Market-oriented approaches to childcare risk overlooking the relational nature of care work. Drawing on survey and qualitative interview data from low-income urban Bangladesh, this mixed-methods study foregrounds how mothers weigh trust, proximity, moral values, and emotional safety when deciding who cares for their children, and how these priorities shape their willingness to use home-based childcare services and to pursue paid work.
Researchers: Kate Brockie; Tasnim Tabassum Diana; Taslima Akhter, Shamshad Navia Novelly, Farhana Kabir; Aloka Ahmed Oishy; Raisa Adiba; Shaila Ahmed, PhD; Munshi Sulaiman, PhD; and Naila Kabeer
Partners: Gates Foundation (GF)
Timeline: 2023–2026
Status: Ongoing
Contact: Raisa Adiba; raisa.adiba@bracu.ac.bd
Context
The link between women’s labour force participation and access to affordable, quality childcare has become a central concern in development discourse across the low-income urban Global South, where caregiving falls disproportionately on women and formal childcare remains limited or unreliable. In Bangladesh, female labour force participation stands at 44.2 percent against 80.9 percent for men, a gap shaped in large part by the invisible burden of unpaid childcare. In urban slums dominated by nuclear households, women often lack kinship-based support and have few viable options to balance work and care. This study draws on a larger BRAC evaluation testing a decentralized, home-based childcare model designed to address the trust and access barriers institutional daycare cannot.
Objectives
This study aims to understand how mothers in low-income urban Bangladesh make decisions about paid work and childcare, and what they value most when entrusting their children to others. It seeks to identify the qualities—such as trust, proximity, moral values, and emotional safety—that shape mothers’ choices between caring for children themselves and using external providers. The study also aims to learn how mothers’ aspirations for employment interact with available care options, and to draw out what these preferences imply for designing a viable, care-centered, home-based childcare model that families would actually use and trust.
Methodology
This study uses a mixed-methods design that pairs a large survey with later qualitative fieldwork. The survey reached 3,529 mothers of children under eight and was carried out between May and June 2024 in four urban areas: Dhaka, Gazipur, Tongi, and Savar. After the survey, BRAC introduced a home-based childcare model and tested two ways of encouraging take-up—cash support given with conditions attached and cash support given without conditions—assigning families to these options at random over a six-month period. The qualitative phase, conducted between February and March 2025, drew on detailed interviews with twelve carefully chosen mothers in Dhaka, where uptake of the service was highest, and Tongi, where it was lowest, with an even balance of mothers who used the service and those who did not. These were complemented by interviews with BRAC’s female field supervisors to capture frontline perspectives.
Findings and Recommendations
Forthcoming.
