Busby, Nicole --- "Unpaid Care-giving and Paid Work Within a Rights Framework: Towards Reconciliation?" [2011] ELECD 872; in Busby, Nicole; James, Grace (eds), "Families, Care-giving and Paid Work" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Families, Care-giving and Paid Work

Editor(s): Busby, Nicole; James, Grace

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849802628

Section: Chapter 11

Section Title: Unpaid Care-giving and Paid Work Within a Rights Framework: Towards Reconciliation?

Author(s): Busby, Nicole

Number of pages: 15

Extract:

11. Unpaid care-giving and paid work
within a rights framework:
towards reconciliation?
Nicole Busby

INTRODUCTION
As the other chapters in this book amply demonstrate, there is a clearly
discernible and growing chasm between the requirements of policy aimed
at the reconciliation of paid work and unpaid care and its current provi-
sion. The contributions from Masselot, Weldon-Johns, Smith, Charles-
worth, Horton and Guerrina show that this often wide disparity is by no
mean a jurisdictional issue and, as Caracciolo di Torella's chapter on
EU-level policy makes clear, attempts to remedy the mismatch in need and
provision by the top-down application of broad principles can often lead to
greater fragmentation rather than harmonization. This is in part because,
as McPherson's consideration of relevant UK social policy and Lyonette's
sociological analysis of working patterns across Europe demonstrate, the
founding assumptions on which the relevant policy is predicated are
increasingly inaccurate as individual behaviour and aspirations continue to
shift and are reflected in patterns of group behaviour relating to family
formation and labour market attachment. The ineffectiveness of policy
based on outdated notions of a `standard worker' is further exacerbated by
the changing demands of an increasingly unregulated, and from the work-
er's perspective, unsecure labour market which influences and restricts the
life choices individuals are able to make (James 2009). All of these factors
combine to enable identification of certain requirements which, if it is to be
effective in enabling individuals to better reconcile ...