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Identifies the main trends in family policy across European countries over the last decade or so and analyses how these developments are to be interpreted, especially in the context of what they reveal about how the Third Way approaches the family. Family policy, and more generally the relationship between the state and the family, is changing. Among the most notable changes are: a heightened interest on the part of the state in family solidarity (especially as it relates to the behaviour of men); a move to treat children independently of their families and to grant them individual rights; a tendency to treat both parents as workers; a move towards a greater welfare mix; and a move towards gender neutrality for the purposes of social policy. In terms of an explanation, while many of these developments have some common currency with Third Way thinking, they are not fully comprehensible in terms of the advance of a Third Way project as such. Rather, they draw their origins from different sources, and, by and large, are very influenced by historical and contemporary processes at national level.

This chapter discusses social citizenship and identifies three main components: reciprocity (necessary to support horizontal redistribution), social inclusion (supporting vertical redistribution), and trust in institutions (vital to the political legitimacy of the enterprise). It reviews current challenges to the welfare state from population ageing, changes in family and household patterns and in the labour market, the growing assertiveness of citizens, and other factors, and briefly examines government responses in Europe.

Centralizing states appropriated the authority of kin groups and ethnic and religious institutions over family life to varying degrees. The ways they regulated family and intimacy did not depend on whether they claimed commitments to secularism or whether family laws were framed in culturally specific discourses. Salient discourses about nations and their constituent cultural groups and traditions interacted with social structure, the nature of state-society engagements under predecessor regimes, the coalitions regimes aim to build, and regime projects to change state-society relations. These interactions influenced approaches to form citizens, recognize cultures, and make families. The chapter demonstrates that this new version of the state-in-society approach to social analysis explains the extent to which regimes changed the personal laws they inherited, the effects of these changes on women's rights, the autonomy of individuals, the nuclear family, sources of family law, and the extent of legal pluralism.

This is a book about families and how they have changed since 1960. One way of investigating family change is by means of a restudy. This chapter examines different ways of theorising social change, exploring particularly how changing gender relations and patterns of family formation are seen as a fundamental aspect of social change. It develops a critique of these conceptualisations which is both theoretical and based on empirical research on families and kinship. In 1960, the social networks within which families were embedded were distinguished as either close knit or loose knit, they were gendered, had women at their heart and involved trust and shared norms and values. The difference between this and conceptions of social capital is that social capital is seen as a resource, whereas in the 1950s and 1960s, social networks were understood primarily in terms of solidarity.

This chapter draws together the findings of this study and discusses their policy implications, returning to the theoretical debates of and evaluating them in the light of the findings. The discussion pays attention to change and continuity in family practices since 1960 and the ways in which they are influenced by class, culture, gender, and place. The chapter begins by looking at changes in the welfare state and family policies between 1960 and 2002, exploring how they relate to and are affected by the ways in which families have changed over the same period. Then, it discusses the main findings, drawing out their implications for policy and, in particular, for debates about social capital and social exclusion. It also explores the theoretical and conceptual implications of the findings and of the way in which the baseline study and the restudy conceptualise social change.

Family change theory (Kagitcibasi, 1996, 2007) is an alternative approach to explain how modernisation and globalisation processes affect the family. The most important assumption of the theory is that when traditional interdependent cultures modernise, they need not necessarily develop in direction of an independent family model typical for Western individualistic societies. Instead, they may develop towards a family model of emotional interdependence that combines continuing emotional interdependencies in the family with declining material interdependencies and rising personal autonomy. In this chapter a preliminary evaluation of the empirical status of family change theory is given, based on a review of recent cross-cultural studies. It will be shown in how far the few studies that have been systematically conducted in this respect have found results supporting or not supporting aspects of the theory, and where the strengths and problems of this research lie.

This chapter examines gender equality and relative levels of violent mortality. It focuses on how differences in female labor force participation affect sex differences in suicide and homicide mortality across ages, nations, and time periods. It also considers the consequences of family changes involving marriage, divorce, and childbearing that relate closely to women's work. It gives the theoretical arguments concerning gender equality and sex differentials in suicide and homicide mortality.

In this chapter, the authors evaluate Egyptians’ understanding and use of developmental models to conceptualize the family. They explored their perception of traditional family and modern family. They also investigated whether Egyptians follow the schema of modernization scholars and practitioners in defining traditional families as undesirable or backward, and in carrying attributes such as extended households, arranged marriage, young age at marriage, uncontrolled and high fertility, and gender inequality on the one hand; and modern families as desirable or civilized and displaying other attributes such as nuclear households, love marriages, older age at marriage, controlled and low fertility, and gender equality on the other. The authors explored these issues in a sample of 84 informants, each of whom were asked to list all the attributes they associated with traditional and modern families. The authors then grouped informants by gender, age, and schooling, and conducted 12 focus group discussions that addressed similar topics. Triangulating these data, they we assessed how local models of the family among lay Egyptians match dominant developmental (modernization) models of traditional and modern family. The findings offer insights about how lay Egyptians have received, resisted, and adapted these models to resonate with local history, society, and culture.

This chapter argues that society can and should seek to renew marriage as a uniquely important integrator of male-female, mother-child, and father-child bonds. It identifies the many positive aspects of recent family change, such as greater professional, educational, and leadership opportunities for women and girls; residential fathers' increased emotional involvement with their children; reduced tolerance for domestic violence; greater acceptance of diversity within families; and growing acceptance of gay and lesbian persons. However, some recent family changes have been negative and hurt children. There is much we still do not know, empirically, about same-sex marriage and parenting and child outcomes, and findings from the author's own study of children conceived with donor sperm are discussed. The chapter concludes that society should pursue greater integration, for the sake of children, and that doing so would not undermine the positive aspects of family change.

This chapter aims to provide a comprehensive perspective on human behavior by studying the role of the distal environment on developmental processes. Social class, or more specifically socioeconomic status, is an all-encompassing context that has great significance in engulfing human phenomena. This chapter first reviews extant psychological literature on the deleterious effects of low social class on development and presents three studies as cases in point, demonstrating the significant impact of the context and contextual change on behavior. Kağıtçıbaşı’s theory of family change proposes three models of family: family of interdependence, family of independence, and family of emotional interdependence. Parenting, however, directly reflects family characteristics. Thus family change theory has led to a theory of the autonomous-related self. The chapter also presents research illustrating the impact of the objective environment and in particular the detrimental effects of low socioeconomic status on various developmental, social, and academic outcomes of Turkish samples.

Against confining practices, young persons have always demonstrated ademocratic capacity that needs not only to be expressed, but exercised at will. Ending on a positive note with one fictional model of a radical peer public from Louise Fitzhugh's Nobody's Family is Going to Change, the conclusion reasserts that children should have the right to a public and participatory identity. Children can form fair, self-governing youth publics when given the chance. We, as the public, need to stepup in providing community connections as well as greater collective support forchildcare beyond the traditional nuclear family.

This chapter examines the changing family patterns in the UK and argues that a benefits system containing a Citizen's Basic Income would go a long way towards meeting the needs of families and households, now and in the future. It first considers the ways in which households and the family have changed during the past half century, citing the ‘flexible employment market’ which gives rise to ‘whole communities in which it is very difficult to establish and maintain families’, and how a Citizen's Basic Income would enable households to benefit from the economies of scale that they generate. It then discusses the changing role of women and asks what kind of benefits system will most benefit women and enhance individual dignity. Finally, it describes the ways in which women are affected by the current tax and benefits structure and the ways they might be affected by a Citizen's Basic Income.

This chapter considers some barriers which need to be overcome in order to implement early intervention when children are facing critical family change. It begins by explaining marketization as it applies to children's access to services. It then discusses the shortcomings in Whitehall's capacity to view the mental health needs of children and their families as a whole. These include policy making that is short-termist, reactive, and uncoordinated; more reward for ministers and civil servants in ‘rising to the occasion’ than preventing such occasions arising in the first place; and most government responses are vertical (i.e. carried out in single departments) when most the key problems faced by government are horizontal (i.e. affect a number of different departments). The chapter then covers how to overcome shortcomings in established professional modes of thinking.

The introduction discusses the reasons for writing this book and provides an overview of the interview material it draws upon and the issues it deals with. It also provides detailed summaries of each of the book’s five chapters. By reporting some of the information provided by respondents in interviews, drawing on a broader background than is indicated in publicly available statistical data, as well as on findings and theories presented in the literature, the introduction details the substantive issues that are the focus of each chapter. It also provides an account of the research method employed in the study reported in the book.