Child care in Germany leaves mothers with few options to work

Child care in Germany is often touted abroad as an enviable model that is both affordable and friendly to working parents. But in fact, mothers who have had to balance their careers with parenthood face the much more difficult reality that the system appears to be designed to keep them out of the labor market entirely.

"Our village has at least 40 children who don't have a spot in kindergarten," said Julia, a working mom who lives in Germany's southeast, "despite the fact that the government is legally obligated to provide childcare over the age of three. Local governments aren't advertising the jobs and aren't doing anything to make them more attractive. The kids that do get places are in overlarge groups, and if a member of staff is sick or quits, which is understandable given the poor pay and working conditions, those families are just out of luck."

The 38-year-old high school teacher added that "if you can't find a nanny or a day care spot, you are of course allowed to take the local government to court, but most people can't be bothered with that stress when you may end up with a spot that's a 90-minute drive away."

Women are pressured to work part-time

Susanne Kuger, an expert on child care with the German Youth Institute (DJI), confirmed that "the number of families who actually do take the matter to court is extremely low," and instead opt to "send the children to grandparents or pay for expensive private day cares and nannies if they're able. If not, one parent, usually the mother, has to reduce their hours or work or delay returning to their job entirely."

She said that "every nanny and day care center can decide what their own opening hours are," whether it's conducive to full-time work or not, and there is often pressure to pick up children by 2 pm at the latest.

Germany has well over 1 million jobs to fill in 2022. One idea being floated is to promote some of the country's 11 million part-time workers — 80% of whom are women — into these full-time positions. But providing child care is proving to be the biggest hurdle.

According to a wide-ranging study carried out by the DJI in 2020, 49% of parents with children under three say they require child care. Of these, a mere 24% is able to secure the number of hours they need to be covered with a nanny or at a day care center. For children over three, 97% require care, and only 71% of parents say they have the necessary hours covered.

But for many of those who say they have all the child care they need, the truth is that one parent has merely accepted that if they can return to work at all, they will have to work part-time.

"The expectation is clear that, for heterosexual couples, that parent is the mother," said Julia, who had to reduce her hours at work after the local government took half a year to respond to her request for child care. "It's an extremely difficult situation if you don't have a support system, such as grandparents who live nearby and are able and willing to provide child care."

High hurdles for immigrant families

The problem is even more dire for immigrant families without this social support network, Alexandra Jahnert of the DJI explained. "The system of registering children for care is complex, usually only available in complicated bureaucratic German language, and there is often a lack of support for families who are not already familiar with how German government offices work," she said, adding that the web of different laws and opportunities across 16 different state governments and countless municipal governments made the barriers for immigrants even higher. This also leads to wildly varying prices, with care costing hundreds a month in some cities, and being completely free in others.

Jahnert said that, for both foreign women and native Germans, there was also "the vicious cycle that day cares give preference to couples where both parents work. Well, if you can't find a child care spot, you can't get a job or return to your old one."

German tax system rigged against women

A study by the Bertelsmann Foundation in 2020 found that even before the pandemic forced more women to stay home, "having children costs mothers up to two-thirds of their lifetime earnings" due to reduced payment during maternity leave, being forced into part-time work or staying at home, as well as a quirk of the German tax system known as "spousal splitting," all three of which also reduce payments into pensions for later in life.

Spousal splitting means that married couples can choose to be placed into different tax brackets where one spouse pays significantly more than the other (usually this is the woman). This means that the couple overall pays less tax, but one partner takes home a much lower net income at the end of every month. For many, this is just another encouragement to stay home with small children rather than spend every cent of their income on child care.

As economist Marcel Fratzscher put it in Die Zeit newspaper, "scientific studies show that in no other [EU] country except Belgium does this tax effect have a greater negative impact on women's employment."

Labor market plagued by shortages

Similar studies show that within the context of the German labor market, mothers are far less likely than fathers to get invited to interviews, and much less likely to work as many hours as they'd like. This impacts their pension payments and pushes them into old-age poverty.

According to the German Economic Institute (IW), in 2021 69% of mothers with children under 3 do not work at all, though only 27% wanted to stay at home full-time. About 21% work under 20 hours a week, the IW found, largely due to the lack of adequate child care options.

"Over the past 20 years, the role of mothers in Germany has changed considerably," study author Wido Geis-Thöne wrote, particularly in how women see themselves after having children. The German labor market, however, still has far to go to catch up in allowing women to realize their desire to return to full-time work.

And child care options must also be expanded to cover that full-time work. "Day care staff must be better paid, having better opportunities for advancement, and the job itself should be changed to encourage higher education levels in staff and increased prestige as a career path," said Susanne Kuger.

"Germany needs 600,000 new staff to cover day care needs in the coming years," she added, and while there are many initiatives at the local level to increase the number of child care centers and staff, a much greater push from state and national government bodies is needed if Germany wants to promote equity between working mothers and fathers.