Description
Book SynopsisThis insightful book provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of the formation and evolution of Nordic earner-carer policies over five decades. Spanning parental leave, father quotas, daycare services, and cash for childcare allowances, it explores the key roles that ideas and political parties play in the policy reform process.
Examining earner-carer politics across Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, Anne Lise Ellingsæter summarises and advances existing family policy literature by adopting a long historical perspective on policy reform. Highlighting how political processes shape policy trajectories, the book focuses on interpretative struggles in political discourses and reform processes, reflecting on the highly politicised and value-laden nature of family policy. It argues that bloc politics – the left against the centre-right – have been a central driving force, energised by differing ideas about relationships between state, family and individual, and between state and market. Ellingsæter also explores gender equality and parental choice, two strong and at times competing ideas influencing family policy.
Drawing on and furthering extensive theoretical and empirical research on family policy and welfare state change, Nordic Earner-Carer Politics will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of social policy, sociology, political science, and gender studies.
Trade Review‘In tracing 50 years of the history of earner-carer models in the five Nordic countries, this important book provides new insights into one of the defining features of the welfare state. Its compelling analysis of both the politics and policies associated with earner-carer models is a major contribution to scholarship.’ -- Mary Daly, University of Oxford, UK
‘Anne Lise Ellingsæter has long been an influential scholar of Nordic social policies, keenly analyzing policy architectures and their effects on gendered divisions of labor. In this ground-breaking book, she turns her experienced eye to policy formation. Focusing on the role of ideas and partisan political dynamics, and applying a comparative and historical lens, she skillfully unwinds complex policy trajectories.’ -- – Janet C. Gornick, Graduate Center, City University of New York, US
Table of ContentsContents: PART I PROBLEMS, PERSPECTIVES AND CONTEXTS 1 Introduction: Placing Nordic earner-carer politics in time 2 The politics of policy formation: modes of change, ideas and parties 3 The contexts: Nordic welfare states PART II EARNER-CARER POLICY PATHS 4 Shifting leave path: from mother to parent right 5 Politicising fatherhood: Struggles over quota politics 6 Going public: Towards universal childcare and beyond 7 Cash for childcare: Choice controversies PART III TEMPORALITY AND POLICY IMPACT 8 Earner-carer policy outcomes: The longer term PART IV CONCLUSIONS 9 The era of Nordic earner-carer politics
