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The chapter discusses three periods of policy change in the field of family policy. Concentrating on basic aspects of family support, such benefits and tax allowances for families, as well as pension credits and parental leave programmes, the chapter contrasts current policy provision with the one which existed in the late 1970s. Using a number of indicators, it assess the scale and profile of change in each country. The chapter argues that both countries have traditionally favoured the male breadwinner families and been rather modest in the support for families per se, albeit for different reasons. However, family support has expanded in both countries, particularly since the 1990s, for several reasons. The ‘paid work’ oriented rationale for policy expansion has become a major driving force in the UK and, more recently, in Germany. Institutionally less embedded than the other two policy areas, national family policy profiles have evolved more dynamically.

Analyses the effects of parental leave and public childcare on mothers’ employment across 14 countries, including the 12 countries discussed in the first 3 chapters. The results suggest that policy configurations influence the patterns of employment of mothers. The analysis of national policy performance also reveals a cluster of countries—Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, and Sweden—that cut across welfare state regimes.

Having looked in detail at the impact on the health and development of children of all ages, the economic welfare of families, and equality, this chapter provides some answers to what can be done about meeting the critical needs of children and families in the midst of globalization. At present, the problem with globalization is with how the gains are being divided up. Systems have been put in place to protect the rights of capital in ways that have far outpaced the protections for working parents and their children. This chapter suggests putting in place universal standards for minimum decent working conditions. These need to comprise the kind of conditions essential to humane survival both for adults and the children they care for, including a living wage, parental leave, leave and flexibility to care for sick family members, and humane hours.

This chapter addresses the question: what is the likelihood of changing gender relations with the help of welfare policies such as parental leave? The chapter is concerned with the politicising of fatherhood, and compares the current entitlements of fathers for taking parental leave in five Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Finland and Denmark). It then uses a review of Nordic studies to examine the socioeconomic and cultural conditions that are affecting the take-up of leave possibilities. It also considers negotiations of gender relations in the daily life of families and workplaces.

This chapter provides two case studies, a national one of Canada and a provincial one of Québec. In the case of Canada, statutory leave entitlements are divided between the federal and the provincial government. Of all the provinces of Canada, Québec is the only province that has made an important investment in the funding of childcare and parental leave. In this chapter, the distinct historical and political development of the two leave regimes are highlighted as well as some of the effects of these different approaches to the parental leave of Canada as a whole.

Until recently, Dutch leave policies were very limited. The only policy available was a twelve-week pregnancy and maternity leave for married women. However, by the end of the twentieth century, as a result of the changing family reforms and labour market patterns, leave arrangements had become a major policy issue with debates concentrating on entitlement, length of leave, and income support. This chapter discusses the development of leave policies, specifically parental leave in the Netherlands. This development has involved different interpretations of the purpose of leave and the divisions of responsibilities between the government, parents, and social partners. Starting from the view point in which parental leave was seen as a way to facilitate part-time employment, the Parental Leave Act provided a basic entitlement to take part-time, unpaid leave for a short period of time. It was left to the social partners to supplement this minimum. However, over time, public responsibility for leave has increased. This was evident not only in the increasing number of leave policies, but in the growing public involvement in the provision of income support as well. During this process, the interpretation of parental leave appeared to have changed from a labour market instrument into a more complex instrument intended to facilitate parenthood and the well-being of children.

In 1974, the development of the Swedish parental leave policy was begun. The introduction of leave policy in Sweden was seen as an example of strategic actions from different political institutions. This chapter argues that political institutions not only act but also create cultural norms that influence public opinion. The development of Swedish parental leave policy showed how an academic elite can produce a theoretical basis for political decisions. Sweden was the first country to introduce parental leave. This could be explained as a result of the academic and political debates in the country in the 1960s. These debates led to the adoption of new ideas among leading politicians. New ideas about equality emerged wherein both women and men were deemed significant in the role theory, making men part of the ‘problem’. Gender role and gender equality eventually emerged in the parental leave policies of Sweden. In this chapter, the three main terms that illustrate the changing political focus in the country are discussed: the focus on ‘maternal policy’ during the beginning of the century; the ‘population policy’ during the 1930s; and the ‘family policy’ during the 1950s. One of the most important changes in Swedish parental leave since its introduction in 1974 was its individualisation. The Family Policy Committee regarded gender equality in the use of parental leave as a long-term measure that should be based on free choice and negotiations inside families. From the introduction of the second individualised month in 2002 to the radical proposals in the inquiry of 2005, the Social Democrats have shown that individualisation of parental leave has become part of Social Democrat family policy.

Using a unique specifically designed for analysing the capabilities and agency gap, conducted in Budapest and Stockholm, chapter 3 compares two societies with a long history of the dual-earner family model, focusing on different worklife balance policies. The survey enabled to access the cognitive level of capabilities, perceptions of the scope of alternatives and a sense of entitlement to make claims. The weak capabilities and agency for WLB among Budapest parents were underpin by traditional cultural/societal norms, long working time regimes, and precariousness in the labour market. The cognitive level of capabilities also revealed profound differences. The Stockholm parents expressed a strong sense of sense of entitlement to make WLB claims and to exercise WLB policies; For Budapest parents the wide agency and capabilities gap is expressed in their weak sense of entitlement and their narrow scope of alternatives for making change in worklife balance and quality of life.

This chapter gathers survey data and analyses the outcome of the 1990s family policy reforms using a gender equality perspective. It examines two different policy reforms: the parents' views on the arrangement of parental leave and how it should be shared by the parents, and the issue of parents' choice of day care or cash grant for care. The analysis suggests that the new ways of developing family leave arrangements are in disharmony with the wishes of men and women who currently live in families with young children.

Communist parties ruled in Hungary and Slovenia after the Second World War. Their ideology placed women alongside men in the labour force, and mothers of young children were not exempted from either. Economic necessity and the desire for a decent standard of living also kept mothers in employment. Consequently, parental leave was regulated earlier and better than in many capitalist countries. This was also due to the shortage of childcare services, while at the same time, migration to urban areas and small apartments resulted in less care by extended families. During the socialist years, before 1989, there were high levels of employment in Hungary. However, today, female labour force participation rates are low compared with the EU average. In Slovenia, for decades, women accounted for forty-five per cent of the workforce, children below three years of age were in subsidised childcare facilities, and this rose to forty-four per cent by 2007. This chapter offers an historical overview of the development of parental leave policies in Hungary and Slovenia, both former socialist regimes but today with very different leave systems. It attempts to explain why their systems have become so different — in spite of an apparently similar approaches to women's labour market participation during the socialist years — by looking at how they have been shaped by political processes, relevant actors, and the debates that preceded the reforms. The second section of the chapter looks at Hungary while the third section focuses on Slovenia. The fourth section draws comparisons, focusing on the very different leave schemes of the two countries, which has considerable significance for women's position in the labour market and their general economic status.

This chapter considers the ideological stumbling blocks that have prevented an adequate conceptualization of the family–state relationship in both American theory and public policy. The first part uses the work of John Rawls to consider the absence of families in contemporary liberal theory, and to explore the assumptions in this theory that are responsible for this elision. The second part demonstrates that many of these same assumptions permeate both law and public policy. To illustrate this, the chapter considers the way that the intersection between work-and-family is constructed in United States' law. Although there is often considerable distance between dominant tenets of political theory in the academy and the public policy that is actually enacted, the chapter shows that there is considerable overlap between them when it comes to work–family law. These tenets, it argues, create a problematic platform on which to construct an adequate family-state relationship.

This chapter brings together all the relevant provisions and case-law on pregnancy and maternity discrimination. The pivotal concepts of ‘pregnancy’ and ‘pregnant worker’ are analysed. The discussion then moves on to the role of the comparator, the health and safety obligations of the employer with respect to the pregnant worker, and employment rights during pregnancy and maternity leave. The right not to be dismissed is the subject of a specific section. The right to parental leave both under the new Parental Leave Directive and the Equal Treatment Directive is analysed The chapter ends with a discussion of the proposed amendments to the Pregnancy Directive.

Until 1992, the Czech Republic was part of Czechoslovakia. Czechs and Slovaks shared the whole communist period as one country including the economic and social changes that followed the collapse of the regime. This chapter begins with the history of the Czech Republic, starting with the policies of the country since 1993. It is divided into two sections. The first section consists of several parts reflecting the changes in the Czech political scene up to 2008. In this section, the developments in maternal and parental leave policies are presented systematically. The second section discusses the cross-cutting issues related to leave policy, as well as those related to work, fertility and gender. The current policy development in the Czech Republic is a search for the balance between the normative and choice-oriented approaches. In sum, the social policy history of Czech Republic is marked by a very different political context compared to the then Czechoslovakia. While the leave policy arrangements of Czechs would have been similar to a Swedish model based on the promotion of gender equality both in work and at home, the Czech social policy instead reconnected to the traditional family regime through refamilialisation. Even after the separation of Slovakia, Catholicism remained and has become a stable latent political dimension. Improvement of leave policy arrangements was preferred to the development of a mixed package of support for families. In the absence of comprehensive childcare facilities, parental leave entitlements aimed to reinforce a traditional gender role model as women are encouraged to leave the labour market to raise children, while the opportunity for men to take parental leave has remained hypothetical due to financial circumstances. By the end of 1990s, the Czech Republic social policy had an apparent similarity with the German policy and its traditional male-breadwinner model.

For the past four decades, employers and employee organisations have played a pivotal role in the designing of social policy in Finland. These central labour market organisations have been involved in decisions about taxes, wages, and social benefits including working times and schemes supporting work-family reconciliation. Social reforms were promised by the state in exchange for moderate pay settlements that would promote competitiveness and employment. From an international perspective, Finland is a mixed case of relationships between social partners and political institutions. The design of pension policy and social policy in general has partly followed both the Scandinavian and Central European models, but in the area of parental leave policy, the corporatist model of tripartite negotiations has led the way. This chapter aims to examine how labour market partners have influenced the development of family policy and leave policy since the 1960s. It attempts to answer the key question: why has the role of social partners been so strong in Finland. It is argued that institutional conditions were less favourable to labour organisations working through the political system, with the Social Democratic Party in a weaker position than in other Nordic countries and the Agrarian Union, the main political power in Finland, able to obstruct social reforms demanded by labour organisations. Given these political conditions, workers' organisations have regarded the labour market arena as offering more possibilities than the political one. In this chapter, interviews are conducted with officials from two central employees' organisations and one central employers' organisation.

In the Nordic countries gender equality concerns have led to the introduction of a non-transferable, use-it-or-lose-it father’s quota in the parental leave system, which gives fathers incentive to take leave. That is except for Denmark, where it was available only for a short duration of time. This chapter looks behind the political process of introducing and abolishing the quota and what have been the impact on male take-up of parental leave. The findings are that the introduction of the father’s quota is a politically risky project, not least in Denmark, where gender equality is of a more symbolic nature compared to the other Nordic countries. As for take-up, the findings are that the father’s quota stimulated initial take-up by fathers but after the abolishment we see an increasing discrepancy in take-up. Today, it is the more resourceful fathers with additional labour market rights to leave who tend to take up leave, implying that fathers today are positioned differently and have different opportunities to spend time with their children.

This chapter analyses why Finnish fathers do not take more parental leave even if promoting gender equality has been a longstanding goal of family policy. It shows that the obstacles are to be found not only in factors at the individual level but also in the structuring of leave schemes and in the special Finnish policy making process where the schemes are developed as compromises in tripartite negotiations between the central employer and employee organisations and the government. Based on a theory of how both continuity and change are produced in the interaction of structural conditions and the choices actors make in their everyday practices, the chapter argues that the policy process shapes the leave schemes and, thus guiding the choices, eventually also the take-up of leave and the slow improvement of gender equality.

The absence of a national system of paid maternity or parental leave in Australia caused puzzlement, particularly because this country, regarded as a ‘social laboratory’ and known for its progressive social and industrial legislation, does not provide entitlement to working parents. Even if a minimalist scheme of paid leave is introduced in the next year or two, the lack of such leave to date requires elucidation, specifically because ‘work-life balance’ and ‘family policy’ have been prominent political issues in the past two decades. This chapter begins by providing an outline of the distinctive features of the Australian approach to social protection and industrial relations. The second section discusses the country's support for families with children and specifies some of the mechanisms the country has adopted to meet its international obligations under the United Nations Convention on Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the ILO Convention on Workers with Family Responsibilities. The section also illustrates the current patterns of access to parental and maternity leave and other forms of family income support. The chapter also considers the politics of paid maternity leave by examining the ways in which political parties, trade unions, women's groups, and employer groups have framed and formed the issue of financial support for new mothers. The chapter ends by assessing the prospects for paid parental leave in Australia.

Compared to many European countries, German parental leave legislation has been undergoing considerable changes in recent years, culminating in the introduction of a twelve-month wage replacement benefit in 2007. When the parental leave policy was introduced in West Germany in 1986, the main goal was to enable and actively encourage mothers to stay at home and care for their children during their early years. In contrast, the income-related childrearing benefit has the explicit purpose of reducing the length of child-related periods out of the labour market and of facilitating a stronger paternal involvement in childrearing. This marks a decisive move away from Germany's traditional family policy path, which like the welfare system as a whole had been built on the assumption of a male breadwinner family model. The long-standing political focus on home care and the importance of mother-child relations has been displaced by concerns over the country's fertility rates and the increasing human value of educated women. In fact, the family policy debate of recent years has been dominated by the conundrum of how to encourage young couples to have children and how to reduce the opportunity costs of childbearing for mothers. Within a broader context of family policy change and the attention to the expansion of childcare services, the recent parental leave reform thus seems to be a clear sign of a paradigmatic shift in German family policy. This chapter addresses why and how such a paradigmatic policy shift has come about. At first glance, it may be tempting to see the current changes as a rational political reaction to mounting socio-economic pressures, but such rational explanation faces difficulties in explaining the timing of the current adaptations. Hence, this chapter looks at the role of political ideas and the discourses that shaped the family policy changes in Germany. In the course of this chapter, it is evident that political beliefs and discourses constitute important pieces of the complex explanatory puzzle of Germany's successive parental leave reforms.

This chapter investigates the potential effects of three major reforms in the Swedish parental leave for various subgroups of fathers. The reforms are the first, the second daddy’s quota month and the gender equality bonus introduced in 1995, 2002 and 2008. A difference in difference approach shows that the first daddy’s month reduced differences between fathers and mothers and also between subgroups of fathers, especially between fathers with different educational level, income and Swedish and foreign-born fathers. The second daddy’s month also reduced differences between fathers and mothers but increased differences between fathers with low income and education and the rest. The gender equality bonus did not have any direct effect for any group of fathers. The underlying trend is that on average fathers use increasing number of parental leave days but the differences between groups of fathers increase.