This book explains why countries have adopted different policies for working parents through a comparative historical study of four nations: France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States.

This work focuses on the social constructions of motherhood in Scandinavia and discusses questions of central concern to western industrialized nations, asking what is the relationship between women and the welfare state and, how do women reconcile work and family responsibilities.

This book uses data from Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden to rethink welfare policy.

Though women’s employment patterns in Europe have been changing drastically over several decades, the repercussions of this social revolution are just beginning to garner serious attention. Many scholars have presumed that diversity and change in women’s employment is based on the structures of welfare states and women’s responses to economic incentives and disincentives to join the workforce; How Welfare States Care provides in-depth analysis of women’s employment and childcare patterns, taxation, social security, and maternity leave provisions in order to show this logic does not hold. Combining economic, sociological, and psychological insights, Kremer demonstrates that care is embedded in welfare states and that European women are motivated by culturally and morally-shaped ideals of care that are embedded in welfare states—and less by economic reality.

A collection of essays about women and welfare in America, this book discusses how welfare programmes affect women and how gender relations have influenced the structure of such programmes. Issues such as race and class are also discussed.

The work-family conflict that mothers experience today is a national crisis. Women struggle to balance breadwinning with the bulk of parenting, and social policies aren't helping. Of all Western industrialized countries, the United States ranks dead last for supportive work-family policies. Can American women look to Europe for solutions? Making Motherhood Work draws on interviews that Caitlyn Collins conducted over five years with 135 middle-class working mothers in Sweden, Germany, Italy, and the United States. She explores how women navigate work and family given the different policy supports available in each country. Taking readers into women's homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces, Collins shows that mothers' expectations depend on context and that policies alone cannot solve women's struggles. With women held to unrealistic standards, the best solutions demand that we redefine motherhood, work, and family.

This text explores the impact of recent welfare reform on motherhood, marriage, and work in women's lives. It also focuses on what welfare reform reveals about work and family life, and its impact on us all.