Both family law and social law have an impact on the situation of families. This has held true since the times of the “poor law” (when family law was certainly more relevant for the wealthy and mighty strata of the population). Nowadays, other rules (such as those of labor law and tax law) and welfare state institutions come into play. In analyzing legal change, this interaction between family law and welfare law has to be taken into account. From this perspective, this article endeavors to answer the following question: how do institutions distribute the costs of children in terms of money and work between various actors, and what is the relevance of the rules for gender inequalities? The changes in the similarities and differences of the institutional configurations in four countries (Belgium, Federal Republic of Germany, Sweden, and United Kingdom) are reviewed for the past decades.
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References
1.
The costs of children have recently attracted some attention in research. Some hints on international literature on child costs are given by Helmut Wintersberger, "Costs and Benefits: The Economics of Childhood," in Childhood Matters: Social Theory, Practice and Politics, eds. Jens Qvortrup, Marjatta Bardy, Giovanni Sgritta, and Helmut Wintersberger (Aldershot, UK: Avebury, 1994), 213-48.
2.
Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press , 1965).
3.
See Kirsten Scheiwe, Kinderkosten und Sorgearbeit im Recht-eine rechtsvergleichende Studie (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1999) for more detail.
4.
Jan Palme and Irene Wennemo, Swedish Social Security in the 1990s: Reform and Retrenchment ( Stockholm: Printing Works of the Cabinet Office and Ministries, 1998), 31.
5.
Ake Saldeen, "New Rules on Financial Public Support for Children Entitled to Maintenance ," in The International Survey of Family Law 1996, ed. Andrew Bainham (Den Haag : Kluwer Law International, 1998 ), 481-86; Palme and Wennemo, Swedish Social Security.
6.
If the yearly income exceeds a certain threshold, it is 10 percent for one child, 6.25 percent per child if there are two, and 5 percent per child if there are three children (Saldeen, New Rules on Financial Public Support for Children, 485).
7.
Bernd Henningsen, Der Wohlfahrtsstaat inSchweden (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1986), 121.
8.
Marianne Sundström, "Supporting Work, Family and Gender Equality" in Child Care, Parental Leave and the Under 3's: Policy Innovation in Europe, eds. Sheila Kamerman and Alfred Kahn (New York: Auburn , 1991), 182-83.
9.
Palme and Wennemo, Swedish Social Security in the 1990s.
10.
Anna Christensen (University of Lund) has drawn my attention to this motivation. She argues that the core of the Swedish social security system is not universality but workcenteredness since universal benefits (such as the former folkspensions or minimum parental benefits for mothers who have not been employed long enough to fulfill the entitlement conditions for the higher parental leave benefits) are very low.
11.
For details, see Anna Christensen, "Das Rentensystem Schwedens aus der Sicht der Frau," Die Deutsche Rentenversicherung no. 10-11 (1999): 659-68 and Scheiwe, Kinderkosten , 145ff.
12.
See Christensen, Das Rentensystem Schwedens.
13.
Stein Ringen, "Family Change and Family Policies: Great Britain," in Family Change and Family Policies in Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, eds. Sheila Kamerman and Alfred Kahn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 100.
14.
The negative impact of divorce on women's income situation in old age had come under harsh criticism. See, for example, Heather Joshi and Hugh Davies, "The Pension Consequences of Divorce" (Working Paper 550, Centre for Economic Policy Research, London).
15.
"Children First: A New Approach to Child Support" (Greenpaper presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Social Security, CM 3992, London, 1998), 1.
16.
For details, see Scheiwe, Kinderkosten, 179ff., 221ff. and Ringen, Family Change, 99-100.
17.
Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), Welfare Benefits Handbook, vol. 1 (London: CPAG, 1999), xviii.
18.
At the beginning of the 1990s, places in public crèches for children younger than age three were available for 2 percent of this group, and places in kindergarten were available for 35 to 45 percent of children older than age three. EC Commission, Childcare in the European Communities 1985-1990: Special Issue of Women of Europe (Brussels, 1990), 10.
19.
Directive 29/85/EC of October 19, 1992, on safety and health protection of pregnant workers and directive 96/34/EG of June 3, 1996, on parental leave, which was extended to the United Kingdom after the enforcement of the Maastricht Social Protocol.
20.
For details, see the comparative tables of MISSOC, Social Protection in the Member States of the European Union (Luxemburg: Office for Official Publications of the EC, 2001) (http://europa.eu.int/comm/employment_social/missoc2001/index_en.htm).
21.
See Sabine Berghahn and Andrea Fritsche, Frauenrecht in Ost- und Westdeutschland. Bilanz, Ausblick (Berlin: Basisdruck, 1991) for a detailed account of changes from a feminist perspective.
22.
The right of an employed parent to time off, which is paid by sickness insurance, is now granted for a maximum of ten days per year for each parent (twenty-five days if there are several children). For lone parents, it is double the amount; the time off can be taken for sick children up to twelve years old.
23.
For the relevant texts, see the homepage of the Federal Ministry of the Family, the Elderly, Women and Youth at www.bmfsfj.de.
24.
What Kaufmann said about France holds true also for Belgium: "Was für Deutschland die `Arbeiterfrage' und für England die `Armutsfrage' war, war für Frankreich die `Familienfrage,' insbesondere die Frage nach der Stabilisierung und dem Unterhalt der Arbeiterfamilie. Jedes Land hatte somit seine eigene, zentrale Denkfigur der `sozialen Frage,' eine eigene Definition des gesellschaftspolitischen Grundproblems, das die nationale Tradition der Sozialpolitik prägte." Franz-Xaver Kaufmann, "Einleitung," in Sozialgeschichte der französischen Familienpolitik, ed. Franz Schultheis (Frankfurt: Campus, 1988), 15-16.
25.
Sheila Kamerman and Alfred Kahn, "Government Expenditures for Children and Their Families in Advanced Industrial Countries 1960-198" (Working paper, International Child Development Centre, UNICEF, Innocenti Essays No. 2, Florence, 1991), 24.
26.
Case C-229/89 (EC Commission v. Belgium), European Court Reports (1991, I), 2205.
27.
Mary A.Glendon, The Transformation of Family Law: State, Law, and Family in the United States and Western Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
