (see Kröger and Yeandle 2013).

It is a common argument that welfare state policies towards childcare and care for older citizens (‘care policies’) substantially contribute to the explanation of cross-national differences to the extent that women are integrated into the labour market (e.g. Lewis 2002). In this regard, studies that focus on women's care responsibility for both children and older people have been increasing in recent years (Gray and Hughes 2005; Chou et al. 2013a; Knijn et al. 2013); however, studies that compare the effects of care policy in European and Asian welfare states are limited in number.

This study aims to answer the following research question: To what extent women's care responsibilities for children and older people impact on women's labour market integration and how this impact differs in the context of different welfare states in Europe and Asia? The article is based on an empirical study using comparative survey data, conducted by researchers from four different countries in the context of the FP7-funded FLOWS project¹ (see the Introduction of this volume for the design of the project). This is the first cross-national comparative survey using the same questionnaires and conducted in the same period of time with similar sample sizes in four different welfare states in Europe and East Asia. It focuses on reconciliation between work and care by addressing the whole spectrum of care responsibilities among women between 25 and 64.

First, the article reviews literature related to gender, care and work and the role of care policies. Then it analyses differences between care policies in the countries included in the study, and considers how far local care policies comply with national care policies. Next, the methods of this study are described, followed by a presentation and discussion of the findings and their limitations.

It is a common argument in comparative welfare state research that cross-national differences in welfare state policies towards childcare and care for older people are key factors that explain cross-national variation in women's labour market integration (Daly and Lewis 1998; Lewis 2002). According to the findings of comparative research, in the Nordic countries, care policies support women's employment generously since they offer public childcare and care for older citizens (e.g. Bettio and Plantenga 2004; Anttonen and Sipilä 2005). After a paradigm change in family policy in the mid-2000s, the German welfare state also began supporting women's employment generously, particularly in the field of childcare and somewhat less in elderly care (Dallinger and Theobald 2008; Mätzke and Ostner 2010; Fleckenstein 2011). In Italy, in contrast, policy in relation to care (in the case of 0–3 aged children and older people) and women's employment is still traditional and residual (Ranci and Sabatinelli 2014). In East Asia, according to Peng (2008), welfare states have in part substantially extended social rights and support for public childcare and public care services for senior citizens. In these welfare states, the main concern is how to get the formal sectors more involved in the provision of care (Chou et al. 2013b), as work-care reconciliation is still a new issue for policy and research in East Asian societies (Kröger and Yeandle 2013).

Concerning the degree to which care responsibilities impact on women's employment, the variation between different welfare states in Europe and East Asia is an open question. Besides care policy, other factors also impact on women's employment. Pfau-Effinger (1998, 2004) introduced the theoretical approach of the ‘gender arrangement’, according to which women's employment is the outcome of a complex and often contradictory interplay of cultural, institutional, social and economic contexts.

In Asia, traditional Confucian values still prescribe a sharp gender division of labour, in which men are primarily concerned with breadwinning, whereas women, even when in paid employment, adopt homemaker and childcare roles (Aryee et al. 1999). A cross-cultural comparative study by Lu et al. (2006) found that employed women in Taiwan worked primarily to support their families rather than to fulfil their own interests. A study by Spector et al. (2004) similarly reported that, in Anglo-American populations, work–family stressors were stronger than in Asian, East European and Latin American populations. Thus, previous comparative studies suggest that employed women from Western societies were more likely to report work–family difficulties than working women from Asian countries (Spector et al. 2004; Lu et al. 2006). However, so far there have been no comparative studies that take into account recent changes in family policies and long-term care policies in Europe and Asia and how they affect the reconciliation of employment and care. Cross-national comparisons of care policies in European and Asian welfare states that focus on the full range of care responsibilities, including care for both young children and older family members, and on their relations to women's employment, are rare.

This study includes three European countries and an East Asian country. The care policies of these European welfare states (Finland, Germany, Italy) have been classified as belonging to different welfare models (Esping-Andersen 1990; Lewis and Ostner 1994; Anttonen and Sipilä 2005) and the East Asian country studied here (Taiwan) is seen in the literature as a typical East Asian welfare state (White and Goodman 2001). The cities included in each country (Jyväskylä, Hamburg, Bologna and Hsinchu) are not capitals but were chosen on the basis that women's labour force participation rate is above the national level. Within their national contexts, they thus represent a particularly favourable urban surrounding for women's employment. Next, an overview of the differences in care policies of these four countries/cities is presented.

Since 1996, all under-school-age children have had the right to publicly funded full-day childcare in Finland. At the same time, however, maternal care of young children has been supported not just by paid maternity and parental leaves, but also by childcare leave, which is extended until the age of three. This childcare leave comes with a guaranteed return to the earlier job position and with a (flat-rate) welfare benefit. At the same time, the Finnish labour market offers only limited options for part-time work. As a result, most children under three years of age are cared for at home by their mothers. However, almost all Finnish mothers return to work at the latest when their youngest child turns three (Kröger et al. 2003).

Concerning care for older people, there is a social right to public care services in Finland. However, access is restricted those with the greatest care needs and therefore public services cover existing needs only partially (Kröger and Leinonen 2012). This has brought an increasing need to supplement the gaps in public provision either by purchasing private services or by extending the amount of family care (Meagher and Szebehely 2013). Overall, the main principles of the Nordic welfare model, namely large public responsibility and universalism that covers the whole population, are still visible in Finland but they have become increasingly modified by increasing privatisation and growing family responsibilities (Mathew Puthenparambil et al. 2017).

Care policy in the local welfare system of Jyväskylä is similar to the general care policy of the Finnish welfare state: it is highly generous in childcare policy, with medium to high generosity for senior citizens (Kuronen et al. 2014).

Germany has been characterised as a family-related care regime in several typologies (Lewis and Ostner 1994; Bettio and Plantenga 2004). However, after a paradigm shift in the mid-2000s, the childcare policy of the German welfare state became similar to that of the Nordic countries (Mätzke and Ostner 2010; Seeleib-Kaiser 2010). Each child aged 1–6 has an individual right to full-time day care, and the municipalities are obliged to offer comprehensive publicly funded day care to all parents who demand it for their children. In addition, children under one year of age are entitled to full-time care if the parents are working, if they are in education or professional training or if the child has special needs. Since 2005 the municipalities have been obliged to extend their public day care supply in order to meet the demand. For children aged 1–3, the right to public day care came into force in 2013 (Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend [Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth]). Nevertheless, only 34% of mothers with children under three are employed, and these mothers usually work part time (33%) (Eurostat LFS 2014), largely due to cultural preferences (Jurczyk and Klinkhart 2014; Pfau-Effinger and Euler 2014).

Germany has also introduced public long-term care insurance on the basis of the ‘Care Insurance Law’ (SGB XI) of 1995/1996 and an individual social right to free public care for seniors (Dallinger and Theobald 2008). Seniors in need of care who have passed a needs test and need at least 7.5 hours care per week can choose between publicly paid care services by care agencies and cash-for-care by family members. The amount of cash that seniors receive for care by family members is legally fixed and is about half of the amount that the care insurance pays to care service providers (SGB XI). Even if the main focus of publicly funded care is on physical care and covers household tasks only in part, the German long-term care policy achieves at least medium generosity in European comparison (Frericks et al. 2014). However, senior citizens use the options for free public care only to a rather limited extent (Keck et al. 2013; Statistisches Bundesamt 2013). In part, this can be explained by the cultural value orientation of the German population, according to which care by family members is the best form of senior care (Eichler and Pfau-Effinger 2009).

Childcare policy and elderly policy in the local welfare system of Hamburg are similar to the general care policy of the German welfare state; Hamburg even offers five hours of public daily day care free of charge (Aurich et al. 2016).

Italy is considered a country with a Mediterranean type of welfare state that provides little support to public care. Informal caregiving provided by household members is higher than in most other European countries and has been poorly supported by welfare policy (Saraceno 2010). Moreover, the level of female participation in the labour market is very low (the female employment rate was 46.5% in Italy vs. 58.8% in EU-28 in 2013 according to Eurostat). In the last decade, this residual care policy model has come under strain as a consequence of an increase in the proportion of older people who are in need of care, and an increase in women's employment rates (Pavolini and Ranci 2008). In spite of these changes, public care policy has been characterised by high institutional inertia, with no basic innovations in the last two decades.

In the field of childcare, a two-tier system has been developed according to the age of children. While early child education for 3–5-year-old children is provided on a universalistic basis throughout the whole national territory as a result of major efforts made by the national state in the 1970s and 1980s, childcare services for 0–2-year-old children are still mainly provided by local authorities and cover only 12% of the target population, with huge local and regional variation. No major changes have been introduced in this system in the last decade, except for specific initiatives taken by some local authorities in an attempt to meet the growing need for childcare of the population (Ranci and Sabatinelli 2014).

Care provision for older people is still based on a national cash-for-care measure providing a limited fixed amount of money to people with high care needs. Home care and residential care services are provided on a local basis only to very poor persons with severe functional limitations (2–3% of the over-65 population). Given this shortage of public provision and the growing demand for care, a huge private care market has emerged in the last decade, characterised by employment of unregulated migrant workers (Ranci and Sabatinelli 2014).

Bologna represents the most advanced local welfare system in the country, with a generous social policy developed in many fields. It also has the highest coverage rates in childcare and the highest female employment rate among Italian cities. In this city, women find the most favourable conditions in Italy to participate in the labour market. Nevertheless, as shown below, the labour market participation of women in Bologna is still lower than in the other European cities included in this study.

In the 1980s, due to its rapid economic development, Taiwan was named as one of the four new industrial ‘tiger’ countries of Asia, together with Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore. These Asian ‘tigers’ have been influenced by Confucianist culture, in which families have traditionally provided the economic support and care needed by their members (Esping-Andersen 1996). Additionally, East Asian welfare systems are often described as ‘productivist’, being more concerned with economic growth than with providing public services and social security for their citizens (Holliday 2000). This has led to a lack of care policies that would help women to join the labour market. In Taiwan, care for lineal family members (including young children, disabled spouses and ageing parents) is a family responsibility, stipulated by the civil code. In 2009, a government subsidy (60% of salary for up to six months) was launched for workers taking parental leave to care for children under three. Additional means-tested schemes (home childcare allowance as well as subsidies for using childcare services of profit/non-profit providers or a qualified childminder) are available only for parents of children under two. Since 2012, kindergartens and nursery schools for preschool children aged 2 and above have been integrated as early childhood education and care. In 2012, around one-third of children aged 0 to school age were using nurseries, day care and after-school centres or qualified childminders, services purchased mostly from for-profit providers. Old people with care needs were cared for primarily by (female) family members and secondly by migrant care workers, while only a small proportion used formal social care services (Chou et al. 2013a; Chou et al. 2015). Consequently, the employment rate of women is still below that of many Western countries (50.5% in 2013; Ministry of Labour, Taiwan 2014). In terms of work and care reconciliation policies, Taiwan is less institutionalised than Nordic and German welfare systems.

Care policy in Hsinchu conforms to Taiwan's national welfare model in relation to generosity of childcare policy and policy towards care for older people.

This study involved four countries (Finland, Germany, Italy and Taiwan) that have been classified as having four different types of care policy models, and each country is represented by one city (Jyväskylä, Hamburg, Bologna and Hsinchu). The data were collected in November and December 2012 by a computer-assisted telephone interview survey, using a standardised questionnaire and a random sample. The study population included women aged between 25 and 64 residing in the four cities. In total, 3235 samples (806 from Finland; 814 from Germany; 800 from Italy; 815 from Taiwan) were analysed in this study. The response rates of the four cities were between 21% and 53% (for details, see the Introduction of this special issue).

Dependent variable. The dependent variable of this analysis is the participants’ self-reported employment status, that is, their response to the question ‘What is your current employment status?’, the alternatives being ‘working’ (including self-employment, full-time and part-time employment, and those on maternity leave but with an employment contract), ‘unemployment’ or ‘outside the labour force’ (including students). Based on the question ‘On average, how many hours per week do you work, including both paid and unpaid overtime?’, the participants were categorised as ‘employed’ full time (35 hours or more) and ‘employed’ part time (less than 35 hours). For the multiple regression analyses (Tables 2 and 3), the self-rated employment status was coded as a nominal variable, that is, those outside the labour force were the reference group and recoded as ‘0’, while the other answers (employed full time or part time, or unemployed) were recoded as ‘1’.

Independent variables. The independent variables included care responsibility, the care policy model, age, education, marital status, health, financial difficulty and women's cultural orientation towards the work–family relationship. For the multiple regression analyses, age was coded as an interval variable; education, health and cultural orientation were coded as ordinal variables and the rest of the variables were coded as nominal variables. Education was rated using seven ordinal levels, from less than lower secondary (1) to higher tertiary education (7), where higher scores mean higher levels of education. Marital status was rated using five categories (married/cohabiting, single, separated, divorced and widowed) and then recoded into two groups (living with spouse/partner, living without spouse/partner: single/widow/divorced/separated). Self-reported health was determined by the question ‘How is your health in general?’ and coded as an ordinal variable, from very bad (1) to very good (5), higher scores meaning higher levels of health. Financial difficulty was determined from the question ‘During the past year, have you experienced any difficulties in paying for the running costs of your household (e.g. food, rent, and household bills)?’ coded as ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Women's cultural orientation toward the work–family relationship was defined and measured by four questions, which were coded as ordinal variables, from strongly agree (1) to strongly disagree (4), higher scores indicating more traditional orientation. These four items were: (1) ‘A woman should be prepared to reduce her work time in favour of her family’, (2) ‘For a child it is even better if his or her mother works and does not just take care of the home and family’, (3) ‘A working mother can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her children as a mother who does not work’ and (4) ‘A man's job is to earn money; a woman's job is to look after her home and children.’ Items (1) and (4) were coded as reverse questions. After coding, the values of these four items were summed together into an index of cultural orientation.

Care responsibility in this study included care for children aged 0–2, care for children aged 3–school age, care for grandchildren and care for older relatives. Care for children aged 0–2 and aged 3–school age was identified from the questions ‘During the day time, how is your youngest child (aged between 0 and 2) usually cared for?’ and ‘During the day time, how is your child (children between the age of three – school age) usually cared for?’, respectively. Care for grandchildren was defined by two questions: ‘Do you have grandchildren?’ and ‘Do you regularly take care of one or more of your grandchildren while their parents are working?’ Care for an older relative was determined by two questions. First, the participants were asked ‘Do you have a dependent parent, parent in law or other elderly relative who has health or social care needs of any kind?’ If the answer was ‘Yes’, another question followed: ‘How are the needs of your elderly relative primarily being met?’ The answers included four alternatives that were used to define care for older relatives: ‘He/she has moved into my house’, ‘I have moved in with him/her’, ‘I visit him/her regularly to provide support for him/her’ and ‘We have moved closer to each other so it is easier for me to provide support for him/her’. The care policy model was defined by the participants’ nationality.

An individual woman is the unit of analysis, and the data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences, Version 20.0. Table 1 shows the participants’ characteristics in the four countries. They were compared using the χ² test for categorical data and, for continuous variables, the F test and the Scheffe test as a post-hoc test between two countries.

To assess how care responsibilities and the care policy model of the welfare state affected the respondents’ employment (whether they were employed full time, employed part time, unemployed or outside the labour force), multinomial regression models were constructed for the four different employment outcomes (Table 2). As described above, care responsibilities performed by women were categorised into care for a child aged 0–2, care for a child aged 3–6, care for a grandchild and care for older relatives, while those who did not have such care responsibilities were used as the reference category. In terms of the care policy model, the Nordic one was used as the reference group. The main objective of the study was to compare the impact of care responsibilities on women's employment outcomes in the context of different care policy regimes and, accordingly, multinomial regression models were used in each of the four countries. All multiple regression analyses controlled for socio-economic and demographic factors (including age, educational level, marital status, health, financial difficulty and cultural orientation).

As shown in Table 1, the participants’ employment status and weekly work hours all showed significant differences between the four different countries. German participants had the highest overall employment rate (77.1%) and the highest proportion of part-time workers among employed women (40.9%) while Taiwanese participants, in contrast, showed the lowest employment rate (57.4%) and proportion of part-time workers (13.5%).

Furthermore, women who participated in the survey also showed different social demographic backgrounds in the four countries concerning their age, education level, marital status, self-rated health, financial difficulties and gender values. For example, Italian participants were the oldest and consequently had the poorest health, while the Finnish showed the highest proportion having higher education, and the Taiwanese had the highest proportion of people who were married, who had financial difficulties and who held traditional gender values. In terms of different types of care responsibilities, significant differences were found among these women between the four countries.

Table 2 shows that women's care responsibilities as well as the care policy model were associated with women's employment status when their age, education, marital status, health, financial difficulty and gender values in different nations were controlled. The findings suggest that working-age women with children aged 0–2 (full time, odds ratio (OR) = 0.34, P < .001; part time, OR = 0.53, P < .05) and with care responsibilities for grandchildren (full time, OR = 0.28, P < .001; part time, OR = 0.54, P < .05) were less likely to be involved in paid work, in particular in full-time work, than those having no care responsibilities. However, in terms of impact of care policies on women's employment, the results show that women in Germany were more likely to work, in particular part time, than women in Finland (full time, OR = 1.40, P < .05; part time, OR = 3.50, P < .001) though both countries have a relatively generous care policy. In contrast, in Taiwan, women were less likely to be involved in part-time work (OR = 0.32, P < .001). In both Italian and Taiwanese welfare states women were also less likely to be unemployed (OR = 0.57, P < .05 and OR = 0.58, P < .05, respectively) than in Finland.

Based on a multinomial regression analysis in each country, as shown in Table 3, employment for women was affected by their care responsibilities in Taiwan, Italy and Finland but in different ways. In Finland, women having care responsibilities for children aged 0–2 were less likely to participate in full-time (OR = 0.20, P < .001) and part-time (OR = 0.29, P < .01) work. In Italy, having care responsibilities for grandchildren was negatively associated with full-time work (OR = 0.38, P < .05). In Taiwan, participants having care responsibilities for young children (aged 0–2 and aged 3–preschool age; OR = 0.25, P < .01; OR = 0.38, P < .01) and grandchildren (OR = 0.16, P < .001) were all less likely to have full-time employment. In Germany, women's care responsibilities were not related to their employment. Furthermore, we did not find an association between caring for older relatives and women's employment in any of the four countries.

Similar to the data from Eurostat (2014) for 2012, our study found that working-age women in Germany had the highest participation rate in the labour market, slightly higher even than in Finland (Table 1). However, 40% of German women with care responsibility worked part time in spite of a relatively generous care policy. In Finland, part-time work of women with care responsibility was far less frequent (25%). It is necessary to point out that according to Eurostat, working-age (age 15–64) women's overall employment rate is higher in other Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland) than in Finland, while Finnish women had the lowest involvement in part-time work among the Nordic countries.

As regards our research question, the results of this study showed that significant differences in women's employment resulted from their care responsibilities and the care policies of national and local welfare systems. While controlling other variables, caring for 0–2-year-old children and caring for grandchildren were found to be related to women's involvement in employment, while caring for children aged 3–6 and caring for older relatives did not have a significant association with the employment status. This is not surprising, since at least European welfare states and cultural ideals about care make a clear distinction between 3- and 6-year-old children and children below 3 (Pfau-Effinger 2012). Women having a child aged 0–2 were more likely than other women to use childcare leave, for example in Finland (Eydal and Kröger 2010), or to leave the labour market after childbirth, for example in Taiwan (Chou et al. 2013a).

While also controlling individual variables, women's involvement in full-time and part-time paid work was significantly connected with care policy regimes, as presented in Table 2. These findings were consistent with the analysis results shown in Table 1, for example in Germany and Taiwan. Moreover, the findings of this study showed that the patterns of labour market integration of working-age women were influenced by differences in care policies between the different welfare states. To conclude, based on Table 2, this study suggests that women's participation in full-time and part-time paid work was affected by their care responsibilities (caring for children aged 0–2 and grandchildren) as well as by the welfare state care policy model. However, in Germany, when the participants’ individual characteristics were controlled as shown in Table 3, we did not find significant associations between care responsibilities and women's full-time or part-time employment.

We also found that in all countries besides Germany, different types of care responsibilities influenced women's employment differently, and that this effect differed between the three welfare states. For instance, in Finland only care for 0–2-year-old children affected women's employment, while in Italy, women's full-time employment was significantly associated only with caring for grandchildren. In Taiwan, women's full-time work, but not part-time work, was negatively influenced by all kinds of childcare responsibilities (for 0–2-year-olds, 3–6-year-olds and grandchildren). This study supports the finding of Gray and Hughes (2005) that caring for young children is more likely than caring for older people to have a negative impact on women's employment; this was true in our study for working-age women in Finland, Italy and Taiwan; Germany being the only exception in this respect.

As shown, even if the childcare policy of the German welfare state is relatively generous, the proportion of women with care responsibility in part-time work is relatively high. In Western parts of Germany, the cultural family model of the ‘male breadwinner/female part time care’ family model (Pfau-Effinger 1998, 2012) is still rather popular: the best form of care for children below the age of three is still believed to be care by their mother at home, and mothers of young children are not expected to work full time. However, unlike previous studies, this study did not find women's employment in Germany to be affected by their care responsibilities, even though the proportion of these women in part-time work was high (Table 1). A possible explanation is that, in Hamburg, the dominant employment pattern of women with very young children is to return early to part-time employment instead of having a longer period of non-employment after childbirth.

Literature on both southern Europe and Taiwan has indicated that women with young children who are able to be involved in the labour market usually have their parents sharing caregiving work (Lu 2011; Ranci and Sabatinelli 2014). Our study suggests that grandparental caregiving is strongly associated with the high level of labour market inactivity of those grandmothers who are still of working age, and that this is further connected to the very low female retirement age characterising these countries. In these countries, ‘inactive’ grandmothers may be taking care of their grandchildren on a grand scale precisely because they have retired so early.

Our study shows that women's employment is not only related to women's cultural work–family orientation, but also to the care policies of the welfare states. On the other hand, the study also indicated that caring for young children may imply a negative impact not only on mothers’ but also on grandmothers’ involvement in labour market in East Asian and Mediterranean welfare states. All in all, whether caring for grandchildren is related to early retirement among Italian middle-aged women and whether caring for young children (including grandchildren) cause mothers and grandmothers to remain outside the labour force in Taiwan needs to be further investigated.

The response rate differs between the different cities of the study, and future studies need to confirm whether the results of the selected cities and countries would be generalisable to other cities of the nation and to other countries with the same welfare model. In addition, this survey study was cross-sectional, not longitudinal, and thus cause–effect relationships could not always be discerned. For example, we do not know whether caring for grandchildren really explains early retirement in Italy and Taiwan or whether early retirement makes caregiving possible for grandmothers. Nonetheless, variations existed within each country, and the comparative findings between the countries were consistent with previous studies. The limitations of using a telephone survey, compared to a face-to-face survey, also need to be acknowledged, although our questionnaires did not include sensitive questions or complicated issues. Although this study was conducted based on a random sample design, women's activity to respond and complete the telephone interview varied, which was another limitation of the study.

This study analysed a comparative sample of women aged between 25 and 64 from four countries and found that the impact of care responsibilities on women's employment varied in different welfare states. In order to promote women's integration with the labour market, supportive work and care reconciliation policies need to be developed, primarily in East Asian and Mediterranean countries that have low full-time employment rates.

This study is the first cross-national comparative survey using the same questionnaires, conducted during the same period of time with similar sample sizes in four different welfare states in Europe and East Asia, focusing on reconciliation between work and care by addressing the whole spectrum of care responsibilities among women aged between 25 and 64. It has brought up new data and new findings concerning women's caring responsibilities and labour market participation in the context of different care policy models. However, in order to confirm and expand the findings of this study, further research using representative national samples in different countries is necessary. From a policy perspective, this article broadens the discussion on work-care reconciliation concerning different types of care responsibilities across European and East Asian welfare states.

The project was coordinated by Prof. Per H. Jensen (Professor at the University of Aalborg, Denmark). Special thanks go to Dr Chen-Yun Pu (Associate Professor, Institute of Public Health, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan) for her assistance in statistical analysis.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Yueh-Ching Chou is Professor in the Institute of Health and Welfare Policy at the National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan. Her research focuses on the reconciliation between paid work and unpaid caring among mothers of adult children with ID.

Birgit Pfau-Effinger is Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Hamburg, Germany and professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark. Her research focuses on cross-national differences in the development paths of the cultural and institutional context of the work–employment relationship, and how cultural and institutions together impact on women's employment and care.

Teppo Kröger is Professor in the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His research interests include comparative welfare studies, work–family reconciliation, ageing, disability, childhood and care.

Costanzo Ranci is Professor in Economic Sociology in the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at the Polytechnic of Milan, Italy. His research focuses on comparative welfare studies, new social risks and new configurations of inequality across Europe, long-term care and childcare policies.