Local loops of care in the metropolitan region of Helsinki: A time-economy perspective

Abstract

Finland subsidizes caring for young children at home by several cash-for-care schemes. In 2001, it adopted a tax credit for domestic services, including care. This article adopts an everyday perspective to social policies to analyse how Finnish cash-for-care policies produce local care loops using a time-economy approach. It examines the increase in private services alongside public ones through an analysis of the organization of childcare in time and space, paying attention to the micro-mobilities and daily choreographies of care. Drawing on interviews with Finnish employers of privately employed childcarers, our results demonstrate that childcare policies and tax credits are central means through which childcare is increasingly being privatized. We argue that the notion of time as a scarce resource and the organization of care loops in a way that maximizes time available for wage labour and ‘quality time’ point towards the emergence of a classed time discipline. Time becomes a commodity with not only monetary value but also another inherent value, captured in the notion of ‘quality time with children’. Significantly, this quality time does not include time used for other reproductive labour tasks, such as cleaning or cooking.