The cornerstone of unity

70 CHILD HOME-CARE ALLOWANCE 
The child home-care allowance is a family policy subsidy for people who take care of their under 3-year-old at 
home, and therefore do not exercise their right to use a municipal daycare. I suggested a subsidy system for 
child homecare already in the late 1950s, but it took three decades to become reality. 
It all started when I had finished my studies and had also participated in working life and wanted to stay at 
home with our three small children. I was encouraged by the opinion of child psychologist, who said that to 
secure favourable development, a child’s two, and preferably three, first years should be spent in the care of one 
and the same person. Different day-care carers have different characteristics, and this restlessness was 
considered undesirable for babies and toddlers. It was not as easy in the 1950s to hire nannies as it had been in 
earlier times but, on the other hand, the proportion of women in our labour force rose to 40% while it was only 
26% in Sweden. 
However, the reality was that when a mother stayed at home to take care of her children, family income 
diminished and consumption declined; if the children were in municipal day-care the mother could continue in paid 
work. The family paid for day-care according to its ability, but the payment only covered part of the real costs, as 
working mothers also gathered a pension while those at home lost out. In my opinion, young families who 
performed this valuable task were placed in an unfair situation. 
As I was a journalist, I started writing articles on this social injustice, and even took the issue to the 
Association of Population Policy’s board of directors, who took an interest because the Finnish birth rate was 
declining alarmingly. I also raised the question with the Centre Party (at that time Agrarian Party), which included 
the child home-
care allowance, or mother’s salary as it was first called, in its agenda in 1962. We founded a 
working group on family policy and constructed a legislative proposal on the issue. 
I also acquainted myself with the Soviet day-care system, which was created after the Revolution. All mothers 
of small children were in paid work in order to contribute to the construction of society and the system. Children 
were in public day-care centres. In contrast, we who supported the child home-care allowance were of the 
opinion that families in a democracy should be able to exercise freedom of choice with regards to child care, and 
that this should also be financially supported by society. The corresponding state committee supported the 
proposal, but its opposing counterpart objected to it in government negotiations. When the Centre Party formed 
a minority government (innovation no. 7) in 1976, a pilot child homecare allowance scheme was launched. 
One would have assumed that this reform would gain easy approval, but that was not the case. The most 
significant adversary was the Social Democratic Party, which wanted the subsidy to be directed specifically at 
mothers who were already in working life. They claimed that the Centre Party was pushing a subsidy for farm 
owners who were at home in any case, even though the reality was that only a couple of thousand of the 60,000 
children born each year were born to farmers. The academic women’s associations also opposed the child 
home-
care allowance on the grounds that they felt it would hinder women’s career development. 
The issue was disputed for several years, especially between the two major parties, both among mps and 
within the government. I even personally clashed with my colleague, Minister Vappu Taipale. In 1986 the child 
home-care allowance was finally approved, to be granted for children under age three, after the parental 
allowance period, and it was also paid for other children under school age. In 1990 all children under the age of 
three were entitled to the subjective right to day-care (innovation no. 69), which was pushed by the Social 
Democratic Party. That settled the political disagreement over the matter. According to child psychologists, 
children over the age three would have had a particular need for day-care to aid their development, but it was a 
good start. 
Child home-care allowance was at its height at the beginning of the 1990s, when it was granted to 150,000 

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families, but the ensuing years of economic depression cut this number by 20%, and it still has not risen back to 
its initial level; in 2004 it was granted to 138,000 families in Finland. Since then the number of families haslittle 
by little diminished being 110 000 in 2016. 
The allowance is nowadays 338 euros per month for children under three years of age (2017) and smaller for 
any other child under sch
ool age. Opinions have been voiced recently in public, according to which women’s 
careers are harmed by the years they spend looking after children at home, and municipal daycare is 
recommended to remedy this. Municipal daycare institutions in Finland are 
nowadays “full”. However, it is vital 
that the home care allowance survives as an alternative. The personal circumstances of families with children 
and mothers vary, as do the guiding principles of childcare and raising children. The home care allowance gives 
many women in Finland the economic opportunity to care for their offspring at home. 
Marjatta Väänänen 
– Minister for Social Affairs 1982–1983