Arnlaug Leira

Families and family policies

Governments have had a longstanding interest in family forms and the behaviour of family members, although their goals and instruments have differed over time and across countries. This timely collection, along with an original introduction by the editors, brings together seminal contributions focusing on a number of important topics relating to this field. Volume I focuses on the origins and social foundations of family policies, their main actors and drivers; together with consideration of crucial concepts and themes, including gender, intergenerational obligations and care. Volume II deals with the various areas and goals addressed by family policies and their diversity across countries: the politics of reproduction; support for children, policies to reconcile paid work and family obligations; parenthood policies; patterns of care policies and domestic violence. This important set will be of immense value to those working in the field of families and family policies and will be an excellent source of reference to both students and academics.

Childcare in Scandinavia: Parental Responsibility and Social Right

Nordic countries include these countries and, in addition, Finland and Iceland. In this paper, however the terms are used interchangeably and refer to Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. 2 I discuss different aspects of this process e. g. in Arnlaug Leira, Parenthood Change and Political Reform in Scandinavia, 1970s–2007, in: Anne Lise Ellingsæter and Arnlaug Leira eds., Politicising Parenthood. Gender Relations in Welfare States, Bristol 2006, 27–51; Working Parents and the Welfare State, Cambridge 2002; Childcare as Social Right: Cash for Childcare and Daddy Leave, in: Social Politics (1998), 362–378; Welfare States and Working Mothers, Cambridge 1992. 3 Cf. Dag Østerberg, Individets rettigheter og den sosiale organisasjon [Individual Rights and Social Organisation], in: Anne Marie Berg ed., Nordisk arbeidslivspolitikk – hinder eller konkurransefortrinn? [Nordic Work Policies – Hindrance or Competitive Advantage?], Oslo 1990, 119–140; Leira, Welfare States, see note 2. 81 L’Homme. Z. F. G. 19, 1 (2008)

From Poverty Relief to Universal Provision: The Changing Grounds for Childcare Policy Reforms in Norway

In 2008, a UNICEF report, The Child care Transition (cp. reference list), recorded a marked change in the daily lives and upbringing of children in the world’s richest countries: ‘Today’s rising generation is the first in which a majority are spending a large part of early childhood in some form of out-of-home child care’1. Increasingly, the early childhood years have been projected as a legitimate field of welfare state regulation: international organizations such as the OECD have been following the process for decades; the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child monitors childcare facilities; and in 2002, the European Council set new targets for childcare coverage, including the provision of facilities for the under-threes. Historical studies from Western Europe report common sources of inspiration for nineteenth-century institutional innovation in childcare. However, the timing and framing of changes in childcare arrangements in different countries have varied and have proceeded at different paces (see, e.g., Kamerman and Kahn 1978;Leira 2002;Saraceno et al. 2012;Scheiwe and Willekens 2009).

Social Rights in a Gender Perspective

In Scandinavia the crisis of the welfare state is much discussed and questions concerning the future of the welfare state have been given new impetus during a period of prolonged economic problems, with unemployment reaching the highest levels in the post-war years. Moreover, the negotiations concerning Sweden, Norway and Finland’s membership in the European Union actualised questions about the construction and content of the social rights of citizens. Public debate voices more disagreement over welfare state expenditure and over the egalitarian concept of the welfare state embedded in the Scandinavian political tradition. A stronger demand for privatisation and a broader desire to limit public spending is also sharpening political discussions over the welfare state. At the same time, the demands of an ageing population and of the employed-mother family have turned the public provision of caring into a hot political topic, and the welfare state is criticised for doing too little. The future of the welfare state is discussed not only in terms of social security and maintaining the welfare state as a safeguard against the perils of the market, the public provision of caring is also important when welfare state legitimacy is the issue. Although the conceptualisation of 《state》 and 《individual》 has changed, the present debate thus has revived interest in one of the main themes of political theory, concerning the character of the relationship between the state and the individual.

Book Reviews : Deborah Brennan: The Politics of Australian Child Care. From Philanthropy to Feminism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994

I want to end this review with a few lines about my own reactions to Transforming Men. I learned a lot from Dench’s argument. Before reading his book, I had somewhat mixed feelings about discussions of ‘masculinity’. Too often, they have seemed to me to get back to rather naive images of men as people who need to fish and hunt to feel like men. At his best (and he is often at his best), Dench is also deeply sensitive to some specifically male problems. Take his discussion of ’men’s silence’ as an example. He maintains that, for most males, an unwillingness to talk about their emotions is a way of protecting themselves against better-equipped women (pp. 50-52). Dench also does a very good job weeding out the structural implications of his metaphor. It is indeed important to pay more attention to ’normal’ men’s problems instead of presenting some single barristers as exemplary caring and loving New Men (pp. 186-188). On the more negative side, his program for a future society in which men would do better is sketchy; it remains to be seen whether or not he is convincing sociologically and politically. I am also somewhat doubtful about his diagnosis of feminism as the driving force behind the transformation into a state patriarchy. Perhaps Dench attributes too much power to feminism? For example in Scandinavia, the welfare system has been less a female invention than a social democratic one. (In Finland, it is probably a social democratic invention coupled with an attempt to follow the lead of Sweden.) However, I do not know enough about the role of feminism within the social democratic movement to really evaluate his claim from a Nordic point of view. One final remark. Dench is a wonderful writer who writes in a fluent, precise, and lively way. He might, however, have provided non-British readers with some brief characterizations of the individuals who populate his book, For example, is Neil Lyndon a playwright, a painter, a journalist, or a politician? How about Peregrine Worsthorne?