ABSTRACT
When and why do welfare states change? This question has been at the heart of comparative welfare state research for a long time. A central claim in this literature was that welfare states are fairly resistant to change and that they change only in path-dependent ways. Most of this research concentrated on the most resource-intensive pillars of welfare states such as the pension, health or unemployment schemes. By contrast, care services and policies addressing families more generally have received comparably little attention in the literature. This is surprising given that some of the key social changes that challenge contemporary welfare states are related to families: population ageing, fertility decline, women’s increasing employment rates or the diversification of family forms. While these concerns affect the majority of wealthy countries, the welfare states of continental European countries are seen as especially unable to adapt. Family policies in these countries often provide support for the male-breadwinner model. Either explicitly or implicitly, social policies, the tax scheme and legal obligations facilitate a traditional gender division of labor which assigns women to the home and men to pursue paid labor. Policies to encourage maternal employment are virtually absent.
