These may include those families who live in a multi-generational family.
The question is whether they have special entitlements, such as in Portugal where the 1999 legislation on family leave granted grandparents entitle-ments to parental leave, and whether such leave is used. The rights to and take-up of parental leave for same-sex couples is likewise seldom investi-gated. Families with a handicapped child and families with a multiple birth may also experience special needs and requirements; for example, in the Netherlands there is additional parental leave for multiple births.
3.5. Ethnic minorities and immigrants
Ethnic minorities and immigrants are often marginally placed in society and thus at greater risk of becoming socially excluded. This group is materially poorer than the average population, and have vulnerable relations to the la-bour market; for example, in Germany the unemployment rate is twice as high for this group compared to the general population (European Commis-sion, 2004). When in employment, the involvement in low-paid jobs, with-out social security rights, is high for this group. Especially in Swith-outhern Europe, much of the domestic work and care for the elderly is carried out within the black economy by immigrants, who hold no associated social rights.
Even when entitled to parental leave, care culture or lack of awareness of social rights may prevent some from taking up parental leave. Lack of data, however, continue to be a major problem, for the identification of problems of eligibility and take-up for this group.
3.6. Conclusion
This chapter has sought to identify the special situations that face those families with children who are seldom heard of in the parental leave policy debate. The ambition in the chapter has been to give an account of the extent to which leave policies recognise and accommodate various dimensions of diversity. This has been a far from systematic review of the available re-search, but apart from gender, and to some degree education, the sad news is that there seems to be a lack of focus on the specific circumstances and needs of those diverging from the standard, whether it be in terms of em-ployment, family type or ethnicity. The good news is that the issue of paren-tal leave is gaining ground as an established field of research, with the
in-creasing incorporation of the issue in large-scale documentation and sur-veys.
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