Early Childhood Care and Education Policy and Reform in the Federal Republic of Germany – in the View of Welfare State

• Main Authors: Ming-Hui Sun, 孫名慧
• Other Authors: Mei-ying Chao
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/43977989145099446122

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 歐洲研究所碩士班 === 96 === Today, more and more women joint labour market. Family can not bear the responsibility of early childhood care and education by their own. It is no longer the private affairs, instead of family, government play an important role of this area. Government sould help parents a better work-family balance, especially the early childhood care and education policy. Nevertheless, because of the conservative corporatist welfare model, the early childhood care and education policy in german is limited. The level of defamilialization of conservative corporatist welfare state is low. German is widely recognized as a strong male breadwinner/female carer model, government offers various family and children allowances, in order to preserve functions of family. However, the early childhood care and education policy in german is lack of child day care centers, especially the children under the age of three. Recently, German faces social and demographical change. Not only the labour force participation rates of women in German continue to increase, the birth rates is even lower than EU’s average. Besides, German is one of the member of EU and OECD, and both two organizations propose some targets or advises for early childhood care and education. Because of those inside and outside causes, German has to reform this policy area. The main points of German’s reform include the reconciliation of children and family allowances, for example Elterngeld. On the other hand, the federal government establishes Day-Care Expansion Act(TAG) to support expansion of child day-care institutions and development of the quality of child day-care in institutions for all children under the age of three. The conclusion of the study is, although German’s early childhood care and education policy still keep the conservative corporatist character, it regards family as the most important carer for children. However, due to the inside and outside influences and challenges, German begin to take account of the care outside family. Day care institutions replace family’s care and education gradually.