5389477

European Societies
3(3) 2001: 339-371

© 2001
Taylor & Francis Ltd
ISSN
1461-6696 print
1469-8307 online
WORKING AND MOTHERING

Women’s strategies in Spain
Constanza Tobío
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
AB STR ACT: The article looks at the relationship between family and
employment from the perspective of working mothers. In a context of
increasing convergence of women’s activity all over Europe what makes a
difference between countries is the extent to which women’s new roles in
paid work are being acknowledged through new practices in the family,
social policies, perceptions and symbols. The concept of strategy is used as
an analytical tool to understand how women manage their double role in
everyday life. Working mothers’ strategies to cope with both worlds can be
considered as an indicator of the social recognition of women as workers.
This hypothesis is examined taking the case of Spain as an example of an
extreme contradiction between the new position of women in the labour
market and the traditional social organization that does not seem to be
concerned by the change. Spanish working mothers, most of them working
full time, are developing a wide range of private, individual strategies to
make their jobs compatible with family responsibilities. The main strategies
are based on substitute mothers, who are either relatives – very often the
mother of the working mother – or somebody hired to take care of the
children. These kind of strategies raise, among other questions, the issue of
the extent to which the organization of domestic life continues to be based
on the traditional gendered family or if they can be a model for the future.
Complementary strategies to do with the organisation of time, reducing
distances between home, work and school, collective childcare and the help
of men are also studied, as well as extreme strategies – taking the children
to work or leaving them alone at home – and indirect strategies like delaying
and reducing the number of children. Primary sources of information, both
qualitative and quantitative are used, based on six discussion groups,
twenty-ve in-depth interviews and a 1,200 cases survey representative of
Spanish working mothers.
Key words: family; employment; gender; Spain
DOI: 10.1080/14616690120079369 339

EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
Introduction 1
Once the dual earner model becomes normal, family and employment
cannot be conceptualized as separate worlds any more. Women’s position
in the labour market cannot be understood without taking into account
their role in the family. Neither can men’s ‘freedom’ to assume responsi-
bilities in paid work be understood without looking at the family organiz-
ation that supports it. The family–employment relationship appears as a
new eld of research between sociology of work and sociology of the
family, seeking to understand the structural logic that links the spheres of
paid and unpaid work.
The theoretical aspects of the relationship between family and employ-
ment have been conceptualized providing a useful framework for research.
Commaille (1993: 13–14) refers to a new ‘question sociale’ that the inter-
action between women’s economic activity and family life poses, and
which requires crossing the traditional boundaries between specialized
elds in sociology, thus allowing innovation. The approach by Barrère-
Maurisson (1992) tries to reconstitute the integrity of a subject of research
often segmented developing new theoretical categories to understand the
family–employment relationship, beyond case study research. She points
out how employment is often considered as an ‘exogenous’ variable from
the perspective of the sociology of the family, just as the family is also con-
sidered ‘exogenous’ by the approach of sociology of work or economics.
Contrary to that, the ‘family–employment relationship’ should constitute
in itself a subject of research (pp. 17–33).
Comparative studies in different European and OECD countries
(Gornick et al. 1997; Hantrais and Letablier 1996, ) have pointed out simi-
larities and differences, usually focusing on women’s economic activity and
social policies. The combination of high levels of female activity and
generous provision of diversied social policy often appears, explicitly or
implicitly, as the normative model, as the objective that sooner or later
should/will be achieved by all, the Nordic countries providing the ‘ideal
type’. At the other end, the Southern European countries range low in
both employment and state support. In between, other models are based
1. I wish to thank Jane Lewis and Rossana Triletti for critical and useful comments on
this article, as well as Marie Thérèse Letablier and Chantal Nicole-Drancourt with
whom many of the ideas here presented were discussed. I also want to thank the Centre
d’Etudes del’Emploi, Paris, in whose stimulating intellectual environment the article
was written. Data and ndings are based on two research projects naced by the Insti-
tuto de la Mujer/Ministerio de Asuntos Sociales (‘Estrategias de compatibilizaci ón
familia-empleo. España años noventa’, 28 March 1994, and ‘Análisis Cuantitativo de
las Estrategias de Compatibilizaci ón Familia-Empleo en España’, Programa Sectorial
de Estudios de la Mujer y el Género, III Plan de Investigación Cientíca y Desarrollo
Tecnológico, 25 March 1996).
340
Women’s strategies in Spain TOBÍO
on different combinations of social policy and women’s activity. In the

liberal countries the non-intervention of the state for ideological reasons
explains the high levels of part-time employment among women, whereas
generous parental leave to take care of the children and quit the labour
market explains the sequential female activity pattern in Germany. This
model, based on the hypothesis of a positive correlation between women’s
engagement in paid work and social policy is, for example, most clearly
expressed by Barrère-Maurisson (1995) when she denes different his-
torical phases in the combination of economic sectors, family types, work
and state regulation. According to this typology, dual earner families cor-
respond to the last phase, where the tertiary sector is dominant and
domestic work is substituted by collective services provided by the state.
In a parallel way it has been argued that the extent of the welfare state cor-
responds to different levels of economic development (Scharpf 1997),
probably neglecting the role of politics, as well as the impact of women’s
activity in the economy.
Recent data on the evolution of women’s economic activity in Europe
in the last years show that there is a common trend towards a pattern
similar to men’s activity: most women are in the labour market during all
their life (Rubery et al. 1998, 1999). In this sense typologies based on the
differentiation between countries with high and low levels of female
activity and different levels of social policy are not useful any more to
understand the new economic and social position of women. Labour
Force Survey data for 1996 (Eurostat 1998a) show that in all European
countries a majority of women aged between 30 and 40 are in the labour
market, even though at those ages most women are mothers with small
children. With the exception of Italy, Ireland and Luxemburg, more than
60 per cent of women in that age group are economically active. The con-
siderable differences that can still be seen in global activity rates2 are partly
due to the fact that the increase in women’s activity in Southern Europe
and in Ireland is taking place through the massive entrance of the younger
generations in the labour market. Female activity over 40 and especially
over 50 continues to be very low. Younger women are not reproducing the
activity pattern of the preceding generation. In demographic terms this is
explained by the difference between age and generation, which becomes
more evident in periods of social change when the younger generations
do not reproduce the behaviour of the older ones.
The argument of increasing convergence among European countries
2. According to data from Labour Force Surveys the country with the lowest global
female activity rate in 1986 in Europe (twelve countries) was Spain (27.1 per cent) and
the highest was Denmark (60.1 per cent). Eight years later differences were reduced,
the lowest rate corresponding to Italy (33.7 per cent) and the highest to Denmark
(58.3 per cent).
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EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
towards a similar pattern is reinforced when data on full-time/part-time

work are looked at. In 1995 the percentage of women aged between 25
and 49 working full time in Italy and Spain was 50 per cent, higher than
Germany (48 per cent), the United Kingdom (42 per cent) or the Nether-
lands (22 per cent) (Fouquet 1998).
Empirical data thus allow the hypothesis of convergence in increasing
women’s activity all over Europe. What seems to be different is not so
much the level of female activity (as a trend) but the answer that women,
men, the family, the social organization and the state are giving to a new
fact. Lewis (1992) has pointed out how care, which is mostly women’s
responsibility, has been neglected as a dimension of the welfare state.
Increasingly the invisible work women assume is being considered as a
basic element to understand social policies in practice (Esping-Andersen
1999). In some cases, such as the Southern European countries, the
welfare state is very limited (Cousins 1995; Guillén 1997; Pérez-Díaz et al.
1998; Triletti 1999) but this does not prevent a rapid increase in women’s
activity. Private and informal strategies to combine participation in the
labour market with family responsibilities seem to be the clue to under-
standing how this is possible.
Spain is an interesting case for sociological analysis as changes that in
other countries have taken a number of years are taking place here in a
very short period of time. The speed at which social change has occurred
during the past ten years in this country explains why the contradiction
between the new economic position of women and the traditional social
organization is especially tense, not in the sense of explicit social conict
as in the hardships that Spanish women suffer to cope with the new situ-
ation. It also explains the wide range of private strategies that women
develop in a context of scarce public policies to help make employment
and family life compatible.
The rst part of the article focuses on the use of the concept of strat-
egy to understand working and mothering. A typology of strategies is then
proposed, based on practices observed through qualitative research. In the
second part of the article different kinds of strategies used by Spanish
working mothers to cope with their double role are presented, discussed
and compared with other cases in Europe.
The concept of strategy as an analytical tool to understand working

and mothering
The current generation of Spanish mothers with small children is the

rst one in which a majority of its members are in paid work. They are
facing new problems that their mothers did not have. They are not just
342
reproducing the behaviour of the past generations but are developing new
practices in a creative and innovative way. Therefore what is needed is a
concept that has to do with agency in a context of social change.
Giddens’ (1991) theory of structuration or Bourdieu’s (1980) concept of
habitus provide a useful theoretical background to articulate agency and
structure. But the ways structures are reproduced through social practices
are not always the same. In periods of social change the active and cre-
ative component of agency is stressed; agents do not simply reproduce in
a more or less original way the past behaviour but act differently in a new
context which poses new problems and requires new solutions. At this
point the concept of strategy can prove useful. It is used here to describe
practices that have to do with action to change the position of the agent
and to give an answer to the new problems that this arouses. Women’s
strategies are those practices related to a change in their economic and
social position and to the new problems that it poses.
Edwards and Ribbens (1991) have pointed out how the concept of strat-
egy has been often used to describe everyday lives – especially women’s
everyday lives – without really discussing its theoretical implications from
a gender perspective. While they recognize, with other authors (e.g.
Hammersley 1987; Morgan 1989), that the concept of strategy retains at
the same time a sense of agency and of social constraints, they argue that
many of the meanings associated with it are based on masculinist under-
standings and should thus be used with caution in relation to women’s
lives.3 I agree with the idea that processes and ways of being explain much of
women’s practices. It could probably be said that it is one of the main
elements of feminine habitus (Bourdieu 1998), though this does not mean
that purposive action is absent in women’s practices.
In periods of social change the strategic component in social and indi-
vidual practices becomes much more important. Spanish working
mothers’ discourse clearly shows that building a new identity as citizens
with full rights through involvement in paid work is a rational objective
to be achieved through purposive action. The repeated idea is that women
‘are beginning to be persons’ but that this goal still requires action, their own
action, to ght men’s opposition and change their position in society. The
dominant discourse among working mothers of today is clearly feminist,
though it is not usually labelled as such. The old model of housewife is
strongly rejected. The desire to work, to achieve a new identity as auton-
omous individuals recognized as such by society provides them with
3. Three main aspects are pointed out. In the rst place the fact that the concept has a
military origin and thus connotations of hierarchy, in the second place the subordi-
nation of need to goals, and in the third place the attention paid to issues of intellec-
tual cognition, rational choice and purposive action to the detriment of complex
emotions and variable qualities of being.
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EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
enough strength to endure all the difculties they are facing. They often
refer to themselves as living in an ‘impossible situation’.4 What seems to
underlie this is the feeling that they are living something for which there
is no model. Their mothers were different; they themselves have not been
prepared to live what they are living, some of them because they thought
they would be housewives all their life, others because they were not aware
of the burden motherhood represents for employed women. If their new
role in the labour market is quite clear – real equality with men in all
activities, which they feel perfectly capable of acquiring – the new family
model that should correspond to it is much less clear. There is strong
inertia surrounding the traditional gendered family as a positive model in
certain aspects, especially the education of the children or the quality of
family life in general (home-made food, family rituals, etc.). There is also
social pressure, as well as specic demands from husbands and children.
Trying to make compatible all these different and even opposing objec-
tives and expectations requires a wide range of practical solutions to keep
the domestic machinery working while women are away from the family.
In Spain paid work for women is still conceptualized as a choice:
women are ‘free’ to work if they want. Of course the second income they
provide is most welcome and is in fact becoming normal; most young
couples, for example, count on it. But what is implicit in the idea of paid
work as a choice for women is that family responsibilities are not. It is
assumed that if they choose to work it is because they are able to cope,
one way or another – it is their problem – with taking care of the children
and making sure the domestic tasks get done. In short, the increasing
female activity rate appears as a sort of indicator that they do manage, that
the family–employment relationship poses no problem, that it is not a
social problem to be assumed as such by all.5 In fact what seems to happen
is that Spanish women are not yet very sure of themselves in their new
role as workers. This can be seen most clearly when working mothers are
asked if it is difcult to combine motherhood and employment. More
often they say no than yes. When they say it is not difcult they are pro-
tecting their engagement in paid work, which they consider necessary for
their autonomy. So women often prefer to cope individually and not
4. The same idea of ‘impossibility’ is developed by Nicole-Drancourt (1989: 69). She

argues that the traditional family based on gendered roles is coherent with men’s pro-
fessional careers, whereas women’s professional careers do not win support from the
family; from that point of view it is ‘impossible’.
5. This same argument was made explicit by the Conservative Minister with responsi-
bility for women’s issues in the United Kingdom, Ann Widdecombe, in 1995: ‘They
[women with children] will all obviously use childcare facilities, just by denition that
they are working with children . . . . Obviously, if 51 per cent of women work with chil-
dren between nought and ve, they have all got access to some childcare facilities’
(McRae 1995).
344
complain because they fear that if they do they might be sent back home
again to be housewives. Only women who feel quite sure in their pro-
fessional engagement dare point out the problems and demand solutions.
Being a worker and mother requires purposive practices that I will call
strategies. Two other aspects of the concept of strategy should be pointed
out: the combination of elements and the diachronic dimension. Differ-
ent partial strategies build up into more general strategies in a complex
mix whose logic has to be reconstructed through sociological analysis. On
the other hand, strategies cannot be conceived without a link between
objectives and actions: in between there is time. This has methodological
consequences. To grasp the real meaning of strategies, cross-sectional
observation is not enough. It is necessary to consider the sequence of prac-
tices that gives them a sense as a general strategy over time.6
The concept of strategy has often been associated with the family
(Easterlin 1987; Pahl 1984; Tilly 1978, 1979)7. Less common is the point
of view of individual strategies within the family and more specically
women’s strategies (Brannan and Moss 1991; Commaille 1993). I will
focus on women’s individual strategies, which sometimes coincide with
family strategies and sometimes are in conict with them. There is not a
symmetrical relationship between individual women’s strategies and indi-
vidual men’s strategies towards family and employment. In fact, family
strategies are to a considerable extent men’s strategies, as Nicole-
Drancourt (1989) shows in her research on men’s and women’s pro-
fessional careers. When a man develops a professional career all the
family is mobilized around this objective, whereas when it is the woman
who follows this path she has to do so by herself, individually, to make it
compatible with family responsibilities. In this sense, men’s career is a
family strategy, women’s career is an individual strategy. To what extent
this makes it more difcult for women is an interesting subject of
research.
Types of strategies
There are different kinds of strategies developed by women. Paid work is

an example of a complex strategy related to economic need but also to the
construction of a new identity as individuals and citizens.
6. The diachronic dimension of strategies has been pointed out by Nicole-Drancourt

(1989).
7. The concept of ‘family strategies’ poses some theoretical problems, especially from the
perspective of methodological individualism, as Garrido and Gil Calvo (1993: 22) have
pointed out. Probably what explains this contradiction is the fact that the family is con-
ceptualized as an individual entity with no conicting interests between its members.
345
EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
A wide range of reasons explain why women enter the labour market,
objective and subjective, economical and ideological, having to do with
them as individuals and as members of a family. But this article focuses on
a more specic kind of strategy: those used by working mothers to
combine their double role in family and employment. The underlying
hypothesis is that there is a contradiction between women’s new economic
role as workers and the social organization as a whole, including the
family, that has remained practically unchanged, as if unconcerned by
women’s involvement in paid work. This is reinforced by persisting social
perceptions of women as primarily homemakers and mothers even if they
are also workers. In many countries the unsolved contradiction between
old institutions and new roles is being dealt with through individual strat-
egies that women are developing to make work and family compatible, but
these are in many cases just provisional solutions to new problems, not a
model for the future which still needs to be dened.
Typologies of strategies can be established according to different cri-
teria: formal/informal (Roberts 1994), collective/individual (Ellingsaeter
and Ronsen 1996; Laufer 1990), social/economic (Hertz and Ferguson
1998), private/public (Gümen et al. 1994), compromise/choice (Finch and
Mason 1990). The following typology of strategies from the point of view
of women is based on working mothers’ discourse about their family–
employment practices in everyday life:
Main strategies
Complementary strategies
Extreme or undesirable strategies
Indirect strategies.
The main strategies are those that are enough by themselves to
respond to most of the demands of domestic and family work or are
necessary to make the whole domestic machinery work. The specic
content of main strategies is not the same for all countries. For example,
childcare centres or schools may be considered as such in the Northern
European countries, but this is not the case in other countries that have
not yet adapted to the double earner family as the norm. In Spain, main
strategies are, on the one hand, substitute mothers who in the absence of
the real mother play their role. Either they are relatives, most often the
mother of the working mother, or a woman who is paid for that job. On
the other hand, organization and planning of domestic work often
appears in working mothers’ discourse as a main strategy based on direc-
tive functions to coordinate all domestic and family activities. Organiz-
ation as a main strategy is a consequence of domestic responsibility,
which is generally attributed to women, even if their professional com-
mitment is important. Parental leave is another type of main strategy very
346
recently established in Spain, but is probably affordable for only a few as

it is unpaid.8
Complementary strategies are those that by themselves are not usually
enough to solve all the problems that reconciling family and employment
poses but combine with others to compose a general strategy. Sometimes
they complement one of the main strategies when grandmothers or
household workers cannot respond to all domestic needs, in other cases
several complementary strategies add up to a global family–employment
strategy. Those most frequently mentioned are childcare centres, spatial
strategies, time strategies and schools, and simplifying and reducing the
amount of domestic tasks.
It is not clear that what is done when there is little choice may be called
a strategy. In these cases the constraint is high. Extreme or undesirable
strategies are bad either for the mother or for the children, but do exist;
for example not going to work for reasons having to do with domestic
responsibilities (work absenteeism), taking the children to work or leaving
small children alone at home.
Indirect strategies are those practices related to making compatible
family and employment but not recognized as such. The clearest example
is reducing and delaying the number of children.
Men should not be a strategy for women, as they should be equally con-
cerned by family responsibilities as women. In spite of that, women still
consider men as a resource – often an important resource – thus implic-
itly accepting that care and domestic tasks are basically women’s affairs.
Curiously enough, Spanish working mothers’ discourse on how to try to
increase men’s involvement in domestic work is much more elaborate and
extended than demands towards the state. Women are putting a lot of
effort into the ‘education’ of men to make them sensitive to the idea that
sharing domestic tasks is necessary and fair in dual earner families. The
outcome does not seem to be very satisfactory at the moment, but looking
towards the future the involvement of men in unpaid work appears to be
one of the main elements of a new model. In this sense, men are less than
a main strategy (at present) because their help is not as important as other
resources on which working mothers can now count, and more than a
strategy (in the future) as they will hopefully assume that domestic
responsibility concerns them just as it does women.
The second part of the article is based on empirical qualitative and
quantitative data and ndings from two related pieces of research. The
8. Leave arrangements for workers with family responsibilities are currently regulated by
a law passed in 1999 (Conciliación de la vida familiar y laboral de las personas trabajadoras,
Ley 39/1999, 5 November). It considerably extends the cases when workers can take
leave for family reasons (not just to take care of small children but also of disabled or
elderly relatives) but it is unpaid.
347
EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
qualitative study is based on discourse analysis of working mothers living

in partnership (married or cohabiting) in four big Spanish cities: Madrid,
Barcelona, Valencia and Bilbao.9 The quantitative part consists of a survey
representative of Spanish working mothers.10 The two approaches have
been used in a complementary way. The qualitative perspective provides
information on attitudes towards family and employment, as well as on
practices to cope with both worlds. The quantitative survey is used to
establish the relative importance of the different types of strategies
observed through qualitative methods.
The main strategies: women substituting for other women
The strength of the traditional gendered family as a positive model

appears clearly in working mothers’ discourse in relation to children.
Employment seems to be a very good thing for women, but children are
better cared for by a mother. Whereas only 20 per cent of the interviewees
(all of them working mothers) said that it was best for mothers not to work
when the children are small (from the point of view of the mother), the
percentage increased to 48 per cent when the question referred to what
was best for the children. Women’s doubts and often their feelings of guilt
towards the effect of their engagement in employment on the children
limits their enthusiasm for paid work. The traditional family model based
on the mother at home still seems to be considered the best for the chil-
dren, though not any more for women: an unsolved contradiction that
working mothers face and that will probably remain until a positive model
of family for both women and children is constructed.
This partly explains why the two main strategies developed by working
mothers to keep their jobs are based on another woman taking their place
in their absence, the substitute being either the grandmother (usually the
mother of the working mother), or somebody who is paid for that job.
The question that this strategy of substitute mothers raises is to what
extent the family continues being a traditional one, very much the same
as it would be if the mother did not work. It might be that these kinds of
9. The qualitative research was based on six discussion groups and twenty-six in-depth
interviews with working mothers living in partnership in the four main Spanish cities.
The eldwork was done during September and December 1995. The main variables
to select the interviewees were age (20–29, 30–39, 40–49) and social class (high,
middle, low) dened according to the women’s occupation (Tobío et al. 1996). The
text was analysed using the software for qualitative research QSR-Nudist.
10. The quantitative survey (Tobío et al. 1998) was based on 1200 interviews representa-
tive of Spanish working mothers with a maximum error of 3 per cent for a level of
condence of 95 per cent (2 sigma). The eldwork was done between March and June
1998 and the results were analysed using the program SPSS.
348
strategies could be delaying the social awareness of the implications of the

new economic position of women. In a sense this is the perfect solution
for the social organization as a whole, for men in particular and for the
state, as women solve these new problems among themselves and thus
they need not be concerned with them. Jan Windebank’s (1996) com-
parative research on childcare practices, mothers’ employment patterns
and social policies in three different welfare regimes represented by
Sweden, France and Britain shows how mothers who manage to free
themselves from caring duties normally rely on other women, ‘mother
substitutes’, who play the role of the mother while the real mother is away.
In a way the strategies based on women taking the place of other women
look to the past, not to the future. On the other hand, it could be said that
traditional family networks are being used as a way to change the tra-
ditional family. Many Spanish women could not be employed if their
mothers did not help them to take care of their children while they are
away. Working mothers as something normal probably does change the
family, or will change the family, even if another woman plays the role of
the traditional mother.
Grandmothers
Most Spanish working mothers (77 per cent) have a close relative living
in the same town; in 56 per cent of the cases it is their own mother. This
is one basic difference between the Southern European countries and
others where spatial distance between generations is common (Höllinger
and Haller 1990).
The help of the older generation is generally received through femi-
nine lineage:11 54 per cent of women with a mother living nearby were
helped in ordinary domestic tasks by her. The percentage drops to 26 per
cent in the case of the father, 24 per cent for mothers-in-law and 13 per
cent for fathers-in-law. One-third of the interviewees are helped daily by
grandmothers taking care of small children of pre-school age and 38 per
cent taking care of school-age children after school.
The support of the family network and especially of grandmothers
becomes even more important in unusual circumstances (when a child falls
ill, during school vacation, etc.). In 65 per cent of the cases interviewees
11. Different authors have observed this, even though the masculine lineage can also be
relevant (Bloch and Buisson 1996). A recent survey on grandparents in France shows
that the relationship between grandmothers and their daughters who are mothers
is much more intense and frequent than that between grandmothers and sons,
grandfathers and daughters or grandfathers and sons (Attias-Donfut and Segalen
1998: 58–9).
349
EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
are helped by their own mothers, 40 per cent by their fathers, 36 per cent
by their mothers-in-law and 12 per cent by their fathers-in-law.
The role of grandmothers is specially important when they live with
their daughters or sons but this is the exception, as traditional extended
families of three generations represent only 16.6 per cent of all families
according to data from the Census of Population of 1991 and continues
to decrease. In many of these cases the elderly are taken care of instead of
taking care. The case of lone mothers is an exception: 48 per cent of lone
mothers with a child below age 6 live with their own mother, a percent-
age which raises to 69 per cent when the lone mother is single (Fernán-
dez Cordón and Tobío Soler 1998: 70).
A new kind of extended family seems to emerge with separate house-
holds but often in the same building, street or neighbourhood. Using
grandmothers as a resource to help compatibility between family and
employment is frequently combined with spatial strategies to reduce dis-
tances (see Spatial strategies, below). Mothers’ and grandmothers’ homes,
though different, often appear as a sort of continuum, with children living
everyday life in one or the other and considering both of them as ‘home’.
Among lower-class working mothers the help of grandmothers is the
most important strategy because there is little choice. Among middle-class
families grandmothers are often preferred to hiring a ‘stranger’ or taking
small children to daycare centres. Upper classes usually rely on hired
domestic workers, but even in this case grandmothers play a role in con-
trolling their daughters’ domestic arrangements or helping in exceptional
situations.
Grandmothers as a resource have important advantages. In the rst
place, mothers can rely on them. They feel that their children are well
taken care of and that they do not have to worry. In fact they often feel
that grandmothers are better caregivers than they are, so they have no
feelings of guilt towards their children. In the second place, their help is
not limited to a certain number of tasks but is open to whatever is needed
(cooking, cleaning, sewing, taking children to school, etc.). Windebank
(1996) has pointed out that in childcare the important thing is who pro-
vides the exibility to ll in gaps between activities or when something
unexpected happens. In the Spanish case the answer is clear: grand-
mothers, and to a lesser extent other close relatives, provide the exibility.
Last but not least, grandmothers are free.
The help of grandmothers does not seem to be a model for the future,
but just a provisional solution for a generation of transition. Working
mothers of today who are now being helped by their own mothers, when
asked if they would play that kind of role in the future when their daugh-
ters face the problems they are facing now, say they will not. In the future
when they are the age their mothers are now, they see themselves working
350
or retired but not playing the role of the traditional mother with their
grandchildren (which they are not currently playing even as real mothers).
‘Of course I will not stay at home taking care of my grandchildren. That’s very
clear for me.
‘Not as a hobby, I mean I will not take care of my grandchildren just for the
sake of my daughter making more money or leading a better life. I also want
to have a better life, I have endured a lot.’
(Discussion group, working mothers married or living in partnership,
Madrid, lower class, aged 20 to 29)
‘Oh, I will not leave my job to take care of my daughter’s children.’

(In-depth interview, married working mother, middle class, aged 30 to 39)
The idea of reciprocity does not appear in their discourse, perhaps

because they consider themselves to be a generation of transition differ-
ent to their mothers. Or at least it does not appear as if the cycle of inter-
generational reciprocity was closed regarding the younger generations.
Working mothers of tomorrow will have to look for other kinds of sol-
utions; the social organization as a whole will have to change according to
the new position of women in the labour market, and everything will have
to be different.
The last generation of housewives twice plays the role of the mother,
rst with their own children, then with their daughters’ children. The rst
generation of working mothers will not reproduce the role of the grand-
mother carer, or at least that is what they think now. In spite of that belief
– or desire – there is some evidence to suggest that grandparents’ help is
an important resource for childcare, even in countries with generous pro-
vision by the state.
Recent research on grandparents in France (Attias-Donfut and Segalen
1998: 64–72) shows that 25 per cent of mothers who do not take care of
their children below age 3 by themselves receive the help of grandparents
in this task. Figures are even more striking when looked at from the per-
spective of grandparents themselves: 82 per cent take care of their grand-
children on a more or less regular basis (85 per cent of grandmothers and
75 per cent of grandfathers). The social and economic differences are
clearly related to the intensity of care that is provided by grandparents;
among the lower classes it is more often daily/weekly care than among the
middle-upper classes. Inactive grandmothers and those occupied in lower
occupational jobs take care of their grandchildren more often than do
grandmothers in the professions who seldom take care of their grand-
children on a regular basis.
Recent data from the European Household Panel (Eurostat 1997: 5–7)
351
EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
show that 14 per cent of women over 50 (and 7 per cent men) provide
daily free childcare. The percentages for women are highest in Italy (29
per cent) and Greece (25 per cent), higher than the European average in
Belgium and the Netherlands and considerably lower in Denmark (5 per
cent), which was the only Nordic country represented. Spain falls slightly
below the European average. The differences between the number of men
and women carers are higher in the Southern countries and in Ireland,
as well as the number of daily hours allocated to this task by women
(Table 1).
Paid domestic help
Upper-class households have traditionally had nannies, maids and other

kinds of help as the normal way of organizing domestic life, regardless of
the wife’s activities, social or professional. This continues to be very much
the norm, and from the point of view of professional women means that
their involvement in paid work is easier as they can rely on somebody else
who is in charge of the domestic tasks. They can even count on their own
mothers if they cannot supervise directly or an exceptional situation
occurs:
‘I’ve always had a nanny to take care of the children...and a maid to do the
household work . . . and when the children were small my mother lived next
door . . . so I have never had any problem.’
(In-depth interview, working mother, Bilbao, upper class, aged 40 to 49)
In other cases the decision to hire a full-time domestic worker is much

more conscious and risky. Mothers who want to develop a professional
career know that this means long working hours and an attitude of ‘being
available’ whenever they might be needed. In short they have to adopt a
‘masculine’ working model, namely that their commitment to their job
comes rst. The problem is that they often have to put the means to do
that before they are ‘successful’ in their careers, before it is clear that the
effort was worthwhile. Full-time household help is a considerable expense
for most families and there is often the idea that it is a kind of expense that
can easily be cut down as one (usually the woman) can manage one way
or another. There is a contradiction between a family strategy (cutting
down expenses on something which is not perceived as absolutely neces-
sary for the family) and the individual strategy of women who know that
if they do not travel or attend business dinners because they have to stay
with their children they will be suspected of a lack of commitment in their
professional activity.
352
TA B L E 1 . Kinship support for working mothers by relative and specic task (% of working mothers with relatives living in the same town who are
helped by them)
Task Maternal Maternal Paternal Paternal Other parents Other parents

grandmother grandfather grandmother grandfather (female) (male)
Ordinary tasks
Take care of pre-school children 31.3 18.8 15.0 7.4 6.6 2.2
Take care of children after school 38.2 15.7 17.5 8.5 8.1 2.8
Take/bring children from school 18.6 10.6 8.9 4.7 5.6 0.6
Prepare children’s meals 23.0 4.5 6.0 1.1 3.2 0.1
Prepare daughter’s meals 18.3 2.2 3.1 0 1.9 0
Prepare daughter’s husband’s meals 11.9 1.5 3.1 0.2 1.3 0
Clean the house 9.4 0.7 1.7 0 3.2 0.4
Wash clothes 8.6 0.4 1.7 0 2.7 0.3
Ironing 8.8 0.2 2.3 0 1.6 0.1
Shopping 8.6 0.7 2.5 0 1.8 0.1
Take the children to the doctor 8.6 1.9 3.9 0.1 1.8 0.1
None of these tasks 46.2 73.8 75.9 87.4 87.4 95.3
Occasional care of children

On weekends 29.9 20.4 13.8 9.6 6.8 2.3
In the evenings when parents go out 33.7 18.9 16.7 11.2 8.9 2.5
When children are sick 41.6 21.9 16.7 9.9 8.4 2.2
During school vacation 33.0 19.8 13.8 8.5 6.6 1.2
If normal carer not available 11.7 6.5 5.3 3.4 5.6 0.9
Other extraordinary situations 38.9 22.8 18.3 12.6 11.5 5.2
None of these tasks 35.1 60.2 65.0 78.0 78.2 91.1
Note
Encuesta de Compatibilización Familia-Empleo 1998 (special tabulation).
353
EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
‘I used to stay with the children [when they were ill she did not go to work]
until I decided I would not, that I preferred to cut down other expenses. I
decided I would not accept cutting down the maid. You always tend to think
that you can reduce that expense but I have kept cool and said “I prefer to eat
potatoes” . . . I have always had a very atypical job for a woman, under a lot of
pressure, with a lot of stress, not a typical job for a woman. Circumstances have
been that way, I have never desired a certain post, but I have never said no to
the challenges I have been confronted with.’
(In-depth interview, working mother, Madrid, Director-General
of a public company, aged 40 to 49)
The same outcome – hiring domestic help – has a very different

meaning in these two cases. For upper-class working mothers it is not
really a strategy, but just a social practice coherent with the habitus of the
social class to which they belong, though very helpful in making a pro-
fessional career. For other women who want to make a career without that
same background, hiring somebody to play the role of the mother seems
to be a strategy in the strong sense of the word.
Data from the quantitative survey show that only a small proportion of
working mothers (6 per cent) can afford full-time household help. In most
cases (19 per cent of all working mothers) paid domestic childcare is
reduced to the minimum amount of hours necessary, just when the mother
is working, during school holidays, on occasions such as children’s illness
or where working schedules and schools’ opening hours do not coincide.
A domestic worker is often hired for just a few hours per week to do the
heavier tasks.
Other kinds of paid domestic childcare strategies like the ‘assistentes
maternelles’ that are very important in France and are also evident in
other countries such as the United Kingdom or Sweden (Daune-Richard
1993; Sauviat 1996), do not exist in Spain. This is a resource that stresses
the mother-substituting element in spite of there being a wage relation-
ship. The child is cared for in a family environment by what could be con-
sidered a ‘professional mother’. In fact the origin of this activity is the
‘nourrice’, the clearest example of mother substitution.
In some countries like Sweden or France policies to promote paid
domestic childcare are being discussed or implemented, based on the idea
of free choice of parents regarding the kind of care they want for their
children. In France an allowance for childcare in the home was established
in 1986 and in 1994 the benets and tax reductions were considerably
increased. Another allowance to employ ‘assistantes maternelles’ was created
in 1990. Jeanne Fagnani (1998) argues that public expenditure on these
two allowances (together with the ‘Allocation Parentale d’Education’
received by parents who stay at home to take care of their children) has
354
TA B L E 2 . Domestic help for working mothers by specic task (% refer to tasks performed by
domestic help referred to working mothers with domestic help: 27.6%)
Task %
Take care of pre-school children 25.5

Take care of children after school 29.9
Take/bring children from school 23.3
Prepare children’s meals 23.6
Prepare daughter’s meals 21.1
Prepare daughter’s husband’s meals 20.9
Clean the house 85.5
Wash clothes 51.2
Ironing 57.7
Shopping 10.6
Take the children to the doctor 7.0
Note
increased in the past few years much more than that on crèches, in spite
of the shortage of places. The effect of this set of policies seems to have
been increasing polarization between highly qualied mothers who can
afford paid childcare and low-qualied mothers who can only rely on col-
lective childcare.
As a conclusion it may be said that both grandmothers and paid domes-
tic childcare are strategies based on women assuming the responsibility of
caring. There has been a change in the person who plays the mothering
role, not in the association between women and mothering, as Leira
(1994) and Windebank (1996) have pointed out. This means that the
extent to which some women can delegate their mothering responsibilities
and engage in paid work is heavily dependent on other women taking their
place. There seems to be a contradiction, not unrelated to the economic,
social and occupational position, between women who are ‘freed’ from
mothering and women whose main activity is taking care of children,
either their own or other women’s (Table 2).
Organization, planning and control as a main strategy
Organization, planning and control are often mentioned in Spanish

working mothers’ discourse as key elements to cope with family and
employment. Women are ultimately responsible for the household. Even
if they have a variety of resources to make the domestic machinery work,
it is their task to ensure they are smoothly coordinated. In short, women
assume directive functions in the family organization, which include
355
EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
deciding what has to be done, when and by whom. This seems to be the
basis of gender role differences between men and women. Men do ‘help’
in specic tasks but they seem quite incapable of deciding for themselves
what needs to be done.
It is interesting to stress that although the dominant discourse is struc-
tured around the idea that domestic responsibility is not shared, this does
not appear as ‘normal’ or ‘natural’. Men should not just help but assume
their share of domestic responsibility.
What seems to be very important in running the domestic organization
is that everything is programmed beforehand so that there are no
surprises.
‘It is a matter of organization.

Everything has to be programmed to the smallest detail.
Absolutely programmed, everything programmed, everything.’
(Discussion group, Valencia, working mother, upper class, aged 40 to 49)
‘Everything on time and everything very methodical.

Like a machine.’
(Discussion group, Madrid, working mothers, lower class, aged 20 to 29)
More difcult to cope with is the unexpected, the extraordinary event that
breaks the perfect rational organization established. When the unexpected
happens, the risk of anguish seems to be considerable. Making the whole
domestic machinery work even in the working mothers’ absence requires
constant control. In fact this is, according to their discourse, the essence of
domestic responsibility: you never leave it, it goes with you everywhere. The
main tools of domestic responsibility are lists, notes, schedules and the
telephone. All the different things that have to be done and items that have
to be bought are written down in lists to make sure nothing is missing or
forgotten. Through notes, women give instructions to all the different
members of the household. Schedules represent a high level of taylorism;
they are mainly used by women who hire full-time domestic help to
organize work throughout the year. The telephone is mainly used to make
sure everything is under control at home, thus blurring boundaries between
private and professional spheres (De Gournay 1997).
Men as resource and strategy
Men are a resource on which working mothers can count – to a limited

extent – to cope with family–employment problems. No ordinary domes-
tic task (out of a list of eighteen) is more often assumed individually by
356
men living with a working mother, whereas most tasks are usually done
by their wives or partners with no help. For example, more than 75 per
cent of working mothers living as a couple wash and iron with no help
from anybody else, more than 65 per cent prepare lunch and dinner, more
than 60 per cent clean the bathroom, the kitchen and do the vacuuming
and so on. The only two domestic tasks that men usually do by themselves
with no help in more than 10 per cent of cases are watering the plants and
helping the children with homework. More often they perform domestic
tasks jointly with their wives, though it is not clear what this means exactly.
For example, in 46.5 per cent of cases men share with their wives taking
care of the children when they wake up at night, in 42 per cent going to
the supermarket, in 38 per cent helping children with homework and
preparing breakfast, etc.
Two main variables are statistically associated with the participation
of men in domestic tasks, age and occupational level. Men’s involvement
in household tasks is higher among younger working mothers. This may
be interpreted as a positive indicator of change, even though gender
differences are still important. Among women with a higher occupational
level the involvement of their masculine partners increases, both in the
tasks they assume with no help and those that they share with their wives.
Men’s higher occupational level also has an inuence in the division of
domestic work but its sense is different. In this case there is an increase
in tasks shared by men and women, as well as tasks done by others (for
example, paid help) but none of tasks assumed by men themselves with
no help.
In short, Spanish men’s participation in unpaid work, according to what
working mothers say about their masculine partners, is not only small but
also reduced to a secondary role, seldom assuming the responsibility of
any domestic task.12 There seems to be a contradiction between egali-
tarian attitudes and strong differences in actual behaviour (Valiente 1998),
even though small changes have been observed during the past decade
(Alberdi 1988; Meil 1999). Compared to other European countries,
Spanish men living in partnership rank in the lowest position according
to their participation in domestic tasks (Commission des Communautés
Européennes 1991). In spite of that, the perceptions of the Spanish popu-
lation concerning gendered roles of the home are similar to the European
average (Commission des Communautés Européennes 1993).
Working mothers’ attitudes towards men’s participation in domestic
tasks have also been studied. Two-thirds of respondents answered that
they do more household work than their partners do and only 3.5 per cent
12. On the division of domestic work between women and men in Spain see Emakunde
1997; Izquierdo et al. 1988; Prats Ferret et al. 1995; Ramos Torres 1990.
357
EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
that their partners do more than they do. A little over half of the inter-
viewees (53 per cent) said that their partners should do more work at
home. There is not an exact correspondence between those who consider
that partners do less and those who think they should do more, as almost
a quarter of these accept the unequal division of labour. In any case it is
signicant that more than half of working mothers say that men should
increase their commitment towards domestic obligations.
Men seem to ‘help’ increasingly at home, but they seldom share domes-
tic responsibility. They usually do the specic tasks they are asked to, but
they do not seem to be able to think by themselves what needs to be done.
Working mothers complain about always being the ones who have to
think about the domestic machinery as a whole. On the other hand there
is a certain self-criticism as, it is said, women usually have rather xed ideas
about how domestic tasks should be done and tend to impose them. Dis-
course becomes quite contradictory on these issues. Women clearly want
men to get more involved in domestic work but at the same time it is not
clear to what extent they really want to share decision-making.
Though men as a resource to cope with current problems seem to be
quite limited, working mothers are developing a long-term strategy to
increase men’s participation in domestic work based on education.
Accounts about how they are ‘educating’ their husbands are repeated
almost in the same words. Men have to be educated, or rather re-educated
because they still have the idea that women are ‘naturally’ in charge of all
domestic affairs. Men’s clumsiness in domestic tasks is frequently inter-
preted as a masculine strategy to show natural inability. The advice is to
keep cool if shirts are burnt, food is full of salt or the windows are not well
cleaned. Next time they will do it better. The most important thing is
never to say things like: ‘You are useless. Let me do it!’
Another idea mentioned repeatedly is that men also have something to
gain through involvement in domestic tasks. These include not only
painful obligations but also very pleasant duties, for example those related
to their children. The old distant patriarch begins to change into a closer
and ‘maternal’ father who bathes or feeds the children and puts them to
bed.
Looking towards the future, sharing domestic responsibilities with
men is the most often mentioned strategy to make family and employ-
ment compatible. Equal education for sons and daughters is one of the
main aspects of this long-term strategy. It is not easy, as this means trying
to educate their sons to be different to their fathers. They do not want
them to be a model for their children, but nobody knows to what extent
they are being successful, even to what extent they are really trying to
educate them differently, according to a new model not yet fully dened
(Table 3).
358
TA B L E 3 . Who does different domestic tasks: interviewed (working mother), husband/partner,

both together, none of them (%)
Tasks Interviewee Partner Both None
Put the washing machine on 77.1 3.0 14.0 5.9

Ironing 76.4 2.0 9.9 11.7
Clean the bathroom 69.9 1.9 15.1 13.1
Put the clothes on the line 68.4 5.7 18.1 7.8
Prepare food 66.5 6.7 18.4 8.3
Clean the windows 65.0 5.0 16.1 14.0
Do the dusting 62.3 2.7 20.9 14.1
Make the beds 60.7 4.3 28.5 6.5
Use the vacuum cleaner 60.1 5.2 23.0 11.8
Clean the dishes 55.8 6.5 30.7 7.1
Water the plants 54.9 11.8 17.6 15.7
Prepare breakfast 49.9 8.2 38.1 4.7
Do the shopping 49.7 6.4 42.3 1.6
Take children to the doctor 48.6 4.7 39.2 7.5
Take care of children at night 40.0 5.1 46.5 8.3
Take care of children after school 33.1 8.2 33.7 25.0
Take children to school 30.1 8.9 24.9 36.1
Help children with homework 29.5 10.2 38.3 22.1
Note
Complementary strategies
Childcare centres and schools
In the past thirty years Spain has made a great effort in education. The
proportion of the GDP used for this purpose has increased from 2.2 per
cent in 1964 to 5.7 per cent in 1997, almost the average for OCDE coun-
tries (5.9 per cent) (Pérez Díaz et al. 1998: 127). In spite of such positive
evolution, there is a striking difference between the development of
centres for children over 3 (that now covers all the demand) and for chil-
dren below 4, which are scarce and most of them private (Valiente 1997).
When the mother is employed, the proportion of children in collec-
tive childcare is quite important in Spain. According to my own data, in
73 per cent of cases working mothers with a child below age 4 uses some
kind of collective childcare service. Almost 100 per cent of those with 4-
year-olds are in pre-school centres and after that age all are in school.
Childcare centres and schools are supposed to be, and perhaps ought
to be, one of the main strategies to solve family–employment compatibil-
ity problems, but in fact they are not. Most daycare centres and schools
do not take into account the fact that a majority of mothers have a job or,
being unemployed, are supposed to be available for a job. Public schools
359
EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
and crèches usually open between 9 and 9.30 a.m., when most people
begin work between 8 and 9 a.m. Afternoons are also a problem for
working mothers. School usually nishes between 4.30 and 5 p.m. while
most people work until 7 or 8 p.m. Often the centres do not have a canteen
and children have to go home for lunch. One-third of childcare centres
open their doors after the mothers begin work. The lack of coordination
between school hours and working hours is even worse in the afternoons
when 58 per cent of the centres close before the mother has nished work.
The problem persists when children go to school.
Only expensive private centres or a few public innovative ones offer
earlier opening hours as well as extra activities in the afternoons. There is
a major problem of coordination between working schedules and school
schedules because they are not established, considering the fact that a
majority of mothers are now in the labour market. The old gendered
family model is taken for granted by social policy.
When the interviewees begin work after the opening of the childcare
centre or school they are normally the ones to take the children, and the
same applies to picking them up in the afternoon. But the most surpris-
ing nding is that often they are also the ones to take them when they
begin to work before school opens (in the morning) or collect them when
they nish work after school closes (in the afternoon). For example, 24
per cent of working mothers who begin work before the crèche opens take
the child there in the morning. In another 24 per cent of cases it is the
father, 18 per cent grandparents, 15 per cent other relatives, and 18 per
cent alternative ways, including somebody who is specially hired for this
task. The same pattern is repeated in the afternoons and for schools,
grandparents playing an even more important role. This means that sig-
nicant proportions of working mothers are systematically breaking one
of the main rules in any job: arriving on time. In some cases it does not
have direct negative effects, either because in the workplace there is an
understanding of these problems, especially when they are highly femi-
nized, or because the woman is self-employed, but in other cases this poses
a big problem, can be the cause of redundancy or has to be compensated
working additional hours or days.
Another difculty related to schools has to do with holidays. In most
centres no activities are offered to children during vacation, though those
that do are increasing as well as special holiday activities organized by local
councils. What to do with the children during school holidays when
parents are working is currently a major problem. Here again grand-
parents play an important role as caregivers, even if they live in another
town, as children are often sent to spend part of their holidays with them.
The unexpected appears when children get ill and cannot go to school.
Usually somebody from the family network, a friend or a neighbour helps,
360
but this is a source of concern when it has to be solved, as so often happens,

from one day to another. If no other solution is found, one of the parents,
normally the mother, stays at home to take care of the child.
Spatial strategies
A lot of time can be saved in large cities if distances between the main
locations can be reduced. Usually working mothers have to move every
day between three or four different locations: their own home, their
mother’s home, their job and the children’s school. Strategies are devel-
oped to shorten distances between them. Four out of ten interviewees with
a mother living in the same town live in the same neighbourhood, in one-
third of the cases in the same home, building or street. They often look
for an apartment, at or house near their mother’s which sometimes
means that their sister or sisters also live near. This decision is taken when
they get married or in other cases when they have children. Similar spatial
strategies can be found in other countries like France, where mothers and
grandparents often live near, in the same building, street or neighbour-
hood (Attias-Donfut 1995).
Living near their job also helps. In this case the strategy is to try to nd
a job near to where they live, but this reduces their chances of nding a
good job or making a professional career, as Hanson and Pratt have shown
(1995). According to our data, more than half of the interviewees (52 per
cent) lived near or very near to their workplace, a percentage that was
reduced to 35 per cent of their male partners (when they live in partner-
ship). In four out of ten cases, living near or very near their workplace is
a choice women have made. More often than not the job is looked for near
the home (25 per cent) instead of the home near the job (12.5 per cent).
This is partly to do with the fact that in Spain most families (85 per cent
according to the last Census of Population) own their homes which makes
it more difcult to move, but also because moving often means losing the
help provided by the extended family. Working on their own at home or
in small businesses close by is a preferred strategy, though this is only poss-
ible in certain occupations and often means giving up other more inter-
esting professional chances.
Another strategy related to space is driving a car. Only one in ve dual
earner households in Spain have more than one car, rising to one-third
among upper-class households. The percentage of working mothers who
drive the car every day is 29 per cent, higher among younger (36 per cent)
and upper-class women (43 per cent).
361
EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
Time strategies
Quite a lot of research has been done on time strategies in Europe and
the USA (Douthitt et al. 1990; Durán et al. 1998; Hantrais 1993; Hessing
1994; Hewitt 1993; Le Feuvre 1994; Majnoni d’Intignano et al. 1999). In
several countries, such as the UK, USA, Germany or Austria, this is prob-
ably the main strategy and in others, such as the Scandinavian countries,
it is often combined with generous social policy aiming at reconciling
employment and family life. In Italy the reorganization of schedules at the
city level has been the main initiative to help women and men combine
family and work responsibilities (Belloni 1996).
Time strategies are less important in Spain. Part-time or exible jobs
are not very common in this country, though women occupy most of them
and they are increasing.13 Discourse on part-time employment is contra-
dictory. On the one hand, many women say it is an interesting option for
working mothers. A majority of the interviewees say that the best solution
for a mother with small children is to work part time, and 44 per cent say
that they would personally prefer to work fewer hours. On the other hand,
there is certain distrust, as part-time jobs are perceived as insecure, with
lower salaries and worse working conditions. If the reduction in the
number of working hours is associated with a reduction in wages, only 15
per cent of working mothers choose this option. Employment in public
administration is a preferred option as most jobs are full time, but working
schedules usually run from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. leaving the afternoons free. In
the private sector working schedules usually run from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. with
a long break of two or three hours for lunch. This responds to the tra-
ditional Spanish organization of time when the male breadwinner used to
go home for lunch and return to his job at 4–5 p.m. When both parents
work 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., working schedules are a problem and certainly
cannot be considered to be family friendly.
When the interviewees do not work in the afternoon this is the time
devoted to domestic chores. In other cases time strategies also have to do
with leaving most of the domestic work they do personally for the
weekend (shopping, heavy cleaning, ironing, etc.). More than half of the
interviewees normally clean their windows on weekends, 38 per cent do
the vacuuming and dusting, 30 per cent clean the bathroom, 37 per cent
do the shopping, 28 per cent the ironing, etc. In other cases working
mothers do part of the domestic tasks late at night or early in the morning
before work, thus reducing their number of hours’ sleep. More than half
of the respondents make the beds early in the morning before leaving for
13. In Spain 14 per cent of employed women work part time and 2 per cent of employed
men compared to 29 per cent and 4 per cent in the EU (Eurostat 1995: 150).
362
work, 17 per cent prepare lunch or dinner, 17 per cent put the washing
on, 14 per cent clean the bathroom, etc. Evenings are often spent doing
domestic work: 27 per cent cook, 19 per cent iron, and 18 per cent do the
washing and sort out the laundry.
Parental leave has recently been regulated in Spain to adapt the Euro-
pean Directive (96/34/CE) to the national law. The aim of the new law
(39/1999, 5 November) is to help workers reconcile family life and pro-
fessional life. It introduces parental leave, as well as other kind of leave to
care for relatives who need it and reductions in the number of working
hours. Parental leave can be enjoyed by the mother or the father for a
maximum of three years until the child is 6 years old. The main problem
is that the leave is unpaid, so few people will be able to benet from it.
According to my own data, only 11 per cent of working mothers had taken
any kind of leave from their job to take care of the children (before the
new law was passed), while the gure for their husbands or partners is only
2 per cent.
Simplifying and reducing domestic work
Simplifying and reducing the amount of domestic tasks is another com-

plementary strategy, and surprisingly, much less used by working mothers
than might be expected. Simplifying means in the rst place, according to
the interviewees’ discourse, having a practical home that is easy to keep
clean, without too many ornaments to dust. Not having lunch at home is
another way of simplifying domestic work.14 Only 9 per cent of the inter-
viewees said that nobody in their household normally (from Monday to
Friday) has lunch at home. In 59 per cent of the cases all the members of
the household usually have lunch at home. In 32 per cent of working
mothers’ homes some household members have lunch at home and some
elsewhere.
Taylorist methods, such as cooking once every few weeks and freezing
meals, is a commonly used simplifying strategy, and is preferred to buying
pre-cooked food. But in most cases (76 per cent), fresh food is prepared
every day.
Another way of simplifying domestic work is reducing to a minimum
the clothes that have to be ironed. Establishing what ‘has to be ironed’ is,
of course, to a considerable extent ideological. For example, some women
said that many items do not need to be ironed, though traditionally they
have been (sheets, towels, tablecloths, etc.). Wearing clothes that do not
14. It should be noted that traditionally in Spain the important meal of the day is lunch
(between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.), though this is beginning to change, especially in dual
earner families with small children.
363
EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
need ironing or are easy to iron is often mentioned as well as using paper
handkerchiefs or napkins. More than one-third of the interviewees said
that easy ironing is one of the elements taken into account when buying
clothes for them, their partner or children. Almost half of the interviewees
said that only what is absolutely necessary is normally ironed. The other
half answered that whatever needs ironing is ironed.
The fact that simplifying strategies do not seem to be very popular
might have to do with the traditional household still being the positive
model of quality of life. This is most clear in all that matters to do with
food. Women feel responsible for feeding the family, making sure that
they eat natural, healthy, home-made food.
‘Fresh food. Everything freshly cooked. I do not like to buy anything pre-
cooked. I cook everything as fresh and natural as I can.’
(In-depth interview, Madrid, working mother, middle class, aged 30 to 39)
Meals as a family ritual, where they eat, the way the table is set or food
presented can also be important among both lower- and upper-class
women.
‘We always eat in the dining-room. In my home we eat in the dining room.’
(In-depth interview, Madrid, working mother, lower class, aged 40 to 49)
‘The table is always set with a linen tablecloth and linen napkins, very sophisti-
cated, I love it. It’s stupid, but I love it. Very sophisticated, yes.’
(In-depth interview, Madrid, working mother, upper class, aged 40 to 49)
Undesirable strategies
Undesirable strategies occur, for example, when mothers have to take

their children to work because there is nowhere else to leave them.
Domestic service workers often take their own children to their
employer’s house. In the summer when schools are closed it is not strange
to nd children in public administration ofces where their mothers work.
Even highly qualied professionals such as lawyers, doctors or professors
have found themselves in such situations, according to their accounts.
Data from the quantitative survey show that 23 per cent of Spanish
working mothers sometimes take their children to their workplace
because there is nowhere else to leave them; only 9 per cent of their mas-
culine partners do so.
In some cases mothers have to leave their work for a few hours for
reasons to do with their children (visits to the doctor, school meetings,
364
etc.) or even not go to work for a day or two if a child is ill. There is a
kind of social acceptance of these situations, especially in public ad-
ministration and in highly feminized sectors, but on the other hand these
practices go against women’s professional image and are used by employ-
ers as an argument that is supposed to show their lack of commitment
towards employment. One-third of the interviewees answered that some-
times they do not go to work for reasons to do with the children, the per-
centage being only 10 per cent for their partners.
Another undesirable strategy that occasionally occurs among women
living in partnership but more often among lone mothers is leaving their
children alone at home when they are still small. Leaving their children
alone below 12 years of age is a strategy used often or very often by 10
per cent of working mothers; another 7.5 per cent answered that it is
sometimes used.
Indirect strategies
Delaying and reducing the number of children is an indirect strategy.

Spain has the lowest fertility record in Europe: only 1.15 per cent, accord-
ing to the last comparative data (Eurostat 1998b), the lowest in Europe
(1.44) and probably in the world. The EU countries with higher fertility
levels are Ireland (1.92), Denmark (1.75) and Finland (1.75); those with a
lower fertility rate are Italy (1.22), Greece (1.32), Germany (1.36) and
Austria (1.36). Current low fertility in Spain is especially signicant as the
rate was clearly above the European average only twenty years ago. This
means that there is probably some relationship between fertility trends
and all the other changes in the economic and social position of women
that have taken place during this period. Low fertility in Spain can, at least
partly, be considered as an indicator of difculties in coping with family
and employment. Only very recently some limited measures have been
adopted by the national government and by some regions such as Madrid
to encourage fertility, most of them based on tax release and direct econ-
omic grants.
A question on having delayed children for economic/professional
reasons was positively answered by a quarter of the respondents (one-third
between those below 30 years of age).15 A similar question on the reduc-
tion in the number of children received 16 per cent positive answers, 33
per cent between those below age 30.
15. The difference between economical and professional reasons was not made because
the qualitative interviews showed that interviewees did not feel comfortable saying
explicitly that they had delayed or reduced the number of children for professional
reasons.
365
EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
Children are not explicitly said to be an obstacle to employment. A

strategy based on simply having a smaller number of children does not
appear as such in working mothers’ discourse. What is usually said is that
women have few children due to economic reasons. The repeated argu-
ment is that children nowadays cost a lot of money, so most families can
afford only one or two children. The way the argument is constructed is
very interesting because it implies that going back to old models based on
gender roles is no longer possible; in fact it says that female economic
activity is not an obstacle to fertility but rather a condition. One inter-
viewee explained it quite clearly:
‘We thought [she and her husband] that the best would be two children and I
think it will be two. If I was not employed we might have had three children,
but you cannot afford three children with only one income.’
(In-depth interview, working mother, Valencia, middle class, aged 30 to 39)
In synthesis, the best option seems to be one or two children in a dual

earner family. More than two children in a dual earner family causes too
much domestic work which would require a full-time housewife, but one
income is normally not enough for a family of three children. So discourse
on children and fertility does not include women’s powerful desire to work
as an argument; instead it develops around economic need which seems
to be a more solid argument against the idea that women’s involvement in
paid work might be the cause of low fertility.
Conclusion
This article focuses on the contradiction between a new economic model

based on most women in paid work and an old family model based on the
mother as carer and responsible for the home. The new reality of women
as workers is not yet fully acknowledged, thus delaying changes in the
family, in the social organization and in social policy coherent with
women’s role in paid work. New practices in employment have not been
matched by new policies and practices in the family, as well as by percep-
tions and symbols. There seems to be a contradiction between a reality
that is symbolically denied (women as workers) and a symbol that with
increasing difculty stands up (women primarily as mothers). It is not so
much the empirical fact of rapidly increasing participation of women in
the labour market that is relevant any more but the social recognition of
this new role. Until this is achieved, the way out of working mothers’
dilemma between the two roles and the superimposition of the obligations
they entail will probably not be found. Women will continue working, as
366
they have done in many other periods of history, but their work will
remain invisible, anonymous, as if they were not really needed.
Most working mothers’ family–employment practices are strategies.
They are not reproducing past behaviour or established models. They
have to develop innovative and purposive action to answer to new prob-
lems, which they are often facing for the rst time. Sometimes one main
strategy is enough to successfully combine their two roles in the family
and in the labour market, in other cases several different partial strategies
are required to make their everyday life viable.
In Spain the family–employment relationship is not yet constructed as
a social problem that concerns everybody and requires solutions. Women
are dealing individually with the problems that being both a worker and
mother pose, often relying on other women who play the role of the
housewife while they are away. The main strategy seems to be the help of
the preceding generation of women – the grandmothers – most of whom
have been housewives all their lives. Grandmothers as mother substitutes
are available to the rst generation of working mothers. Many of these
would not be able to keep their jobs without the help of their own
mothers, yet this strategy does not seem to be a model for the future.
Working mothers of today will not reproduce the role their mothers are
playing as substitute mothers. Other strategies currently used to cope with
a new situation are only affordable by a minority of women or are not
desirable. Social unawareness of the consequences of women’s involve-
ment in paid work will probably increase its negative effects, not only on
women and children. A new model needs to be dened concerning women
and the state, as well as men and the market.
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Constanza Tobío is Profesora Titular at the Department of Political Science and

Sociology, Universidad Carlos III of Madrid. Her main areas of research are
urban sociology, social structure and the family–employment relationship. She
is currently engaged in research on Spanish women’s strategies to cope with
family responsibilities and paid work both from a qualitative and quantitative
perspective.
Address for correspondence: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Departamento de

Ciencia Política y Sociología, Despacho 7.38, Calle Madrid 126, Getafe 28903
Madrid, Spain.
371
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European Societies

3(3) 2001: 339-371

WORKING AND MOTHERING

DOI: 10.1080/14616690120079369 339

on different combinations of social policy and women’s activity. In the

towards a similar pattern is reinforced when data on full-time/part-time

The concept of strategy as an analytical tool to understand working

The current generation of Spanish mothers with small children is the

4. The same idea of ‘impossibility’ is developed by Nicole-Drancourt (1989: 69). She

There are different kinds of strategies developed by women. Paid work is

6. The diachronic dimension of strategies has been pointed out by Nicole-Drancourt

recently established in Spain, but is probably affordable for only a few as

qualitative study is based on discourse analysis of working mothers living

The main strategies: women substituting for other women

The strength of the traditional gendered family as a positive model

strategies could be delaying the social awareness of the implications of the

‘Oh, I will not leave my job to take care of my daughter’s children.’

The idea of reciprocity does not appear in their discourse, perhaps

Paid domestic help

Upper-class households have traditionally had nannies, maids and other

In other cases the decision to hire a full-time domestic worker is much

Task Maternal Maternal Paternal Paternal Other parents Other parents

Occasional care of children

The same outcome – hiring domestic help – has a very different

Take care of pre-school children 25.5

Organization, planning and control as a main strategy

Organization, planning and control are often mentioned in Spanish

‘It is a matter of organization.

‘Everything on time and everything very methodical.

Men as resource and strategy

Men are a resource on which working mothers can count – to a limited

TA B L E 3 . Who does different domestic tasks: interviewed (working mother), husband/partner,

Tasks Interviewee Partner Both None

Put the washing machine on 77.1 3.0 14.0 5.9

Childcare centres and schools

but this is a source of concern when it has to be solved, as so often happens,

Simplifying and reducing domestic work

Simplifying and reducing the amount of domestic tasks is another com-

Undesirable strategies occur, for example, when mothers have to take

Delaying and reducing the number of children is an indirect strategy.

Children are not explicitly said to be an obstacle to employment. A

In synthesis, the best option seems to be one or two children in a dual

This article focuses on the contradiction between a new economic model

Alberdi, Inés (1988) Los hombres españoles, Madrid: Inner-Instituto de la Mujer,

Bourdieu, Pierre (1980) Le sens pratique, Paris: Editions de Minuit.

Meil, Gerard (1997) ‘La participación masculina en el cuidado de los hijos en la

Constanza Tobío is Profesora Titular at the Department of Political Science and

Address for correspondence: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Departamento de

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