| Summary: | It is of crucial importance for professional women to strike a balance between childcare and work.Help from family can effectively reduce women’s time spent on childcare.Based on relevant survey,this paper successively analyzes the time of mother,father and grandparents invested in childcare and explores how women are supported by their family in this duty.Infant and childcare can be as time-consuming as a full-time job.Mothers have always played a primary role in infant and childcare,while grandparents,offering a helping hand to effectively alleviate the mother’s workload,can play an alternative role,which is of great significance.This is particularly true in early childhood,when more than 40% of Chinese children are under the care of grandparents,with relatively limited participation of their fathers.Childcare gap between mothers and fathers is even larger in rural China.It is quite common for a family to turn to nursery services when their child are three years old to significantly alleviate the mother’s childcare burden.When it comes to the design of relevant public policies and projects,consideration should be given to the role of each family member in taking care of infants and children in different growth stages to explore more options for childcare.More specifically,in addition to motherhood,grandparents’ support should be valued,and fatherhood should be enhanced.
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