Work/Family Policy Stratification: The Examples of Family Support and Family Leave

In the past decade the United States Congress has debated and passed legislative policies concerned with women's work, both in the family and in the labor force. The Family Support Act of 1988 and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 fall into this category of legislative policy. A comparative study of Congressional testimony in each case reveals that these two pieces of legislation are excellent examples of how federal policies—and the debates which fashion these policies—maintain and promote a system of policy stratification that perpetuates differences based on gender, race, class and marital and occupational status.     

Decision‐Making Factors within Paternity and Parental Leaves: Why Spanish Fathers Take Time Off from Work

This article aims to understand how Spanish fathers construct and justify their decisions to use both paternity and parental leaves. Specifically, we analyse the fathers' discourse about paid work conditions, the couple's decision‐making process, formal and informal care resources, and care and gender equality. We divided responders according to the type of leave that they took and the length of time away from work; as a result, participants in this study were placed into three groups: (1) fathers who take 15 days off from work after childbirth, which are usually those who took only paternity leaves; (2) fathers who take off more than 1 month, which are usually fathers who also took parental leave; and (3) fathers who take off less than 5 days from work, which are fathers who do not take any official leave. We analyse 30 in‐depth interviews with Spanish fathers by applying a critical discourse methodology. The findings indicate that paternity leave is mostly considered a right, but not a duty, and the decision whether or not to use it is viewed as an individual choice. Fathers who take longer leaves judge time off from work not only as an individual right, but also as a duty to their families. These fathers show a low work‐connection discourse, an explicit rejection of other care resources, and a care‐sensitive attitude.     

Work and Family in the 1990s

This review highlights four themes emerging from the work and family literature of the 1990s. The first theme evolves from the historical legacy of the maternal employment literature with its focus on children's well‐being. The second theme, work socialization, is based on the premise that occupational conditions, such as autonomy and complexity, shape the values of workers who in turn generalize these lessons off the job. Research on work stress, the third theme, explores how experiences of short‐ and long‐term stress at work make their mark on workers' behavior and well‐being off the job. Finally, the multiple roles literature focuses on how individuals balance roles, such as parent, spouse, and worker, and the consequences for health and family relationships. In addition to these four major themes, advances in work and family policy initiatives over the past decade are discussed. Suggestions for future research focus on addressing issues of causality, attending to the complexity of social contexts, linking research to policy, and developing interdisciplinary theories and research designs.     

Reflexive Fathers: Negotiating Parental Leave and Working Life

The emergence of parental leave schemes has been the most important area of expansion for the Norwegian welfare state in the 1990s. Schemes have been extended, and special rights have been granted to fathers. The main underpinning of this strategy is the intention to bolster the fathers’ contact with and care for their children. Another objective is to share the benefits and burdens of working life and family life between men and women. In this article we analyse how fathers construct different fatherhood practices through negotiations in relation to the leave schemes and different working conditions.     

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.     

Paid Maternal and Parental Leave Legislation and Primary Prevention

Abstract

For child development, the first three years are crucial to foundations for emotional and mental health, for toilet training and vocabulary development, and for the precipitation of conscience and essential inner controls. For this reason, these are also the primary prevention years during which marital intactness and paid maternal and parental leave benefits are of crucial importance. A comparative social policy review of the status of parental leave legislation in North America and in Europe confirms that the United States is far behind.     

Parental leave benefit in Austria. Stratified take-up in a conservative country

Since 2000, parental leave benefit legislation has shifted from an employment-related benefit to a nearly universal and then to a mixed system of five different benefit rates of income-related and flat-rate models with four different maximum lengths, and with a longer spell if two partners share childcare leave in Austria. The diversification leads to the questions: what determines parents' choice of a certain model, and what are the implications of such a diverse system for social and gender equality? The parents' choice depends on income, employment status, region, and relationship status and thus is restrained. The models further social and gendered stratification, as they still serve a conservative male breadwinner family as well as a modernised dual breadwinner one and, to a lesser degree, an adult worker. In contrast, low-income (single) parents receive more individualised treatment and have to engage in employment sooner than other groups.     

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.     

Family Dispute Resolution: Use,Timing, and Outcomes

The mandatory requirement for separating or separated parents to mediate disputes over children before filing an application for the courts represents one of the key changes introduced in the 2006 Australian family law reforms. The process is known legally as Family Dispute Resolution (FDR). Based on the reports of three cohorts of parents who had separated in different periods after these reforms were implemented, this paper examines: (1) the socio‐demographic characteristics and circumstances of parents who used FDR; (2) the extent to which parents who attended FDR at different periods after separation differ in characteristics and circumstances; (3) FDR outcomes and the extent to which these outcomes vary according to parents’ circumstances and their timing of FDR use. The analysis shows that use of FDR was quite common among separated parents. Parents who went to FDR were typically able to reach an agreement and this positive outcome appeared to have increased over time, which may reflect improving and refining practice. The data show that the quality of inter‐parental relationship and circumstances surrounding separation such as family violence and other issues are closely linked with FDR use and its outcomes. They also reveal that parents who used FDR typically did so in the early stage of separation with its use much less common after separation for three or four years. Typically, in these cases, s60I certificates, which are normally required before the courts can intervene, were issued.     

Navigating Globalization: Immigration Policy in Canada and Australia, 1945–20071

Scholarship on immigration and globalization has failed to adequately analyze the nation‐state’s regulatory capacities, insisting instead that contemporary patterns of migration jeopardize national sovereignty and territoriality. While recognized that states possess the legitimate authority to control their territorial and membership boundaries, recent transformations of these capacities remain largely unanalyzed. This article’s historical analysis of Australia and Canada’s postwar immigration policies demonstrates that the contours of state regulation are intimately connected to the exigencies of state administration and nation building and—in contrast to the expectations of dominant theories—have intensified and expanded within the globalization context. The literature’s inattention to the fundamentally political nature of immigration has obscured the critical effects of national policies within both the migratory and globalization process. Australia’s and Canada’s contemporary policies constitute a unique model of migration control and reflect attempts by both countries to strategically position their societies within the global system and resolve a number of economic, political, cultural, and demographic transitions associated with globalization.     

Parents’ Workplace Situation and Fathers’ Parental Leave Use

This study examines how the workplace situation of both parents affects fathers’ parental leave use. We used parental leave‐taking register data from Statistics Sweden for dual‐earner couples who resided in Stockholm and had children in 1997 (n= 3,755). The results indicate that fathers shorten their parental leave if their workplaces are such that one can expect leave to be associated with high costs and that fathers appear to be influenced by the leave use of other fathers in the workplace. Mothers’ workplace situation appears to be less important for fathers’ leave use. The results point to the importance of actors other than parents (such as employers) for understanding the gender‐based division of child care.     

Grass Roots Family Action and Military Policy Responses

No abstract available for this article.     

Girls’ Family Labor in Low‐Income Households: A Decade of Qualitative Research

This article analyzes a decade of qualitative research to identify and explore an overlooked survival strategy used in low‐income families: children's family labor. Defined as physical duties, caregiving, and household management responsibilities, children’s—most often girls’—family labor is posited as a critical source of support where low wages and absent adult caregivers leave children to take over essential, complex, and time‐consuming family demands. We argue that there are lost opportunities when children are detoured from childhood to do family labor and that an intergenerational transfer of poverty is associated with those losses.     

The Evolution of Family Policy in Spain

Summary

The aim of this article is to trace the evolution of Spanish family policy from its beginning in the 1930s to the present, showing the shifting role played by the State in defining and supporting family formation and functioning. Different periods areconsidered according to the objectives and characteristics of this policy as well as according to the support it received from the political forces ruling in each period. For each period, objectives, mechanisms, output and outcome are analyzed. The evolution over the whole period has been, on one hand, away from support of the patriarchal family to the recognition of family pluralism, and, on the other, evolution from a government provided family salary to a policy intended to combat poverty.     

Family Members' Narratives of Divorce and Interparental Conflict: Implications for Parental Alienation

This study focused on the internal dynamics of family members who experience divorce and interparental conflict. Interparental conflict and triangulating children increase the likelihood of alienating children from a parent. Narrative interviews with members of three families were used to explore meaning structures. Results showed how parents and children thought, felt, and created meaning about their experiences; how family members responded to conflict and behaviors associated with parental alienation; and how they viewed family relationships. Metalevel findings suggested each family member held dichotomous views and used cognitive and behavioral control response strategies. Thus, parental alienation stems from a relational dynamic and needs to be addressed from a family systems perspective.