Families and Family Policies in Europe

Families and Family Policies in Europe
Author: Linda Hantrias
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2014-09-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317891252

The family is currently a controversial topic both within the UK and Europe. While demographic trends seem to suggest that family structures and attitudes within the European Union are converging and that member states are facing similar social problems, their policy responses are very different. This book examines the differences between these national responses and that of the EU as contained in the social chapter. It analyses the key concepts underlying the formulation of family policy and illustrates it with the latest data much of it hitherto unpublished.

The Palgrave Handbook of Family Policy

The Palgrave Handbook of Family Policy
Author: Rense Nieuwenhuis
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 727
Release: 2020
Genre: Families
ISBN: 3030546187

"This engaging collection gathers theoretical and empirical insights from leading family policy experts. The authors - representing diverse countries, disciplines, and methods - bring to life the volume's innovative conceptual framework, which is organized around policy institutions, both public and private. The volume closes with a call for new lines of research that should inform family policy scholars for years to come."--Janet Gornick, Professor of Political Science and Sociology, and Director of the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA "Featuring exciting contributors from a range of often-siloed scholarly disciplines, countries and cultures, this Handbook offers nuanced insights into how interacting societal inequality factors influence family policy enactment to reinforce or improve inequality outcomes across gender, class, and nations. It is ambitious, broad-reaching, and succeeds in providing a strategic view within and across nations to inspire thoughtful evidence-based policy implications to improve societies in the future."--Ellen Ernst Kossek, Basil S. Turner Professor of Management, Purdue University, USA This open access handbook provides a multilevel view on family policies, combining insights on family policy outcomes at different levels of policymaking: supra-national organizations, national states, sub-national or regional levels, and finally smaller organizations and employers. At each of these levels, a multidisciplinary group of expert scholars assess policies and their implementation, such as child income support, childcare services, parental leave, and leave to provide care to frail and elderly family members. The chapters evaluate their impact in improving children's development and equal opportunities, promoting gender equality, regulating fertility, productivity and economic inequality, and take an intersectional perspective related to gender, class, and family diversity. The editors conclude by presenting a new research agenda based on five major challenges pertaining to the levels of policy implementation (in particular globalization and decentralization), austerity and marketization, inequality, changing family relations, and welfare states adapting to women's empowered roles

Children, Families, and States

Children, Families, and States
Author: Cristina Allemann-Ghionda
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 458
Release: 2011-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0857450972

Due to the demand for flexible working hours and employees who are available around the clock, the time patterns of childcare and schooling have increasingly become a political issue. Comparing the development of different “time policies” of half-day and all-day provisions in a variety of Eastern and Western European countries since the end of World War II, this innovative volume brings together internationally known experts from the fields of comparative education, history, and the social and political sciences, and makes a significant contribution to this new interdisciplinary field of comparative study.

Families and Family Policies in Europe

Families and Family Policies in Europe
Author: Astrid Pfenning
Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2000
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Comparative family policy studies have flourished in recent years. The growing recognition of family policy is related to far-reaching changes in family structures since the mid-1960s and to the growth of European welfare states to fiscal and institutional limits. With recent welfare state reforms, the family, gender roles, and the social division of labour have become prominent issues. This book contributes to comparative family policy studies by a distinct profile. Contributions typically include a small number of countries. The geographic focus is on Southern European and Scandinavian countries, including comparisons to Austria, Belgium, Britain, Germany, Ireland, and The Netherlands. The book combines quantitative and qualitative approaches, institutional and historical perspectives.

Fatherhood in the Nordic Welfare States

Fatherhood in the Nordic Welfare States
Author: Eydal, Guðný Björk
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2016-01-13
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1447321146

The five Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, are well-known for their extensive welfare system and gender equality which provides both parents with opportunities to earn and care for their children. In this topical book, expert scholars from the Nordic countries, as well as UK and the US, demonstrate how modern fatherhood is supported in the Nordic setting through family and social policies, and how these contribute to shaping and influencing the images, roles and practices of fathers in a diversity of family settings and variations of fatherhoods. This comprehensive volume will have wide international appeal for those who look to Nordic countries and their success in creating gender equal societies.

Public Attitudes toward Family Policies in Europe

Public Attitudes toward Family Policies in Europe
Author: Monika Mischke
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2013-09-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3658035773

Family-policy variation in Europe is still enormous and there is very limited knowledge about the publics’ attitudes toward family-policy measures in a comparative perspective. This book addresses this research gap by combing a profound analysis of existing family-policy measures with a thorough analysis of public attitudes. Based on institutional theory, which argues that institutions structure the processes of orientation, the empirical analyses shed light on the relationship between the current family-policy setup, the social context, and public attitudes toward particular family-policy measures in 12 countries of the European Union. The results demonstrate that the social context needs to be taken into account in order to improve our understanding of attitudinal variation among different countries and family-policy contexts. Moreover, this book points out that only few patterns of social polarization are quasi universal whereas many others are specific to individual countries or certain groups of countries.

Handbook of Family Policies Across the Globe

Handbook of Family Policies Across the Globe
Author: Mihaela Robila
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 475
Release: 2013-06-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1461467713

Family policy holds a particular status in the quest for a more equitable world as it intersects the rights of women, children, and workers. But despite local and global efforts and initiatives, the state of family policy in different areas of the world varies widely. Through a cross-section of countries on six continents, Family Policies Across the Globe offers the current state of the laws concerning family life, structure, and services, providing historical, cultural, and socioeconomic context. Lucidly written chapters analyze key aspects of family definition, marriage, child well-being, work/family balance, and family assistance, reviewing underlying social issues and controversies as they exist in each country. Details of challenges to implementation and methods of evaluating policy outcomes bring practical realities into sharp focus, and each chapter concludes with recommendations for improvement at the research, service, and governmental levels. The result is an important comparative look at how governments support families, and how societies perceive themselves as they evolve. Among the issues covered: Sierra Leone: toward sustainable family policies. Russia: folkways versus state-ways. Japan: policy responses to a declining population. Australia: reform, revolutions, and lingering effects. Canada: a patchwork policy. Colombia: a focus on policies for vulnerable families. Researchers , professors and graduate students in the fields of social policy, child and family studies, psychology, sociology, and social work will find in Family Policies Across the Globe a reference that will grow in importance as world events continue to develop.

The Triple Bind of Single-Parent Families

The Triple Bind of Single-Parent Families
Author: Nieuwenhuis, Rense
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2018-03-07
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1447333640

Single parents face countless hardships, but they can be boiled down to a triple bind: inadequate resources, insufficient employment, and limited support policies. This book brings together research from a range of disciplines from more than forty countries--with particularly detailed case studies from the United Kingdom, Iceland, Sweden, and Scotland. It addresses numerous issues related to the struggles of single parents, including poverty, employment, health, children's development and education, and more.

Families and Food in Hard Times

Families and Food in Hard Times
Author: Rebecca O’Connell
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021-05-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1787356558

Food is fundamental to health and social participation, yet food poverty has increased in the global North. Adopting a realist ontology and taking a comparative case approach, Families and Food in Hard Times addresses the global problem of economic retrenchment and how those most affected are those with the least resources. Based on research carried out with low-income families with children aged 11-15, this timely book examines food poverty in the UK, Portugal and Norway in the decade following the 2008 financial crisis. It examines the resources to which families have access in relation to public policies, local institutions and kinship and friendship networks, and how they intersect. Through ‘thick description’ of families’ everyday lives, it explores the ways in which low income impacts upon practices of household food provisioning, the types of formal and informal support on which families draw to get by, the provision and role of school meals in children’s lives, and the constraints upon families’ social participation involving food. Providing extensive and intensive knowledge concerning the conditions and experiences of low-income parents as they endeavour to feed their families, as well as children’s perspectives of food and eating in the context of low income, the book also draws on the European social science literature on food and families to shed light on the causes and consequences of food poverty in austerity Europe.