The Defamiliarization of Childcare in Uruguay: What Factors Contribute to the Use of Care Centers?

Abstract

The purpose of the following article is to analyze childcare strategies in Uruguay with data from the recent Care Strategies Survey. The main question that guides this article is what are the elements that favor the institutionalization of part of the burden of childcare (attendance and hours at childcare facilities for children under and over the age of 3). Gender mandates, which manifest through the maternalism index, contribute to the use of institutions, since traditional ideas about the caregiving role of mothers have effects on less institutionalization. At the same time, mothers’ access to work and higher levels of household income increases the probability of using institutions. Lastly, the defamiliarization of childcare depends on cultural mandates and, to the same extent, on the material conditions to access services.

Keywords

sociology gender studies childcare families care institutions care strategies defamiliarization gender mandates

Introduction

Childcare Strategies and the Importance of Institutional Care

This article addresses childcare in Uruguay from a gender perspective, focusing on analyzing how families use care centers for children based on the information provided by the Care Strategies Survey. The article specifically focuses on the factors that contribute to the use of care institutions for children between the ages of 0 and 3, the period in which attendance to educational centers is not compulsory. It also analyzes the factors leading to the use of more than 4 h a day of institutional care in children over the age of 3. In Uruguay, universal and compulsory educational services consist of 4 h a day, leading families to resort to other kinds of support to articulate care with an 8-h workday. Some families pay more hours of institutional care in private services, which commonly offer double shifts. Also some public services offer 7–8 h of care, although these are a minority. Therefore, there is a question about the factors that allow a greater use of institutional childcare hours, those necessary for the articulation of paid work and care. The paper seeks to characterize the households that make greater use of care institutions for young children in terms of their socioeconomic level and the employment situation of women, and to analyze the influence of gender mandates on the use of care centers.

The debates and theoretical developments on care are well known, which have contributed to its understanding as a central component of social well-being and a critical node of gender inequalities. Considering these contributions and in order to empirically approach such a complex notion, the research that gives rise to this article begins with a conceptualization of care that responds to the theoretical development that the concept has had in the country, built from the permanent link between research and public policy (Aguirre et al., 2014). In this context, care is defined as caring for the daily needs of people in situations of dependency, which can be carried out by a paid or unpaid person, family or non-family, in an institution or in the home. Care includes a material component and another affective or bonding aspect (Aguirre, 2009; Batthyány, 2009 after Letablier, 2007). This relational component of care is central to the definition used because, among other issues, it allows its differentiation from domestic work. In the care sector, it is necessary to establish a bond with another person, which leads to the nature of this work being different, requiring the handling of emotions so that the relationship is harmonious, a key aspect for quality care. The maintenance of a good bond, necessary for care to fulfill to be successful, requires a very important effort which goes beyond material tasks and which is often made invisible.

On a daily basis, households deploy various resources to care for their dependents, and it is known that women are the most used resource providing both unpaid and paid care. The different combinations of the resources deployed and the actors that provide care depend on the concurrence of various elements, both material (economic resources, available service offer) and cultural (mandates regarding good care, that is to say, what societies believe to be appropriate regarding to whom, how, when, for how much, and where should care be provided). This combination of different providers on a micro-social scale is defined as care strategies and refers to the concurrence of material and cultural factors that lead to the consolidation of specific forms of care in which certain actors predominate, such as family (and its different members according to whether they are men or women), care centers, or paid care work at home (domestic workers or nannies).

The concept of care strategies refers to the result of a series of actions that combine structural and cultural constraints with aspects of an individual or family agency. Care strategies are configured based on a certain distribution of care among the different provider agents. Wallace (2002) studies home care strategies, where he states that in contemporary societies the organization of resources in terms of time and money carried out by households has great analytical value. His proposal for the concept of strategy overcomes the limitations of thinking that individual actions are determined by social structures (structural determinism) or that they are absolutely free, independent of the social context. Thus, it is proposed that a care strategy is the product of the intersection of structural (material) and cultural (normative, evaluative) elements, and personal motivation (Wallace, 2002).

The distribution of care in a society depends on political and ideological orientations regarding the role of the State in the exercise of the care function. The familiarization of care refers to the predominant participation of the family in the provision of care to the detriment of other actors such as the State or the market.

Familistic care regimes (Razavi, 2007) are defined as that in which the main responsibility for care lies on the families. This type of regime and its variations (Saraceno, 2016) are more frequent in Latin American countries and denote a low State participation in the provision of care through universal services, especially in the care of children in early childhood, which means that this care, which is very intensive and demanding in terms of time and effort, falls to the families and especially to women members. When the provision of care is left to family resources, social and gender inequalities are reinforced, since those who cannot afford a service in the market make greater use of family and female care. For women, the overload of care work implies important restrictions for their development and participation in the labor market, limiting their autonomy.

Among the main inequalities noted in the labor market is gender gap in labor force participation. The evolution of the activity rate of men and women for the period 2006–2019 shows that despite a reduction in the gender gap in this indicator, approximately half of women of working age does not participate in the labor market, which accounts for a barrier both for the exercise of the right to work of these women and for a better use of the productive capacities of our society.

Another inequality noted, product of the greater dedication of women to care, refers to the differences in the rates of female and male activity when they live with children. The labor participation of women decreases as the number of children with whom they live increases, while that of men remains practically constant. With data from 2018, it is observed that when women and men do not live with children, the gender gap in the activity rate is smaller (11.5 percentage points), while it grows in the presence of children in households (33.3 percentage points for households with three and more children).

On the other hand, it is also evidenced that women work less paid hours than men, as a result of the high unpaid workload that constitutes a barrier to their full insertion in the labor market, which affects their current and future incomes. According to data from 2018, women work an average of 35.9 paid hours a week and men 42.2 (Sistema de Información de Género, 2019).

Specifically, regarding gender inequalities in the distribution of time allocated to paid and unpaid work, the Time Use Survey carried out in 2013 showed that women dedicated two-thirds of their time to unpaid work (64.6%) and a third to paid work (35.4%), while the opposite happened with men, who dedicated two-thirds of their time to paid work (68.1%) and a third to unpaid work (31.9%) (Batthyány et al., 2015). These data show clear inequalities with respect to the generation of own income to the detriment of the economic autonomy of women.

Regarding the distribution of childcare, the two national measurements of time use (2007 and 2013) showed clear trends in relation to the quantitative and qualitative division of this work (Batthyány, 2009, 2015). Data from 2013 indicate that approximately a third of Uruguayan women participated in childcare (31.5%), which was the case with a fifth of men (21.7%). Likewise, childcare, compared to care for other population groups, is the one that demands the greatest participation: in households with children from 0 to 3 years old, the participation of women reached 90% and that of men, 67.6%. This indicates that one-third of the men living in households with children under 3 years of age did not participate in their care, which was the case with only one in ten women. Regarding the dedication of weekly hours to this care, the weekly average of women was 22 h a week and that of men, 13 h (Batthyány, 2015).

Therefore, gender studies have been the means to claim the need to defamiliarize care from a greater State provision through public, universal, accessible, and quality services, as well as through the regulation and supervision of what is offered by the market. When the State assumes responsibility for this provision, the right to access care no longer depends on household resources, and women have better conditions for their participation in public life (Batthyány et al., 2019; Pautassi, 2013; Tobío et al., 2010). Thereon, Filgueira and Martínez (2019) analyze the reasons behind the stagnation of women’s labor participation in Latin America since the 2000s. This halt is due to economic and social inequality, the lack of universality in care services, the differences in women’s work compared to men’s, particularly in relation to the importance of paid domestic work and the few changes made regarding men’s participation in domestic and care tasks. This situation implies that women must generate different adaptive strategies to enter the labor market and articulate paid and unpaid work. These are the main identified strategies: the reduction of the number of children or the decision not to have them, the unpaid work of other family members to care, the contracting of services, the use of public care services, the contracting of home care, and the use of care leaves, part-time jobs, or flexibility. Considering the socioeconomic level as a variable, they point out that women in higher social classes depend more on the market than women of lower social status. Thus, the role of the State is decisive.

From the point of view of the care strategies developed by families, there is some background that highlights that the offer of services, or their universality, is just one of the different factors that families and people take into account to adopt a certain care strategy.

The importance of considering cultural factors (Kröger, 2003; Pfau-Effinger, 1998) as aspects that influence the care modalities adopted by families and the definition of public policies is pointed out in the European literature and antecedents. Letablier (2007) incorporates the cultural aspect by referring to the “care culture” as collective representations, values, that a society has on care.

In the case of Spain, as in the rest of the countries of southern Europe, care strategies are centered on the family, with a weak presence of social care services, which are understood as substitutes for the family, but they are not claimed as a universal right of citizenship (Moreno et al., 2016).

In the case of Argentina, there is a strong maternalization in the care of children under 4 years of age, and a greater institutionalization of children between the ages of 5 and 12. The factors affecting the use of institutions to a greater extent are the age of the children, the region and the household socioeconomic level. In that country, the lower the socioeconomic level, the greater the familiarization and feminization of care (Faur and Pereyra, 2018).

In the case of institutional childcare, important differences are distinguished according to the country. In Finland, since 1996, day care centers have been a universal right for non-school age children. In turn, these care services are accompanied by leaves and benefits for parents with children below the age of 3. In France, public service is widespread, and most parents have almost free access to preschool centers. In the United Kingdom, free childcare is more limited. In Italy, there are multiple variations according to the different regions. Finally, in Portugal, childcare for children under the age of 4 does not cover too many hours and is concentrated in community provisions or third sector organizations (Kröger, 2003).

The research identifies care centers hours as a key factor to explain the use of care services. The number of hours offered by services, the lack of flexibility, and the inefficiency in terms of reconciling paid work with care work are crucial for family decisions. Another aspect that is worth highlighting is mobility, since transport is decisive when choosing non-family care strategies.

Social Organization of Care in Latin-American Countries

In terms of the social organization of care, and in light of the path followed mainly by European countries, the Latin American context is characterized by an institutional weakness of policies. Multiple empirical investigations developed in the region (Batthyány et al., 2017; Esquivel, 2011; Faur, 2009; Guimaraes and Hirata, 2020; Lupica, 2016; Rodriguez Enriquez, 2015; Salvador, 2007, among many others) show that social care organizations present an unequal distribution. Thus, care responsibilities lie on households and women. This is the product of several factors that occur simultaneously: the persistent sexual division of labor, the naturalization of women as caregivers, the scarce institutional developments of welfare regimes in the region, and great economic inequalities (Faur, 2009). At the same time, there is a predominance of the market and the family when it comes to solving the needs of work-care articulation.

There are common features that characterize the social organization of care in the region. Among these, it stands out the fact that care continues to be a function carried out mainly by the families especially of women within families. Therefore, it is a matter considered primarily private. As an example, the idea that childcare should be provided by families (that is, by mothers) when they are young is due to the very low coverage offered by the different types of childcare centers in the region. Enrollment in institutions is lower when it comes to very young children (from 0 to 2 years of age), which confirms the following trend: the older the children, the higher the enrollment proportion. Therefore, the use of care institutions is limited in the region, even when they exist for young children. Thus, the widespread idea that in the first years of the child the best care is provided at home and by the mothers endures significantly.

In addition to this, in most labor codes and specific regulations in Latin America, maternity protection has been prioritized, a situation that has been reviewed in recent years, in order to increase the time of leave for women, without modifying the parents’ time of leave. The actions of the State in the field of care are generally limited to the protection of the working mother within the framework of the formal labor regime. However, gender inequalities in the labor market remain, and women continue to leave the market or to take part-time jobs due to care demands. In 2018, about half (42%) of working-age women in Latin America declared themselves unavailable to work (or declared they were not looking for employment, even though they wanted to work) due to their responsibilities as unpaid caregivers. This percentage was only 5% among men. Also, according to the same ILO survey, in Latin America women are responsible for no less than 74% of the hours of unpaid care work (ILO, 2018, in Guimaraes and Hirata, 2020).

A third characteristic is the importance of paid domestic work as a resource for the provision of care in households (ILO, 2018 cited in Guimaraes and Hirata, 2020), which is one of the pillars that support the social organization of care. As a common feature in the different countries, paid care work (mainly domestic workers without formal care specific qualifications and who do many other tasks regarding households besides caring) is a key resource for the coverage of care in households and for access to paid work for women, both for female employers (because it allows them to go out to work outside their home) as well as to female employees, because it allows them to access a job where low qualifications are required and to articulate paid work with the care of their own children. In our countries, paid care work represents 16% of global employment and no less than 31% of female employment (ILO, 2018 cited in Guimaraes and Hirata, 2020).

Domestic workers, who largely care dependent people, are overrepresented among regional immigrants (such as Peruvians in Chile, Paraguayans in Argentina, Dominicans in Costa Rica, among other feminized migratory corridors), for example, women coming from rural areas and lower social classes, Afro-descendants, and indigenous women. These inequalities related to gender, class, geographic location, and ethnicity or race are key to understanding how the social organization of care works in the region and how persons in the most disadvantaged situations perform paid and unpaid care work.

The global chains of care (Hochschild, 2012; Parreñas, 2001, among others) that characterize international migration are found within Latin American countries, where women who migrate and work as caregivers in other countries leave their children with other women who, being relatives or not, receive remuneration on the part of the migrant that although it is not perceived as a salary, it is in some way the payment of the cost of caring. In general, women in Latin America hire other women from lower social classes to care for their children and this is reproduced throughout the social fabric, as girls from the same family (child labor) or close relatives frequently carry out the task.

Fourth, as a result of the socioeconomic inequalities typical of Latin America, access to care is segmented according to social class. In the absence of public coverage, the market plays a key role in care, although clearly access is restricted for those who cannot afford it. Access to services continues to be a privilege of higher-income families. In most countries, public services are ineffective in resolving the work-family articulation due to the frequent mismatch between their business hours and the obligations and schedules of working women-mothers.

These characteristics of the social organization of care in the countries of the region occur in a context of broad sociodemographic changes. Women’s participation rate in the labor market has grown rapidly in Latin America, from 40.5% in 1991 to 51.5% in 2018. The number of people per household has dropped considerably: in the same year of 2018, only 16% of persons lived in large families, in which the distribution of unpaid care could be performed by more members. Furthermore, the aging of the population has caused the growth in the demand for care, especially among dependent elderly people, to challenge the possibility for it to be provided by family members on a free basis.

Despite the characteristics of the social organization of care in the region, in these last 5 years, some experiences of articulated care policies can be highlighted, such as the ones developed in Uruguay, (Sistema Nacional Integrado de Cuidados–SNIC) Costa Rica (although it does not integrate population groups into the same policy) and more recently in Argentina (Mesa interinstitucional), and the sub-national ones of Mexico City (Sistema de Cuidados de la Ciudad de México) and Bogotá (Sistema Distrital de Cuidados). Next, we develop the context of the care policy in Uruguay.

Uruguayan Context

Since 2015, Uruguay has developed SNIC, which seeks to guarantee the right to care, as per Law No. 19353. It is aimed at promoting the development, personal autonomy, care, and assistance of dependent people, including children. Within this framework, one of its objectives refers to the transformation of the family care model, providing new services and regulating the existing offer. It also focuses on the transformation of the gender-specific division of labor, which results in a care work overload for women.

The SNIC is defined by law as the set of public and private actions that provide direct attention to the activities and basic needs of daily life of people who are in a situation of dependency. It comprises an articulated set of new benefits, coordination, consolidation, and expansion of existing services, as well as the regulation of people who perform care services (Uruguay, 2015).

The SNIC pursues the following objectives:

A) Promote a comprehensive care provision model based on articulated policies, comprehensive programs and actions of promotion, protection, timely intervention, and, whenever possible, the recovery of the autonomy of those people with dependency.

B) Promote the articulated and coordinated participation of public and private care services.

C) Promote the optimization of public and private care resources, rationalizing the use of human, material, and financial resources.

D) Promote the regulation of all aspects related to the provision of public and private care services.

E) Professionalize care tasks through promotion of training of care workers, encouraging their professional development.

F) Promote a transformation in the sexual division of labor, integrating the concept of gender and generational co-responsibility.

G) Promote territorial decentralization, seeking to contemplate the specific needs of each territory, establishing agreements and joint actions with local governments.

The social problem identified to install the SNIC as a public policy is the overload of care work provided by families, especially women, and the need to redistribute care work between men and women. The System is chaired by a Care Board made up of a wide variety of public bodies such as the ministries of social development, economy, labor and social security, education and culture, health, the national institute for childhood and adolescence, the national institute of social security, local governments, among others.

As achievements, the creation of a law that recognizes care as a social right and that establishes decent working conditions for care workers can be highlighted (N° 19.353). Likewise, the creation of a specific institutionality is an important achievement. On the other hand, the creation of innovative services such as home care for dependents or telecare, the expansion of coverage of services for children of 2 and 3 years, and the training of care workers. However, the coverage achieved in innovative services is very scarce and little progress has been made in expanding the coverage of services for children under 1 year of age. On the other hand, although the coverage of childcare services was expanded, only very few extended the weekly hours to more than 20 h. In addition to this, these services continue to be focused primarily on lower income households.

Regarding funding, most of the services are paid for by general revenues, that is, by the State. Some of them are contributory and others are financed through co-payments based on the household income level.

There are public and free childcare centers from children between 1 to 3 years old (CAIF, CAPI) whose objective is to guarantee the protection and promote the rights of all boys and girls from, prioritizing access for those who come from families in situations of poverty or social vulnerability. Most of them offer care for 4 h per day. On the other hand, there is free, universal, and compulsory preschool education for those of 4 and more, also mostly in a 4-h model.

Maternity leave in Uruguay is 14 weeks, paternity leave is 13 days and parental leave, which constitutes an hourly reduction from the end of the maternity leave, which can be by one of the parents in the same way, indistinct and not simultaneous until the child is 6 months old. This right does not protect informal workers who represent a quarter of workers (24.8% for 2019 data).

The possibility of defamiliarization of care, covering at least 8 h of workday presents weaknesses. The modalities of public and free offer of care available to children under 2 years of age maintain the focus on families in situations of socioeconomic vulnerability or present a very lower coverage. Thus, care leaves are practically the most relevant line of action to guarantee the care of babies under one year of age considering their reach in the population.

It should also be mentioned that state support through care leaves lasts up to 6 months and that then weaknesses are observed in the public offer to guarantee options that allow facing the daily care of children up to 3 years of age, when the public offer is more robust. Therefore, there is a disconnect between care leaves, which covers a large proportion of workers but lasts up to 6 months, and care services, that the bulk of the population can access when the leave is completed.

To analyze the defamiliarization of care, it is necessary to pay attention to the number of hours that children spend daily to know if these services allow the articulation of care with work. When analyzing attendance of children between the ages of 0 and 4 at childcare centers, it is observed that it increases with age. The classic coverage indicators usually only consider attendance (whether or not they attend) and not the type of services (how many hours per week, and whether they attend accompanied by mothers). This does not distinguish those children whose institutionalization enables labor articulation from those who participate in activities in the care centers but who do not even cover part-time work hours and who also require the presence of an adult.

Practically a third (31%) of children between 0 and 2 years old attend a center for up to 4 h a week, while half (49.5%) attend between 5 and 20 h, that is, part-time. Only 9.5% attend between 21 and 30 h, and 9.9% attend more than 30 h (ECH, 2017 in MIDES, 2019). Therefore, the vast majority of these children are cared for under other modalities for more than half of the day, generally through family and female solutions.

From our definition of institutionalization of care, it is considered that a child attends a care center when they do so for at least 20 h per week and without requiring the presence of the family. Considering this distinction, Graph 1 shows that most children aged 0 and 1 attend less than 20 h. This reverts from children of 2 years.

Graph 1.

Center attendance and an average of 20 h of attendance per week or more, according to children’s age (0–4 years). Total in the country, 2018.

Considering only those who attend 20 h a week or more, depending on whether the provision is public or private, we have found that for the 0–2 years age group, most of the children attend private centers, that is, financed by households. This is much more pronounced for children less than 1 years of age. For children over the age of 3, this trend is reversed, with State provision becoming more important Graph 2.

Graph 2.

Type of centers attended by children an average of 20 h per week or more, according to children’s age. Total in the country, 2018.

Graph 3.

Maternalism index by childcare strategy (TYPE 1). Total Montevideo and the metropolitan area, 2019.

According to SNIC’s (2015–2020) last publication, the largest investment in early childhood in the country’s history was made in the last 5 years (SNIC, 2020: 10). Despite the efforts that have been developed by the care system, there is still no extended public offer of services of at least 20 h per week for children between the ages of 0 and 2. Therefore, in this segment, a large part of the population must resort to family care, or if they can afford it and prefer it, to the services offered in the market. Consequently, the use of care centers varies according to the public offer available and its socio-territorial focus, the economic resources that families have to pay for a private center and also the cultural mandates on good care present in the Uruguayan society, that are inclined toward family care provided by women for children under 2 years of age.

The reduced use of childcare centers for children under 2 years of age results in mothers care, although this varies according to socioeconomic level. In higher-income sectors, the use of domestic workers who perform care work is more frequent, and in lower-income sectors it is covered by the mother or other women in the family (Batthyány et al., 2019). Therefore, the use of domestic workers is not extended to the entire population but is restricted to who can afford it. The average Uruguayan households that hire domestic workers is 8.8%, but this is 26.5% in households in the highest income quintile and 1.1% in the poorest quintile (ECH, 2019).

On the other hand, it should be clarified that maternity, paternity and parental leaves do not replace the use of care centers for children under 2 years of age, because they cover only the first 6 months of children (Batthyány et al., 2018).

In Uruguay, the preeminence of a familistic cultural model of care has been confirmed. It is expressed in the results of surveys and qualitative studies that show that people consider that the desirable care for children from 0 to 3 is at home with the mother. About 7 out of 10 people who live in households with children say that the ideal care they would recommend during a workday for children between the ages of 0 and 3 is with their mothers (EnEC, 2019). These data coincide with those found in this regard in the social representations of care survey (2011), and they are evidenced in the National Survey of Adolescents and Youth (2013 and 2018) that delves into gender representations in childcare. Also, in the Nutrition, Child Development and Health survey (ENDIS, 2013, 2015), strong gender mandates are manifested in childcare, reflecting that the Uruguayan population considers that women are the most “fit” for care and thus they should carry out that task. Gender mandates in care are linked to the development of familistic strategies run by women.

In addition to the social representations of population care, the opinion of care experts is also known, showing a preference for family care in the first years of life, especially the most influential (such as those in the medical sector) and in decision makers (in the political sector). This reinforces cultural barriers to the defamiliarization of care for young children.

According to previous research on expert knowledge, the “medical” approach to childcare focuses on health aspects: ensuring breastfeeding and disease prevention for quality care. Thus, this approach has familistic features, which imply the centrality of care in the home setting for children under the age of 2 (Batthyány et al., 2014). The legitimacy of this perspective and the role of medical knowledge is evidenced in the Social Representations of Care Survey (2014), where it is verified that a quarter of the Uruguayan population considers the opinion of doctors as a priority when consulting about parenting (Batthyány et al., 2014).

In the same research, other aspects that are evidenced are the existence of the so-called “psychological-educational” discourse, which enables other possibilities of quality care, highlighting that what determines good care are the safe bonds that can be developed with other adult carers, even with paid caregivers at home or in children’s centers (Batthyány et al., 2014). Therefore, the option for institutional care can potentially provide quality care for children, but it appears as an option that is not very legitimate for the population.

This article will work from a typology of care strategies, which distinguishes the institutional framework in which care is developed. This axis of differentiation is one of the seven dimensions of care elaborated by Thomas (2011). Although the author proposes this classification of components in order to distinguish the multiple and different definitions of care that exist and the possible contradictions between them, it is also useful for the identification of different possible care modalities. Based on the data from the Care Strategies Survey, a typology was developed, which uses the dimensions of care developed by Thomas (2011) as a tool. Thomas identifies the following dimensions: (1) carer’s social identity (who the carer is), (2) care-recipient’s social identity, (3) interpersonal relationship between caregiver and care-recipient, (4) nature of care, (5) public/private domain where care is provided, (6) economic character of care relationships, and (7) institutional setting where it is performed. The institutional framework where care is provided is decisive because it defines the rules in which it is framed (families’ moral norms and values, and institutional regulations). In addition to this, the institutional framework in which care is provided refers to the physical location where care takes place, that is to say, at home or in a care center, etc.

This article will delve into a typology that distinguishes the institutional frameworks where care is provided, that is to say, between care carried out in the domiciliary or household sphere (even if there are commercial relations) and that performed in an institutional framework (care centers).

Methodology

The empirical basis of this article is the Care Strategies Survey (ENec) implemented during May and November 2019, which represents households with children and dependents in Montevideo and the metropolitan area.

Households were previously contacted by pollsters according to the databases provided by state agencies within the framework of institutional agreements of strict confidentiality. This information allowed locating households with a dependent population. After the telephone confirmation, the interview was carried out in all cases with the consent of those being interviewed and clearly explaining how the researchers would use those data.

The main dimensions addressed by the survey were care strategy, factors involved in the strategies, care costs, social representations of care, household composition, and household’s profile based on sociodemographic characteristics.

The methodology used for this article is mainly descriptive in nature, using inferential statistics in the presentation of two models (one of multiple linear regression and the other of logistic regression) that seek to confirm which variables impact in the institutionalization of children between the ages of 0 and 3, as well as in the number of hours that all children ages 0–12 attend care or educational centers. The incorporation of both models seeks to show which variables are statistically significant to explain the institutionalization, controlling them with other variables, and also to find out which ones have the greatest impact on it.

Table 1.

Percentage distribution of care typology according to the age of children in the home. Montevideo and the metropolitan area, 2019

	Households with children 0–3 years	Households with children 4–12 years	Total households with children 0–12 years
Home care	91.8	76.7	81.1
Institutional care	8.2	23.3	18.9

Source: Prepared by the authors based on micro-data from the Care Strategies Survey carried out in Montevideo and the metropolitan area, 2019. GISG-FCS-ANII-SNIC.

In order to have a synthetic measure of social representations about gender and care, there was an index developed to show the presence of maternalism in the population. This index classifies the population according to the presence of traditional mandates on the irreplaceable and exclusive role of mothers in childcare and their preeminence over other actors and other possible projects for women.

To develop the maternalism index, we have considered the following items consulted in the survey: “It would be desirable for the mother to stop working to care for the children until their first year of life”; “Women have to carry out tasks at home so that men can thrive outside the home”; “Women should choose jobs that allow them to care for their children”; “When there is no economic need, it is preferable that women take care of their children instead of working”; “Women need children to feel fulfilled”; “It is better for the mother to take care of the children because she is the one who knows what happens to them”; and “It is preferable that women take care of the children, especially when they have a disability.” This index ranges from 0 (not at all maternalistic) to 7 (very maternalistic).

It is a simple index, in which no questions were weighted but all had the same weight. Two categories were developed to distinguish between low degree of maternalism and high degree of maternalism.

Results

Home or Institutional Care

It was observed that 91.8% (22 h) of the hours of care provided to children under 3 take place in the home setting, and the remaining 8.2% (2 h) are provided by institutions. In the case of children between the ages of 4 and 12, 76.7% of care hours take place at home (18.4 h), but institutional care increases significantly to cover 23.3% (5.6 h) of care hours. Therefore, the strong weight of home care strategies has been observed in younger children. The difference according to the age bracket is due to the compulsion of attendance at an educational center from the age of 4. This average number of hours does not cover an 8-h workday; thus, it is a solution from the educational system, which is not aimed at articulating work and family, and which results in partial support.

Given that attendance at an educational center is compulsory from the age of 4 and that it is almost universal, to analyze the factors that affect the use of a care center, we will only consider the range between the ages of 0 and 3.

The socioeconomic level influences childcare strategies, since the higher the socioeconomic level, the lower the proportion of those who adopt home strategies. In the case of the upper class, home-based care hours account for 85%, while in the case of the middle class they represent 91.7% and 93% for the lower socioeconomic levels. In contrast, a high socioeconomic level presents the highest proportion of institutional care hours, which doubles the rest of the levels. This accounts for 15% in the case of children. In the middle sectors, this proportion drops to 8.3% and in the lower sectors the institutional strategy represents 7%.

Table 2.

Percentage distribution of hours spent by each caregiver, according to the socioeconomic level. Montevideo and the metropolitan area, 2019.

Socioeconomic level	Households with children 0–3 years			Households with children 4–12 years			Households with children 0–12 years
Socioeconomic level	Home	Institutional	% Total	Home	Institutional	% Total	Home	Institutional	% Total
Lower	93.0	7.0	49.2	79.4	20.6	44.2	83.4	16.6	44.0
Middle	91.7	8.3	39.9	75.6	24.4	44.8	79.9	20.1	44.9
Upper	85.0	15.0	10.9	69.6	30.4	11.0	74.8	25.2	11.1
Total	91.6	8.4	100	76.6	23.4	100.0	80.9	19.1	100.0

Source: Prepared by the authors based on micro-data from the Care Strategies Survey carried out in Montevideo and the metropolitan area, 2019. GISG-FCS-ANII-SNIC.

The proportion of households of Montevideo in the low socioeconomic level is 17.1%, that of the middle sector is 58.3%, while the proportion of households in the high sector is 24.6% (CINVE, based on ECH, 2017).

The distribution of the socioeconomic level of households with children is different from that of the total number of households in Montevideo because poverty is concentrated in these households. In Montevideo, according to socioeconomic level, 44% of households with children 0–12 years old belong to the low level, 44.9% to the medium level, and 11.1% to the high level. These data vary according to the age of the children as can be seen in Table 2.¹

In this case, it is observed that the practices of the middle levels are more similar to those of the low levels, probably due to the limited capacity to pay for these services. In other indicators that will be analyzed next, related to cultural or valorative elements of care, we observe that the middle levels share similar opinions to those of the upper levels. This is probably due to the fact that the INSE integrates the educational level and the type of occupation, variables that affect the presence of more or less traditional gender roles and care representations.

The main caregiver’s² employment situation influences the care strategy of children under the age of 3. It is important to consider that 87.2% of main caregivers are women, and almost in all cases (99.8%), it is a family member who lives with the children. On the other hand, mothers represent approximately 70% of caregivers.

As in other research, the feminization of this work becomes evident, as women assume this responsibility to a much greater extent than men, which has direct consequences on their participation in the labor market.

When the main female caregiver does not work, the use of institutional care represents 6.1% and, at the other end, when she works for 40 h a week or more, the use of institutional care practically doubles, reaching 11.2%. In any case, it is important to visualize that this percentage represents 3 h of daily care, so the strategy in these homes also relies on home care provided by other agents, in addition to the one provided by the main caregiver.

Regarding the use of institutional care in households which the main caregiver does not work, this can respond to two different situations. Some of them access the care centers because they belong to the most vulnerable population and therefore meet the requirements for access to public centers. And on the other hand, there may be women who belong to households with high socioeconomic levels where it is not necessary to have a second income and can afford a care service and also consider it appropriate for their children to attend those ages.

Table 3.

Percentage distribution of hours dedicated by caregivers, according to their working hours. Montevideo and the metropolitan area, 2019.

Main caregiver working hours	Total	0 to 3			4 to 12
		Home	Institutional	Total	Home	Institutional	Total
Doesn’t work	37.4	94.0	6.1	41.2	80.0	20.0	35.9
Works less than 20 h	9.2	95.9	4.1	9.6	79.0	21.0	9.1
Works between 20 and 29 h	10.0	92.5	7.5	8.8	76.6	23.4	10.5
Works between 30 and 39 h	19.0	91.1	8.9	19.1	76.4	23.6	18.9
Works 40 h or more	24.4	88.8	11.2	21.4	74	25.9	25.7
Total	100	91.8	8.2	100	76.7	23.3	100

Source: Prepared by the authors based on micro-data from the Care Strategies Survey carried out in Montevideo and the metropolitan area, 2019. GISG-FCS-ANII-SNIC.

In the case of women whose labor insertion is less than 20 h, their lower use of institutional care is probably associated with two factors. They need to work but they have access to low-quality conditions jobs, where informal, domestic, and occasional workers are employed. Given the limited public offer of services that cover the 8-h working day, and the focalization in lower income households, these women cannot use public centers and find it difficult to pay for more hours of private care services.

Social Representations of Ideal Caregivers and Reasons for Using Different Childcare Providers

The survey also inquired about the people or institutions that are recommended for the care of young children during their fathers’ or mothers’ working hours. As in the background on social representations of care (Batthyány et al., 2012), it is verified that the mother continues to be identified as the ideal person to provide care for young children. In 66.4% of cases (households with children from 0 to 3 years of age), people mentioned the mother as the caregiver they would recommend during the workday for children under 3, and the father was mentioned in 49.6% of cases. It is noteworthy that 48.2% of respondents mention other family members as a recommended option for care, as this reveals a familistic logic is the ideal of care for young children during the working journey. It should be noted that the father and other relatives are recommended in similar proportions.

Four out of ten respondents mentioned children’s centers as legitimate care options, while only 10.5% recommended the care of a paid person in the home. This shows that a large proportion of the population assess centers positively as an adequate actor to provide care for young children.

Now, when comparing the ideals with the concrete practices on the use of institutional or home care, it is observed that households with children under 3 years of age that mention the centers as a recommended option (39%) are the ones that use the most institutional care hours (11.1% vs. 6.4% who do not recommend centers). Therefore, there is some correspondence between what is advised (the use of centers) and childcare practices in this age group. However, it should be emphasized that this proportion of hours (11.1%) represents only 2.7 h per day of institutional care coverage. The question arises as to whether this limited use of hours is related to household preferences regarding institutional care, time availability and quality of services, or to the impossibility of paying for a quality private service that covers more hours.

Table 4.

Percentage distribution of strategy used, according to the recommended caregiver option for children between the ages of 0 and 3 during the working day. Montevideo and the metropolitan area, 2019.

Caregiver recommended*		Strategy used
Caregiver recommended*		Home care	Institutional
Mother	66.4	92.3	7.7
Father	49.6	92.1	7.9
Another relative	48.2	93.7	6.3
Person hired at home	10.5	93.5	6.5
Care center	39.0	88.9	11.1
Total		90.1	9.9

Source: Prepared by the authors based on micro-data from the Care Strategies Survey carried out in Montevideo and the metropolitan area, 2019. GISG-FCS-ANII-SNIC.

Multiple answer question. The percentage of affirmative answers for each option is shown.

Table 5.

Maternalism level by socioeconomic level. Total Montevideo and the metropolitan area, 2019.

	Low level of maternalism	High level of maternalism	Total
Lower	33.7	66.3	100
Middle	52.3	47.7	100
Upper	80.9	19.1	100

Source: Prepared by the authors based on micro-data from the Care Strategies Survey carried out in Montevideo and the metropolitan area, 2019. GISG-FCS-ANII-SNIC.

As mentioned before, a maternalism index was developed to account for the importance of gender mandates regarding the role of women in childcare. This index is developed as a synthesis of a set of phrases that respond to mandates toward women. When cross-referencing this index with the socioeconomic level, it is observed as in other antecedents that the lower the socioeconomic level, the higher the proportion of those who adopt maternalistic discourses regarding care, while the opposite occurs among high socioeconomic levels.

While two-thirds of households with low socioeconomic status have a high level of maternalism, this is the case with one in five households with high socioeconomic status. In the middle sectors, the level of maternalism is practically divided into two halves.

For its part, the stance toward maternalism seems to scarcely influence the adopted strategy, since among those who have low index values (not maternalistic), 22.7% of the hours are covered by institutions while these percentages decrease slightly as the maternalistic position increases.

The survey also asked about the reasons why households use each care provider. Regarding the care provided by the main caregiver (who is the mother in 71.7% of cases), the most mentioned reason refers to the organization of the family. The parents’ love and care obligations account for 42.6% of the reasons. This category is broken down into 22.6% of respondents who mention the importance of the family taking care of the children, 11.5% of them state ethical reasons related to the responsibility or obligations of the parents, and 8.5% of those surveyed mention love as a reason.

The figure of the mother is the one most frequently mentioned among those who indicate that it is better for care to be performed by the family and those who prefer it to be carried out in the home, the space in which the mother is located. For example, these are some of the phrases spontaneously mentioned by the population: “Family bond, the mother should take care of children at home as much as possible”; “No one is going to take care of them better than their mother”; “Because she is my daughter, it is my duty as a mother, and I like it, that’s why I wanted to be a mother.”

The relation observed here between motherhood, home, and love is consistent with the data already presented on the feminization and familiarization of care. At this point, there are no differences based on socioeconomic level, but it is an aspect that cuts across all households.

The figure of the father (referring specifically to men) appears when manifesting family reasons and for children of all age groups, but it is mentioned much less than the mother; then parents are mentioned, regardless of gender; and lastly, different family members who are considered to be better caregivers. Some quotes that exemplify the presence of these dimensions are: “They have to be with their parents”; “It is reasonable and logical to take care of children”; “It is better for parents themselves to provide care”; “He is obviously my son”; “The child has to be with his family.”

Regarding the reasons that families mention about the use of care centers, three main categories stand out: education and socialization, articulation with job responsibilities, and trust in the centers.

The first category is related to the fact that children receive education and socialize with their peers, and it occupies the first place in households with low socioeconomic level (52.5%). This ratio is mentioned by 28.4% and 29.5% of respondents in households with middle and high levels, respectively.

The second category refers to the articulation of care with the parents’ work responsibilities. It includes reasons that mainly refer to needing more time to work, so as not to overload grandmothers and other caregivers, and because the center is near their home or the parents’ workplace. This category is the most mentioned one in the middle and upper classes (31.7% and 36% respectively), and it is much less mentioned by the lower sector (22.1%).

Table 6.

Coefficients β of the logistic model that explains attendance or non-attendance to care centers. Total Montevideo and the metropolitan area.

	β	SE	Wald	df	Significance level	Exp(β)
PPC’s gender	−0.308	0.404	0.582	1	0.446	0.735
PPC’s age	0.00	0.00	1.088	1	0.297	1
PPC’s employment situation	0.566	0.298	3.606	1	0.058	1,.61
PPC’s educational level	0.091	0.286	0.101	1	0.751	1.095
Age of boy and girls	0.341	0.04	74.249	1	0.000	1.407
Disability	0.193	1.396	0.019	1	0.890	1.213
Number of people living in the household	0.001	0.079	0	1	0.987	1.001
Socioeconomic level of the household	0.412	0.274	2.265	1	0.132	1.511
Recommend care center as a strategy	0.682	0.276	6.096	1	0.014	1.978
Maternalism index	0.132	0.089	2.168	1	0.141	1.141
Constant	−2.837	0.807	12.353	1	0.000	0.059

Source: Prepared by the authors based on micro-data from the Care Strategies Survey carried out in Montevideo and the metropolitan area, 2019. GISG-FCS-ANII-SNIC

Third, respondents trust centers, which is linked to the tranquility families identify as a reason for children to be institutionalized. This trust sometimes comes from family members, from experience with siblings who have gone to the centers, from recommendations, among others. It is mentioned to a greater extent by the middle and upper classes. This category is referred to by 15.2% of low-income households, by 29.1% of middle-class households, and by 26.2% of upper-class households.

Factors That Influence the Use of Institutional Care

With the aim of knowing which variables influence the decision that children between 0 and 3 years of age attend care centers and ranking them with another series of variables, a logistic model was carried out. The dependent variable is the attendance (1) or non-attendance (0) of children between the ages of 0 and 3 to childcare centers. Independent variables were organized into four modules. The first one refers to the characteristics of the main caregiver (PPC) (main caregiver’s gender, age, employment situation, and maximum educational level). The second one refers to children’s characteristics (their age, disability degree). The third one includes the characteristics of the households (number of people in the household and socioeconomic level). The fourth module refers to gender and care representations (maternalism index, and whether or not respondents would recommend a care center as the main strategy for the care of children from 0 to 3 years of age).³

Out of all the variables considered, children’s age variable presents a level of statistical significance (0.000) that allows us to affirm that it impacts on attendance at childcare centers.⁴ The increase of 1 year in each child, keeping constant the rest of the variables, increases the probability of attending a care center (odds ratio of 1.407) more than without a 1-year increase in the age variable.

The recommendation to resort to a care center for children between 0 and 2 years of age during the working day, keeping constant the rest of the variables, increases the probability of attending a care center (odds ratio of 1.987) more than when a care center is not recommended as part of the main childcare strategy. The level of significance is 0.014, being the variable with the greatest impact on the OR of the attendance at centers.

Table 7.

Coefficients β of the MLR model that explains attendance or non-attendance to care centers. Total Montevideo and the metropolitan area.

	Non-standardized coefficients		Standardized coefficients	t	Significance level
	β	SE	Beta	t	Significance level
(Constant)	1.541	0.037		41.84	0.000
PPC’s employment situation	0.075	0.023	0.105	3.216	0.001
PPC’s educational level	0.041	0.02	0.077	2.046	0.041
Socioeconomic level of the household	0.1	0.019	0.197	5.125	0.000
Maternalism index	−0.018	0.007	−0.097	−2.549	0.011

Source: Prepared by the authors based on micro-data from the Care Strategies Survey carried out in Montevideo and the metropolitan area, 2019. GISG-FCS-ANII-SNIC.

Last, the fact that the main caregiver is busy in the employment market increases the probability of attending a care center 1.761 times more than if he did not have a paid job, keeping constant the rest of the variables. This indicates that when female family members (who are the main caregivers) work for a pay, the chances of attending a center increase. The socioeconomic level is related to the employment situation of care givers, which is a significant variable when explaining attendance at centers. As evidenced by multiple antecedents, women have a higher participation in the labor market in households with higher socioeconomic levels.

Second, a multiple linear regression (MLR) model was performed with a logarithm of the hours attended by children between the ages of 4 and 12, excluding those children who do not attend care centers.

Similar to the previous model, the same variable modules were introduced: characteristics of the main caregiver, characteristics of the children, characteristics of the households, care and gender representations, as well as recommendation of centers for the care strategy of children between the ages of 0 and 3.⁵ The large groups of variables assess the impact on care hours based on: aspects related to caregivers, aspects related to children, socio-demographic and economic characteristics, and gender representations.

The variables presented in the model are all statistically significant, which leads us to affirm that they explain the variance of hours that children attend care centers. On the other hand, the standardized beta coefficients allow us to organize the variables according to their incidence in the hours attended by children from 4 to 12 years of age.

In this regard, the results of the model show that the number of daily hours that children from 4 to 12 years old attend a center or institution depend firstly on the socioeconomic level of the household and second on the main caregiver’s employment situation. It is observed that the maternalistic representations have a similar relevance to the occupational situation, as it shows that the greater the maternalism, the lower the hours of children’s institutionalization. Finally, when caregivers have a higher educational level, there is an increase in the hours of institutionalization, an aspect that is consistent with the results on the impacts on hours of institutionalization according to people’s socioeconomic level and employment situation.

Conclusion

This article has analyzed institutional care in Uruguay for children between the ages of 0 and 12, and the factors that contribute to the limited institutionalization of the burden of care by using care centers.

First, it is worth stressing the utmost importance of households as caregivers in childcare strategies, especially for the youngest children. This is also evidenced by the few care hours provided by institutions for children under 3 years of age (2 h per day on average), compared to 6 h per day in the case of those between the ages of 4 and 12. Thus, in accordance with the background, it can be noted that childcare strategies include high levels of familism, which decrease with the age. The latter is linked to compulsory schooling and the universal offer of public and free services, which has increased for younger children in the last 5 years, although a significant increase in the number of hours provided by institutions has not been observed.

Increasing coverage is necessary, but not sufficient, when you think that educational institutions not only serve the needs of cognitive stimulation and content teaching in childhood, but they also meet the demands of the homes in which all adults work or seek to do so, being an important tool for women’s access to the labor market.

Second, also in accordance with the antecedents, the study shows the high feminization of childcare strategies, with women taking responsibility for care more than men. The data show that in Uruguay there is a prevailing idea that childcare is of high quality when it is provided “at home and by the mother,” an aspect that is expressed in the fact that in almost 100% of the households the main caregivers are women, with mothers accounting for 70% of the total.

One of the elements that also shows that childcare continues to be a “women’s issue” is that women who effectively manage to be inserted in the labor market do so because of the possibility of using care institutions (when women work, institutional hours double). This shows that, in order to carry out their work or professional projects or to achieve economic autonomy, the mechanism used by women is institutions and not the masculinization of care, that is to say a more equitable distribution with their male peers, an aspect that indicates that the challenges of gender co-responsibility are still significant. In short, joint responsibility for care between the State and families seems easier to achieve through public policy than an effective redistribution of care tasks between women and men in the home. This is also linked to the low use of parental leave by men (2%, BPS, 2020) and emphasizes the idea that if specific mechanisms are not implemented that mandate men to become involved in care, traditional practices will be reproduced. Therefore, the institutionalization of care allows defamiliarization but does not ensure the de-feminization of care.

The study shows that care strategies are strongly conditioned by material aspects (economic levels and offer of services) as well as cultural aspects (mandates on what “ought to be” in care). The latter are expressed in the maternalism within the culture of care in Montevideo and the metropolitan area. Respondents recommend the mother (66%) as the main care strategy for children between the ages of 0 and 3, while the father is mentioned less and in the same proportion as other relatives (approximately 49%).

The reasons given for the use of maternal care refer to the weight of the family and love and care obligations, while for the use of institutional care the reasons are socialization, articulation of work and care, and trust in centers. Furthermore, and in accordance with the antecedents, maternalism levels vary depending on the socioeconomic status, being three times stronger in the lower classes according to the analyzed data.

Regarding the factors that explain the institutionalization, in the case of children under the age of 3, it was observed that the age of the children (the older, the greater the use of institutions), the mothers’ employment situation (children’s attendance increases when their mothers work), and the valuations on care centers increase or decrease the use of care institutions. Regarding the last factor, the legitimacy of care centers is important in increasing the probability of their effective use. Thus, besides generating material conditions to access services and enable universal access to children under 3 years of age, it is important to legitimize these services as a valid option for children in early childhood.

The legitimacy of these services for children is influenced by expert discourse on childcare, particularly by the medical discourse, which is very present in the parents’ daily life and decisions regarding care strategies. As previous research has shown (Batthyány et al., 2013), medical discourse is less permeable to gender perspective since it usually recommends not using the centers during the first 2 years of life, due to the risk of contagion of diseases and for the promotion of extended lactation. The emphasis on the health components contrasts with another type of expert discourse in childcare, which is “psychological-educational” oriented and places as its main element the quality bond between the caregiver and the person being take care of, so it considers the possibility that other people, such as men or institutions, can provide quality care. Therefore, this other discourse is more permeable to gender perspective, since it does not associate mothers with quality care and promotes the attendance of children under 2 years of age at the centers. However, the medical discourse is the most influential in the creation of ideals and a culture of care, and to a large extent decision-makers in charge of public policies rely on it, leaving the discourse of a “psychological-educational” type relegated to the background.

Regarding children older than 4 years for whom attendance at educational institutions is compulsory, it was analyzed what factors affect those who attend more than 4 h a day. Within this population, it was observed what factors contribute to the increase in hours, with the socioeconomic level of the household being the main factor, as it explains that those who use more hours of these services are those who can afford it. Therefore, the shortage of public and universal services offering more than 4 h a day reproduces clear class inequalities, which add to those of gender, since only women with high educational levels and access to the labor market can afford care services.

If society through the State does not generate collective mechanisms for care provision, the vicious circle of care for women in poverty will be perpetuated, since access to the labor market is essential to achieve economic autonomy and therefore to change the economic poverty situation in which they live. Furthermore, it is relevant to bear in mind that it is the poorest women who are inserted in sociocultural contexts where gender mandates are more traditional. Thus, the possibility of requiring men to carry out care tasks so that women can work seems to be a very long-term goal, with full-time care institutions being the ones that can provide time for other activities in this population.

However, the material conditions that families have to access centers that offer more than 4 care hours a day is not the only factor that explains the greater use of institutions. Like the material conditions, traditional ideas about the role of women and men in care are significant factors that influence further institutionalization. Therefore, this allows us to state that care policies must generate universal full-time care services while promoting cultural changes that value and legitimize the use of these services at an early age, so that families consider them to be a good option for childcare, contributing to the defamiliarization and defeminization of care.

Footnotes

Annexes

Annex Table 2.

Variables involved in the model.

	VARIABLES	VALUES	TYPE
DEPENDENT VARIABLE	Y = hours (>0) for children between 0 and 12 yeas of age	0 - infinite	Continuous
Main caregiver’s characteristics	Gender (main caregiver) (X1)	0- Male	Dummy
	Gender (main caregiver) (X1)	1- Female	Dummy
	Age squared (main caregiver) (X2)	18 years and over squared	Continuous
	Employment situation (main caregiver) (X3)	0- Unemployed	Dummy
	Employment situation (main caregiver) (X3)	1- Employed	Dummy
	Maximum educational level reached (main caregiver) (X4)	0 – Up to primary education	Categorical
		1 – Up to secondary education
		2 – Up to tertiary education
Children’s characteristics	Age squared of children from 0 to 3 (X5.1) and Age squared of children from 4 to 12 (X5.2)	0–3 squared and 4–12 squared	Continuous
	Child with a disability (X6)	0- No	Dummy
	Child with a disability (X6)	1- Yes	Dummy
Characteristics of the households	Number of people in the household (X7)	1–12 people	Continuous
	Socioeconomic level of the household (X8)	0 - Lower	Categorical
		1 - Middle
		2 - Upper

Representations of gender and care	Maternalism index (0 non-traditional to 7 traditional) (X9)	Gender mandates (0–7)	Continuous
	Would recommend a care center as a primary strategy for childcare (X10)	0 - Yes	Dummy
		1 - No	Dummy

Funding

The research that allowed the elaboration of the article was financed by the Porgrama Grupos I+D 2018-2022 Sociología de Género” Comisión Sectorial de Investigación Científica, Universidad de la República, Uruguay. And from Proyecto Maria Viñas “Necesidades y Estrategias de Cuidado de dependientes en Uruguay” Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovación, Uruguay.

ORCID iD

Natalia Genta

Notes

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