New Zealand Cultural Norms of Parenting and Childcare

The aim of this qualitative study of 40 New Zealand mothers is to explore their ideas, beliefs and values around the roles of mothers, parents and formal childcare in meeting the care needs of children, and how that relates to decisions about labour force participation for mothers. The study also provides information on the difficulties experienced by mothers in this study in combining paid work and parenting, and their perceptions of the roles of the Government and employers in relation to other provisions to assist parents in combining their dual roles of parent and paid worker.

Being a qualitative study of 40 mothers, the findings of this study cannot be generalised to all New Zealand mothers. The sample is skewed towards those in paid work, particularly full-time work, and those in middle to upper income and occupational groups. However, it does identify the issues that determine decisions around paid work and parenting for these mothers from throughout New Zealand, and how they perceive motherhood in early twenty-first century New Zealand. These findings are supplemented by findings from a random sample survey of New Zealanders (Gendall 2003) on attitudes of New Zealand society in general towards mothers’ roles, and of a national random sample survey of parents on issues of work, family and parenting by the Ministry of Social Development (2006), published subsequent to this study being undertaken. The findings presented in this report are, thus, indicative of how New Zealand norms of motherhood, childcare and paid work may differ from those in various European countries, as presented by Pfau-Effinger (2004), which could contribute to policy development in this area for New Zealand.