PARENTS, WORK, AND CHILDCARE IN GERMANY

In the last decade, the work-family landscape has changed significantly in Germany. After decades of low investment in childcare and policies that promoted a family model where mothers stayed at home to raise their children, there has been a significant expansion of investments in public childcare, incentives for mothers to return to work sooner after childbirth, and for fathers to more equitably share in child rearing tasks (Blome, 2017). The lack of public supports had led to record low fertility rates (Germany, with low birth rates of 1.44, is the only country in the world with several decades of fertility rates well below the replacement rate of 2.1 (Bujard, 2015)) and costly losses in terms of human capital for German employers as skilled female workers had long periods of absence from the labor market.