Nordic Earner-Carer Politics

This 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.