Public Call for Interested Parties to Participate in the Project

Dear fellow citizens,

As part of a project to improve birth rates and support families, Kula Municipality is carrying out another in a series of activities aimed at helping families raising children balance family and work commitments and reduce the psychological cost of parenthood.

The project establishes an ONLINE SERVICE to support families with a range of household maintenance tasks, repairs, yard and garden upkeep, household chores (laundry, ironing, cleaning), as well as childcare and support with children’s learning.

The service is intended as an online database—a directory of everyone providing similar services throughout the Municipality of Kula, displaying providers’ services and contact details, along with descriptions of their qualifications and service offerings. This will enable every family to hire professional support safely and affordably, while everyone providing these services will receive free advertising and access to clients. The service will be continuously available as an online database, that is, a website with regularly updated information.

If you are a teacher, primary school teacher, preschool educator, or student looking for extra work and income working with children; if you have the need and skills to earn extra money by working as a domestic helper performing household maintenance, lawn mowing, repairs and similar services, apply to be included in the service provider database, giving yourself access to a market for extra income and an opportunity for employment.
APPLICATIONS ARE ACCEPTED BY PHONE AT 065/ 241-24-97 on every business day from 08-14, by calling or sending an SMS. Please provide your contact details and specify the service you offer. The relevant staff will then contact you about the next steps for joining the online service. The application period runs from 30 October to 10 November 2023.

As a responsible municipality, we recognized that various measures needed to be implemented to reduce the psychological cost of parenting by making household management easier. The psychological cost of having a child is an economically immeasurable concept; it represents the subjective experience of investment, or of deprivation, frustration and sacrifice, primarily on the part of women. In Serbia, parenting is largely equated with motherhood—specifically intensive motherhood—which entails women/mothers unconditionally and exhaustingly devoting themselves to their loved ones, their children, their spouse and the household, and increasingly today to their elderly parents and other relatives who need help. The psychological cost of parenting and the related stress it causes are economically immeasurable factors that often underlie decisions not to have another child, or not to have more children. Fathers also pay the psychological cost of parenting and family life, as they face social pressure to be breadwinners in circumstances where this is increasingly difficult to achieve, and thus experience what is known as a “crisis of masculinity.”

In many countries, household chores have been made much easier by the availability of various services that help save the time and energy parents—especially working parents—need to manage their households successfully. Thanks to these savings in time and energy, parents feel far less burdened by raising and caring for a child, can spend more time together in a meaningful way, take part in recreational activities, and so on. In our community, the greatest burden of these tasks once again falls on the wife/mother, and possibly on her informal support networks (female relatives).

It is precisely in this spirit that this parenting support program is being organized.