Work and Childcare: Where the Responsibility Lies

The daily burden (and joy) of childcare is managed differently from family to family, with few solutions which could in fairness be labelled as 'wrong'. Also on an international scale, there are stark differences between countries, as illustrated by new Eurostat figures.

At least when it comes to parents and their employment situation, no country assessed by Eurosat had a higher share of 25 to 54 year old mothers in employment in 2020 than that of men. As our chart shows though, in countries such as Slovenia, Sweden and Portugal, the difference between fathers and mothers is quite small. At the opposite end of the scale, Italy and Turkey had the largest differences as well as the lowest shares of employed mothers.