Thanks to improved childcare options, around 40 percent of mothers with small children are now working. This is a significant increase, but hundreds of thousands of daycare places are still missing.
The proportion of working mothers with small children has increased significantly in recent years, also due to improved childcare options. In 2022, 39.7 percent of mothers with at least one child under the age of three were employed, according to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis). The proportion has thus increased by around nine percentage points within 14 years. However, working mothers with young children are still in the minority. At the start of the time series in 2008, their share was still 30.8 percent.
For ten years, children from the age of one have had a legal right to a day-care center place. This obviously has an effect: “One reason might be the expansion of childcare as part of the introduction of a legal entitlement to early childhood care,” emphasized the statisticians.
investment programs for daycare expansion
According to the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ), the first investment program started in 2008 to promote the expansion of the day-care center. With the first three investment programs, the federal government contributed a total of 3.28 billion euros to the expansion of childcare places for children under the age of three.
As part of the first three investment programs, more than 560,000 additional childcare places in day-care centers and day-care centers were funded, the BMFSFJ reports. The funds from the fourth and fifth investment programs are to be used to create a further 190,000 places for children before they start school.
“Offer must be further expanded”
According to the BMFSFJ, the federal government is currently providing an additional one billion euros with the fifth investment program. The basis for the fifth program is the economic stimulus package to deal with the consequences of the corona pandemic in 2020 and 2021. This makes it possible to create up to 90,000 new childcare places in day care centers and day care. “These funds can also be used for conversion measures and investments in equipment or to improve the hygiene situation,” it says.
The industrialized nations organization OECD advises taking further measures to enable women to work longer hours. “To achieve this, the range of childcare and early childhood education must be further expanded,” says the current economic report on Germany.
Despite the legal entitlement to childcare, there are still 378,000 day-care places nationwide, according to a report by the editorial network Germany (RND) from a response by the BMFSFJ to a request from the Left Group. In the age group one to three years there is a lack of 291,000 places; in the group three to six years there are 87,000. The information was based on figures from 2021, it said.
More and more mothers are employed
However, according to Destatis data, the previous day-care center expansion has had hardly any effect on the employment of fathers. In 2022, 89.6 percent of fathers with a child under the age of three were employed, in 2008 it was 88.9 percent. “Mothers in particular often take on the care work and adapt their employment to the family situation,” says the Federal Office.
A total of 8.2 million mothers with underage children lived under one roof last year. 2.1 million of them had at least one child under the age of three. Regardless of the age of the child, the employment of mothers has increased over the past 14 years: in 2008, 56.7 percent of all mothers with children under the age of twelve were still employed, by 2022 it was already 64.1 percent. In the case of mothers with older children aged twelve to under 18, the proportion rose from 76.8 to 84.0 percent. Overall, more than two out of three mothers of minors were in the job last year, compared to 62.8 percent in 2008.