Bringing Up Baby

The welfare state’s role begins before birth, with an extensive schedule of visits to the new parents from the first ultrasound, but its importance grows when the child arrives.

Births normally take place in a hospital—although some also choose home birth at their own cost—and almost all maternity hospitals in Finland are public. (Other sectors in Finland have now been abandoned to the whims of the market, but this one has been kept almost entirely within the state.) In addition to the box, there’s a series of maternal clinic visits to look after the parents and the baby, as well as various forms of support—both monetary and in-person—for those that need them.

In the last few years, maternity hospitals have seen fewer visits than before. Finland used to have a comparatively high fertility rate for a Western European country, but in just a few years it’s crashed to one of the lowest. What this means or how it should be handled poses a delicate question – not least because much of the rhetoric more-or-less subtly subordinates the interests and choices of families (and particularly women) to nationalist goals. At the more ridiculous end of this debate was former Social Democrat Party leader Antti Rinne’s suggestion of ‘vauvatalkoot’, roughly translated as ‘baby festival’, implying some sort of a vast collective effort for making babies.

Nevertheless, it is a fact that the average desired number of children for people continues to be higher than the actual number of children they end up having. This tells a story of unfulfilled dreams – fundamentally, the issue may well indicate people do not feel secure enough about their own futures. The welfare state cannot solve all of these questions, but it can shed light on a few answers.

Whether the birth rate is low or high, helping families in raising their children is a good in itself. The simultaneous pressures of work, family life, and other demands have been exacerbated by pandemic control measures which left grandparents and others in the vicinity of the family unable to help. But the current centre-left government of Finland is now planning reforms that will make it easier for families to both form and sustain themselves, ranging from various changes in the education system to the removal of the requirement of sterility for legal gender reassignment, among other things.

The reform that will affect the largest number of people is the equalisation of family leave for both parents. A long parental leave is, of course, a key element of a welfare state, and Finland has so far offered mothers 105 working days and fathers approximately a half of that – but there are obvious concerns about the inequalities this creates in the labour market, and a consensus on solving the issue has long existed among Finnish parties.

This government has ended up with a model in which both parents have seven months of parental leave, and the possibility of assigning at most three months to the other parent. The legislation will still go through a few more rounds in Finnish parliament, but it’s intended to be approved in autumn 2021 and enter into force the next year. By expanding and privileging the time to spend with family, away from work, it’s an example of how the welfare state can place the needs of families above the logic of the market.

Subsidising Family Life

When children get older, families can choose between day care and subsidised home care. Finland has a universal right to day care—municipalities must ensure that there is a spot in free day care available for any kid that might need one—but private and NGO-based day cares also exist, and day cares in general are everywhere: in suburban districts, it’s hard to walk for more than a few blocks without running into a yard full of children shouting, playing, or following the caregivers in a line, kitted out in reflective vests so drivers can spot them.

While there is a wealth of opportunities for parents to find someone to watch their kids, day care is not mandatory, or the only alternative. Families that do not send their children to day care can instead get a subsidy for raising them at home. This subsidy is essentially the sum the state would otherwise spend on day care, amounting to a few hundred euros a month, and from time to time several cities have chosen to supplement it with their own additions.

The home care subsidy has long been a subject of controversy. One feminist critique argues that it keeps women out of the workforce – there’s a longstanding connection between day care and women in work, which has traditionally meant a way to sustain and improve women’s lives without the need to depend on men as ‘breadwinners’. On a similar basis but with vastly different motivations, the home care subsidy has also been attacked by pro-capitalist liberal right and, from the opposite end, is defended by social conservatives.

But not all feminists are against the subsidy, by any means. Some believe it can offer parents—not just mothers—a temporary exit from the daily demands of capitalist wealth creation. As Katri Kiukas, the author of a new book on feminist perspectives on pregnancy and motherhood, writes:

Those supporting the subsidy cuts are stable middle-class men and women with careers, while those using it most are poor, less-educated mothers, whether immigrants or born in Finland. With low wages and no such opportunities for creativity, self-realisation, or careers that [the] middle class considers self-evident, for them, taking care of a child at home may offer a more meaningful experience than work.

For many families, though, these questions of day care and home care are not ideological – they are dependent on what sort of a solution suits their family at a given time. The home care subsidy is not the only subsidy parents receive. Finland also has a child allowance of approximately €95-183 per child, depending on the number of children—the rate rises as the family grows—which is higher for single parents.

This allowance has also gone through several political struggles, including suggestions against paying it to the richest families (opposed by the Left, in the great tradition of universalism inherent in the Nordic welfare state) and for equalising the rates for the number of children. But no-one would dare to suggest removing a benefit like this entirely.

Changing the Future

These are not all the services on offer from the welfare state. Municipalities offer inexpensive temporary caretaking services to families feeling acute pressure. Schools and general hospitals provide care for minor and serious illnesses. And the trade union movement remains vital to ensuring wages are high enough to allow caregivers to sustain family life.

But not everything is perfect. For instance, writers like Kiukas have raised the topic of obstetric violence – the often brutal treatment of mothers in the process of giving birth, and the refusal to take their needs and feelings into account. Finding and fixing issues like this remains an ongoing effort.

Crucially, the services described here are not individual, but a part of a greater whole. Not only is family-related policymaking at the heart of Finnish social policy – there is also no family policy without a widespread, expansive, and universal social policy. This, in turn, is connected to a holistic vision of a society based on solidarity and inclusion. Finland’s experience shows the degree to which marketised economies limit the freedom for people to choose how to have a family, while welfare states tend to support their choices.

There are plenty of reasons that people may choose not to have children. But there is no question that the more sinister themes of contemporary politics – from the drudgery of working life to the ecological crisis and rampant consumer culture – provide a deeply unstable arena for those decisions to be made. The left has answers that can provide more fulfilling lives for parents, children and the wider community. But its task in the coming years is to show that these cannot co-exist with the demands of capitalism.