The paper is an historical and cross-country study of South European families (Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal) compared to families from distinct institutional contexts and welfare state regimes (Germany, France, Denmark and the United Kingdom). It looks at changes in family patterns and family policies since the 1970s in order to understand why rapid and deep family changes are observed in some areas, while in others family patterns reproduce with only minor changes since decades. It uses official national and European time series, two waves of the European Value Survey and an historical analysis of Welfare State policies for studying family changes and family continuity in the South. Women in South Europe have been the protagonists of rather silent social transformations with large unintended consequences. Their massive participation in higher education and in paid employment has strongly influenced family formation, fertility and divorce patterns. All four South European countries belong currently to the lowest-low fertility countries. In addition to changes in women’s life in relation to paid and unpaid work, family values have changed, too. Tolerance towards divorce and non-traditional family forms has increased in parallel to an individualization of life goals. However, South European families show also significant particularities, which lead us to propose the existence of a South European family model compared to the other countries of this study. We relate the persistence of high family solidarity values and practices and the very slow change of the traditional gender division of home and care-work to particularities of southern housing and labour markets and to the underdevelopment of certain social policy areas. Public care services for very young children and for elderly, family cash benefits, parental leave and the regulation of time-flexibilisation oemployment have not changed in accordance to the deep family changes and requirements. Innovations in these fields have come mainly from outside, through European Union directives, and others are indirect consequences of the expansion dynamics of national education systems.
Families, Markets and Welfare States. The Southern European Model
NALDINI, Manuela;
2009-01-01
Abstract
The paper is an historical and cross-country study of South European families (Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal) compared to families from distinct institutional contexts and welfare state regimes (Germany, France, Denmark and the United Kingdom). It looks at changes in family patterns and family policies since the 1970s in order to understand why rapid and deep family changes are observed in some areas, while in others family patterns reproduce with only minor changes since decades. It uses official national and European time series, two waves of the European Value Survey and an historical analysis of Welfare State policies for studying family changes and family continuity in the South. Women in South Europe have been the protagonists of rather silent social transformations with large unintended consequences. Their massive participation in higher education and in paid employment has strongly influenced family formation, fertility and divorce patterns. All four South European countries belong currently to the lowest-low fertility countries. In addition to changes in women’s life in relation to paid and unpaid work, family values have changed, too. Tolerance towards divorce and non-traditional family forms has increased in parallel to an individualization of life goals. However, South European families show also significant particularities, which lead us to propose the existence of a South European family model compared to the other countries of this study. We relate the persistence of high family solidarity values and practices and the very slow change of the traditional gender division of home and care-work to particularities of southern housing and labour markets and to the underdevelopment of certain social policy areas. Public care services for very young children and for elderly, family cash benefits, parental leave and the regulation of time-flexibilisation oemployment have not changed in accordance to the deep family changes and requirements. Innovations in these fields have come mainly from outside, through European Union directives, and others are indirect consequences of the expansion dynamics of national education systems.
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