How Welfare States Care: Culture, Gender and Parenting in Europe

Abstract: A social revolution has taken place in Europe. Women's employment patterns changed drastically the last decades. But they are still different across Europe. Welfare state scholars often presume that diversity and change in women's employment across Europe is based on financial (dis) incentive structures embedded in welfare states. This book shows, by in depth analyses of women's (and men's) employment and care patterns as well as child care services, taxation, leave schemes and social security in four different welfare states (the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium) that this logic does not hold. A mother is not primarily the homo economicus welfare state scholars tend to presume. 'to work or to care 'is above all a moral predicament. What explains better the differences in Europe is to place care centrally and analyse welfare states as cultural agents. In the case of caring and paid employment, welfare states send culturally-defined moral images of good-enough caring in the

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• ISBN: 9789053569757
• Extent: Online-Ressource, 300 S.
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Veröffentlichungsversion ; begutachtet (peer reviewed)

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie, Anthropologie

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Amsterdam
• (who): Amsterdam Univ. Press
• (when): 2007
• Creator: Kremer, Monique

Further information

• URN: urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-271983
• Rights: Open Access; Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 15.08.2025, 7:26 AM CEST