ABSTRACT
This chapter explains why different gender-cultural models historically developed into dominant family models and why different gender arrangements evolved in three countries on the cultural level and in social practice until the mid-20th century. The comparative analysis of the socio-historical evolution of gender arrangements has shown that the development of the male breadwinner family into the dominant cultural model was not necessarily related to the transition to modern industrial society. The socio-historical comparison has shown that the differences cannot be explained with different courses of industrialization. The gender arrangement became the issue of public discourses, experienced processes of individuation and democratization and the increasing integration of women in the modern employment system. The modernization of the gender arrangement on the basis of the housewife model in the direction described above requires the state to support childcare and nursing tasks, which used to be assumed by women, through transfer payments to families and government services in the form of public childcare.
