ABSTRACT
In Great Britain and the United States the idea of consciously using family policy to create specific attitudes toward parental roles would have a hard time gaining a hearing. Indeed, the idea of family policy as such is not generally accepted, although numerous policies exist that affect the situation of families either directly or indirectly. Two-thirds of unmarried parents continue to live together after their child is born, and half of all couples whose child is born outside matrimony later legalize their relationship. Nevertheless, it appears that Sweden is moving faster than most other advanced industrialized countries toward a society of cohabiting individuals, temporary families, and single individuals with or without children. One illustration suffices to show how difficult it is to combine in social policy the goals of protecting the weak, treating all individuals equally, encouraging all adults to be self-supporting, and remaining neutral with regard to forms of cohabitation.
