A widening gap? The political and social organization of childcare in Argentina.

This article examines how social policies and programmes implemented in Argentina shape the political and social organization of childcare. The author seeks to analyse how welfare institutions are currently responding to emerging needs, and to what extent they facilitate the defamilialization of childcare for different social classes. Because Argentina lacks a truly unified ‘care policy’, four different kinds of facilities and programmes are examined: employment-based childcare services; pre-school schemes; social assistance care services; and poverty reduction strategies. It is argued that far from offering equal rights and services with a universalist cast, these ‘caring’ institutions reflect the ethos of the current welfare model in Argentina: a fragmented set of social policies based on different assumptions for different social groups, which in turn filter down to the social organization of childcare.