Familialization, de-familialization, and family policy change in high-income countries

This article provides country-specific accounts of family policy change in twenty-one high-income countries between 1990 and 2015. It relies on a measure including twelve indicators across three dimensions: financial transfers, childcare services, and leave schemes. Indicators within each dimension are classified using the concepts of (de)familialization, widely employed in feminist social policy scholarship, and two original composite scores—the familialization and de-familialization scores—are constructed to capture the magnitude and direction of family policy change. Against a backdrop of overall policy expansion, the analysis identifies four distinct trajectories mirroring Leitner’s ideal-typical “varieties of familialism”: explicit familialization, optional familialization, implicit (or partial) de-familialization, and de-familialization. The article further shows that family policy change is largely path-dependent, with countries often undergoing trajectories specific to their family policy regime. In particular, familializing trends are most prominent in Mediterranean and liberal countries, whereas de-familializing trends are observed in social democratic and conservative countries.