ABSTRACT
What is the welfare state response to new family forms? Apparently, different forms of the welfare state encourage different family forms and motherhood models. In the early 1980s Ruggie (1984) examined differences between ‘social democratic’ welfare states such as the Scandinavian ones and ‘liberal’ welfare states such as in Britain and argued that social democratic states are more responsive to the demands of workers, and therefore more supportive of working mothers.1 Variation in welfare state family policy is noted also by Esping-Andersen (1990) who takes the different arrangements between the welfare state, labour market and family as a basis for distinguishing between three main clusters or ‘ideal types’ of welfare state regimes: the ‘social democratic’, among which the
Scandinavian states predominate; the ‘liberal’ cluster exemplified by the UK; and the ‘corporatist, conservative’ regime within which he places, for example, Germany, Italy and France. Esping-Andersen, however, does not really explore the importance of different family policies for women and men as mothers, fathers and citizens, nor does he elaborate on the importance of unpaid family-related work for welfare production, as observed, for example, in work by Lewis (1992) and Orloff (1993). What different welfare state regimes imply for the political and social definition of motherhood obviously needs further examination. Scandinavian family policies have had a mixed reception. An American social analyst, Wolfe (1989) finds that the Scandinavian welfare states have created a new family form, ‘the public family’, in which both parents are in paid work, while the children are cared for in public day-care centres. For him, this family appears as a highly problematic construct. New family forms have also been interpreted as representing a democratisation of the relationship between genders and generations, even as an indication of an emerging ‘woman-friendly’ welfare state (Hernes 1987). However that may be, both concepts, ‘the woman-friendly welfare state’ and ‘the public family’ presume a renegotiation of the boundaries
between the public and the private, and a restructuring of both families and labour markets along gender lines.
