Analyses increasingly feature claims that European states have departed from the male breadwinner ideal and are moving towards a dual-breadwinner model (Lewis, 2006). At the same time, a growing number of scholars have advanced the ideal of a universal caregiver (or dual-earner dual-carer) society as the solution to reconcile in an egalitarian manner the interests of men, women, and children (Fraser, 1994; Gornick en Meyers, 2008). This paper contributes to this debate by analyzing the extent to which European countries’ childcare policies promote gender equality in paid and unpaid work. In order to overcome the limits of single-programme studies, the focus is on the institutional characteristics of both childcare services and parental leave provisions. In the analysis, fuzzy-set ideal type approach is used to evaluate European countries’ conformity to four ideal divisions of labour: male breadwinner, caregiver parity, universal breadwinner and universal caregiver. The results of this analysis are also used to assess similarities and differences across European countries, and the extent to which the European Union has fostered convergence towards a single model.
