Canadian families into the year 2000

"Canadian families are pluralistic and varied, with a mix of traditional, modern, and post-modern characteristics. This paper looks at families into the immediate future.... Consideration is given to ethnicity, cohabitation, fertility, childrearing, sexuality, family policy, adolescence, and general family life. The state will continue to influence family life. Non-familial associations will affect family values and activity."     

Family Policy: Becoming a Field of Inquiry and Subfield of Social Policy

This decade review centers on 2 disconnects between rhetoric and reality. First, public investments in families continue to grow, yet family policy is still not a term widely used by policymakers or the public. Second, social science studies increased in number and sophistication, with some family sensitive and others policy relevant. Few focus on both, which is what is most needed if research is to inform family policy. In exploring these disconnects, we summarize recent trends in family policies and the influence of research on family policymaking. We suggest a rationale for family policy and illustrate its value using the examples of early childhood, welfare reform, and parent education policies. We conclude with suggested next steps.     

Has Family Policy Come of Age? A Decade Review of the State of U.S. Family Policy in the 1990s

Family policy has come of age in the 1990s, yet it has not achieved a status commensurate with that of economic or environmental policy. Because family policy has been difficult to define, this review proposes an explicit definition of the term family policy and a companion implicit term, a family perspective in policy making It updates the rationale for family policy, arguing that family commitment at its core is particularly consequential in an individualistic market economy with a small social safety net. It chronicles recent developments including philanthropic commitments, state and federal policy initiatives, and the use of research to inform family policy making. Selected family policy issues including family and work conflict, long-term care, family poverty, and marriage, are overviewed. The paper concludes with developments during the decade in theory, methods, and dissemination that hold the potential for capitalizing on the current popularity of families as a theme in policy making.     

‘Men Don't Have Families’: Equality and Motherhood in Technical Employment

Drawing upon evidence collected during a study of female technical professionals in the electronics sector, this paper argues that organizational policies and practices in respect of this group continue to be underpinned by the ‘norm’ of the typical male employee whose family commitments impinge marginally, if at all, on work responsibilities. Women, as actual or potential mothers, continue to be seen as deviants from this norm, whose family commitments are likely to adversely affect work performance or commitment. Not only do these assumptions condition the general treatment of women technical professionals, but they are embodied in those policies and practices designed to facilitate the combination of motherhood and paid work. Both the assumptions around which policies are framed and their implementation in practice reinforce as unproblematic the prevailing domestic division of labour. Such policies and practices therefore continue to function essentially as a concession to the deviant status of women in general and mothers in particular, rather than as tools of a broader equal opportunities policy.     

An Exploratory Examination of Students' Family Policy Beliefs

Abstract

Family policy is coming to be recognized as an important component of programs focusing on family issues. As political leaders continue to engage in debates about family issues and family service professionals report spending more time on policy issues within their professional practice, attention to policy issues has become more important in the education of students in family courses. Because of the increasing presence of public policy study within the family studies curricula, it is important to consider students' policy perceptions and experiences as they enter family policy classes. Argued here is that students are more likely to become engaged with family policy topics that are timely and meaningful to them. This research examines student perceptions of various policy topics and issues in an attempt to better design courses with family policy content.     

Part of the family: Planning for permanence in long-term family foster care

There are concerns for the stability and outcomes for children in care amongst policy makers in England and many other countries. The goal of permanence for children separated from their birth families and in the care of the state has dominated child care policy and practice in the UK, the USA and Canada since the 1980s, but the meanings of permanence in terms of stability, emotional security and family membership into adulthood are complex and the placements and legal status thought best able to achieve permanence are contested.This research was an investigation of planning for permanence in long-term foster family care in England, where it is accepted by policy makers that this is a legitimate permanence option. The aim was to consider the fit between the planning and reviewing systems designed to achieve permanence in foster care and the reality of planned permanent placements as experienced by foster children and foster carers.Results suggested that although committed relationships within the foster family were helping children to feel a sense of permanence and to become part of the family, planning and reviewing procedures required by corporate parenting were often not adapted to the special nature of these foster placements. It was concluded that although planning and reviewing systems need to be rigorous, they also need to be more child and family sensitive in permanent placements.     

The Alliance for Jobs in Germany: The Promise and Failure of Gender Mainstreaming

SUMMARY

The German Alliance for Jobs, Education and Competitiveness, a new policy instrument for reducing unemployment, was introduced by the red-green coalition government in 1998. In 2000, this policy instrument was abandoned, largely because business, labor, and government could not find sufficient common ground to continue working together. I argue that this policy instrument had the potential to affect the female workforce positively but that leaders from all sectors failed to incorporate gender considerations. In my view, the German economy will continue to lag behind its competitors unless it adopts gender mainstreaming, increases opportunities for women, and transforms its economy into a more service-oriented economy.     

Sex and family planning in Denmark and in Danish communes

Sexual activity and family planning practice in the general Danish society and in Danish communes were examined. Denmark has a sexually active population which practices effective and consistent family planning and which has an impressively low abortion level. Effective methods of contraception - especially IUDs and the pill - are known and practiced by all socioeconomic classes in Danish society. Denmark's steadily falling birthrate is due to: 1) a liberal attitude toward sex and procreation, 2) an effective and early system of sex education in the schools, and 3) available and reasonably priced contraceptive methods. Sexual and family planning practices in Danish communes are similar to those in the general society. Most pregnancies in the communes are not accidental and most would not end in abortion. The sexual attitudes and practices in the communes are influenced by the general society.     

去还是留？——回乡民工继续外出就业的影响因素分析

回乡农民工是继续外出还是留在家乡务工？人力资本、家庭因素、经济因素以及外出经历都对农民工个体的外出决策形成影响。促成农民工离开城市回到家乡的原因中。家庭因素和经济因素是最主要原因。分析表明,在影响农民工继续外出决策因素中,这些因素仍然是主要影响因素;同时,外出收入、婚姻状况、外出给家庭带来变化对农民工的外出决策有着显著影响。此外,年龄、外出打工时间长短和对外出生活的满意度也对其外出决策有明显影响。     

Community Care in Taiwan

SUMMARY

This article explores the policy definitions and the funder roles of central and local governments in community care in Taiwan. The notion of community care has been adopted in Taiwan following the model of Hong Kong but the main question of the article is whether this has resulted in actual service provisions at the community level, forming an alternative to institutional care. The data has been collected from several sources: policy documents, official statistics, surveys, general reports, funding provision reports, and empirical studies. The results show that neither central nor local authorities are seriously involved in caring for elderly people or persons with disabilities in Taiwan's communities. In Taiwan, community care for these groups of people still means, in practice, informal care provided by female family members without any support from public policies.     

A few points concerning the population growth of China's minority nationalities

How the populations of national minorities of China should develop in the future is a major problem that bears on the wealth and power of the homeland and the prosperity and development of the various nationalities themselves. The population of minority nationalities in China totaled only 35.52 million in 1953 and grew to 55.8 million in 1978. The speed of population growth of the different nationalities in different historical periods is closely related to the Party's policy and socioeconomic factors. Attention must be paid to the gap between population growth and the development of the economy, culture, education, health, and medical care as well as to other practical problems existing among the national minorities: 1) a young age structure, 2) early marriage and early reproduction are a widespread practice, 3) economic development still remains at a low level, and 4) cultural and educational level and health and medical care undertakings fall short of actual needs. Due to the serious imbalance between population growth and economic development, the lives of national minority peoples in most regions are still poverty-stricken. Implementing family planning programs among national minorities involves problems of understanding as well as many practical issues. The population growth of national minorities is a vital issue that calls for immediate, extensive, and in-depth research.     

Family leave legislation in the American states: Toward a model of state policy adoption

The issue of mandated family leave has drawn substantial attention in recent years. This article develops and tests empirically a model of adoption of family leave policies in the American states during the late 1980s. State family leave policies are seen as a function of three sets of variables: (a) institutional-elite variables such as partisan control of state government and the proportion of women in the state legislatures; (b) constituency disposition variables such as mass partisanship, mass ideology, and the likelihood of general support for “women's” issues; and (c) contextual-demand variables such as birth rates and women's participation in the workforce. The model provides impressive fit to the data, accurately predicting the family leave policies of 92% of the state cases. The results suggest the importance of partisan control of state government, proportion of women in the state legislature, urbanization, and feminism as a state policy as factors that affect the probability that states will adopt mandated family leave policies. His research interests include American politics, public policy, and domestic political economy. He is editor of theAmerican Politics Quarterly, and is former President of the State Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky. Her research interests include family policy and women's labor force participation. She received her Ph.D. in Family Science from the University of Georgia.     

1984 and beyond: Divergent Directions and Extra Depth*

It is time family therapy looked wider than the therapy session. Problems presenting also need to be viewed within a societal context. The complexity and fluid nature of issues affecting the family today needs to be recognised. To highlight this, 3 divergent areas are discussed; family structure, culture, and the nuclear threat. The myth of homogeneity is exposed and the pluralistic nature of Australian society is discussed. It is argued that family therapists have a responsibility to be aware of, and to comment on, family policy issues if the approach is to continue to develop divergent directions and extra depths.     

廊坊市发展总部经济的“三步曲”构想

发展总部经济对于构筑"京津冀电子信息走廊、环渤海休闲商务中心"、建设"环首都绿色经济圈"等都有非常现实的意义。文章在对廊坊总部经济发展现状全面调研的基础上,提出"三步曲"的廊坊总部经济发展模式,并在总体规划、政策引导、配套对接等方面提出了对策建议,以期对廊坊总部经济发展起到一些积极的作用。     

Modernization and the demographic transition: cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of a revised model

Problems associated with past research on the fertility-development issue are identified in this article, and a model of the macro-level determinants of fertility -- a model informed by the revised theory of fertility transition -- is specified. This model is estimated both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. In addition, a model is specified that assesses the importance of a family planning program effort on fertility change in less developed countries. The effects on fertility change of other variables is controlled. Using crude birth rates for 117 countries, the model is operationalized and the revised model is applied to 1974 rates. A longitudinal model of 1955-1959 to 1974 change in rates is then tested. The final model for 81 less developed countries from the original set of 117 countries includes a measure of family planning effort. Results support the view that high levels of modernization increase motivation to control fertility, but they also show that excessive reliance on developmental change in less developed countries to bring about fetility declines would prolong unnecessarily the current period of rapid population growth. The dominant role of modernization in the models that lack data on family planning programs only facilitates understanding of the past. Modernization is not the only road to future lower fertility. Modernization, abortion, and family planning programs are explicit policy relevant variables. It was found that legalized abortion has a large and independent impact on lowering birth rates and that family planning programs also reduce unwanted births in less developed countries. These programs were the most important factor related to change in 1955-1959 to 1974 crude birth rate.     

Reconstructive legitimacy in final reports of contract research

It is argued that final reports of contract research firms are best understood as documents embedded in a political economy rather than as objective depictions of reality. That political economy gives rise to distortions of the research process in such reports we conceptualize as ‘reconstructive legitimacy’. That concept points to a set of structural conditions which induce contractors to gloss over problems and misrepresent research events. Reconstructive legitimacy functions to convey the image of these for-profit organizations as capable of delivering a viable and useful product to their sponsors. Implications of this manifestly political and economic process for policy research and formulation are discussed.     

Population and family planning in developing countries: the employer's role

The overall population problem of the world is discussed briefly. The author asserts that rapid population growth has serious social and political implications and imposes serious restraints on economic progress. It is also linked to problems of urbanization. Family planning is a way out. The state alone is not enough to make family planning successful, it must be supported by the different segments of society. Employers have a major social responsibility in this respect. After this general introduction, and the assertion of the basic role of the employer in family planning programs, the author deals with the specific situation in India in terms of 1) its population problem, 2) progress and impact of the Indian family planning program, and 3) the role of employers in the promotion of family planning in India; a detailed section is devoted to the family planning centers of the Tata group of companies (Tata textile units, chemicals, iron and steel, engineering and locomotive, etc.). The author enumerates the measures to promote effective participation by employers, which include 1) an organized framework, 2) assistance to employers, and 3) removal of disincentives. The author concludes by saying that the efforts of employers to limit population growth need to be supplemented by international cooperation and action.     

Universal Access to Affordable Housing? Interrogating an Elusive Development Goal

Abstract

Universal access to safe and secure housing has long been a central concern of the international development community. Since 2001, this aspiration has taken the form of global benchmarking embodied in the UN Millennium Development Goal 7–11 and its successor the Sustainable Development Goal 11. Despite these targets, hundreds of millions of households continue to be excluded from this basic human right. How might we understand the politics driving the disjuncture between rhetoric and reality? By historically examining the core policy documents, it is suggested that the self-actualising discourse of neoliberalism—in which the housing goals are framed—work to normalise a reality in which the commodification of basic survival needs and individualised self-help are seen as the only viable alternatives in realising decent shelter for all. Moreover, the construction and reconstruction of neoliberalism over the past 15 years has resulted in the increasingly explicit and central role of corporations in delivering housing justice.     

A comparison of family policy designs of Australia and Norway using microsimulation models

Many of the Australian family support schemes are income-tested transfers, targeted towards the lower end of the income distribution, whereas the Norwegian approach is to provide subsidized non-parental care services and universal family payments. We contrast these two types of policies and discuss policy changes within these policy types by presenting results from simulations, using microsimulation models developed for Australia and Norway. Labor supply effects and distributional effects are discussed for the hypothetical policy changes of replacing the means-tested family payments of Australia by the Norwegian universal child benefit schedule and vice versa, and of reducing the childcare fees in both countries. The analysis highlights that the case for policy changes is restricted by the economic environment and the role of family policy in the two countries. Whereas there is considerable potential for increased labor supply of Australian mothers, it may have detrimental distributional effects and is likely to be costly. In Norway, mothers already have high labor supply and any adverse distributional effects of further labor supply incentives occur in an economy with low initial income dispersion. However, expenditure on family support is already high and the question is whether this should be further extended.