ABSTRACT
Recent comparative welfare state research suggests that sociodemographic and economic changes in post-industrial societies lead to the emergence of new social risks (Esping-Andersen 1999; Bonoli and Armingeon 2003; Pierson 2001a). Where welfare state policies once focused on the male breadwinner with stable employment as the modal beneficiary and focal point of policy, governments across Europe now face pressure to update welfare state institutions to meet the needs of increasingly diverse clienteles. Those with family care obligations, especially women, are among the most prominent of these new welfare state clienteles. Women are particularly prone to caring as a new social risk, because nowadays mothers are more likely to be employed, households with children are increasingly likely to be headed by one parent, and wages in the femaledominated service sector are comparatively low. The welfare state, the argument goes, needs to take this risk into account in order to ensure social stability. Mothers without access to affordable childcare facilities will resort to income support and drive up welfare expenses, and couples who consider their environment family-hostile will decide not to have children at all, thus exacerbating already unfavourable demographic trends.
