The article focuses on changes in availability and use of childcare and pre-school facilities after the Second World War in the Czech society during different periods of communist regime and during the post-1989 era. It studies how they are embedded in context of women's participation on the labour market, gender roles, social policies, fertility rates, public debates on care and fears of population decline. Several discourses influencing the availability and use of childcare and pre-school facilities are identified in the history, e.g. ''the women's issue'' discourse supporting construction of nurseries since 1950s, ''the children's issue'' and ''the population'' discourses contributing to several prolongations of paid childcare leave since 1960s, etc. In history based institutional settings are identified as the main factors leading in a new labour market context to a current drop in availability of nurseries and an increase in care of pre-kindergarten children by mothers at home.
The article provides a detailed insight into a critical stage in the life course of young women. It focuses on the transition to first-time motherhood among women with tertiary education in heterosexual dual-earner couples in the Czech Republic. The plans of pregnant women regarding their working lives following the birth of their first child are compared with the subsequent realities of their lives (the first eighteen months of their motherhood). The study is based on longitudinal qualitative research conducted between 2011 and 2014. The research revealed that pregnant women did not consider motherhood and paid work as contradictory and that most of them anticipated working before their child´s third birthday. Due to the reality of motherhood and the chances of combining childcare and work, a number of the women in the sample changed their plans, did not return to work once their children reached eighteen months of age and did not expect to return to work in the near future. The lack of available non-maternal childcare or the unwillingness to take advantage of it were found to be the key factors in their decision not to work, coupled with a shortage of part-time work and flexible working arrangements (working hours and place of work). Conversely, the offer of flexible working conditions, the prospect of good financial rewards and a positive relationship between the woman and her work constituted the key reasons for women to return to work during the first eighteen months of their child’s age. With regard to the fulfilment of their plans, structural conditions and constraints were identified as being of greater importance than personal preferences.
This article argues that, despite Poland’s better situation during the economic crisis, the long-lasting rationalisation of permanent austerity overshadows and hinders any alternative solutions in the field of social policies. In this sense, the crisis that hurt the economies of many other countries represented a reference frame for adhering to the path of austerity policies in Poland. The neoliberal track in social and economic policies was accompanied by the strengthening of their conservative pillar: any slight improvements in family policies took a maternalist direction, with a well-paid maternity leave prolonged to one year without the same individual rights being granted to fathers. Finally, the crisis served as a background for the Catholic Church’s attack on the category of “gender”, an example of moral panic. The policy changes as well as the stronger anti-feminism in public discourse were in line with the institutional and ideological legacies of the period of transition, while the crisis served as a direct and indirect reference point for the actors behind these developments., Dorota Szelewa., and Obsahuje seznam literatury