ABSTRACT
There is considerable evidence that gender-related structures of paid work reflect and influence the social meaning and individual importance attached to children. But this connection is not a direct one: family plays the role of an interlinking and mediating medium where (working) parents – mostly mothers – are primarily responsible for bringing up children, with more or less support from welfare institutions, depending on the specific welfare-state system. In European market societies, different models exist for childcare and for the organization and distribution – between the institutions of state, market and the family, and among men and women (Esping-Andersen 2009) – of income. These models have to take into account that having children is no longer a ‘natural’ matter of fact these days, but strongly influenced by the options of living one’s own life and of using contraceptive or reproductive technologies (van de Kaa 1987).
