Home | About Us | Contact Us | Site Map | FAQs

^aDepartment of Political Science, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G3. E-mail: lwhite@chass.utoronto.ca

A burgeoning literature on the French welfare state notes a puzzle: successive French governments in the 20th century developed a number of employment-friendly family policies in an otherwise conservative welfare state. Although research to date has tapped into part of the explanatory puzzle, a fuller explanation is needed of the drivers of French welfare state development. This article focuses on the role of ideas and norms to account for both the breadth and narrowness of French family policy. The article demonstrates that acceptance of the norm of 'reconciliation of work and family life' shaped and transformed actors' interests and provided the foundation upon which gender-progressive employment-based family policies emerged, not because actors accepted the need to promote women's equality but rather because they agreed that mothers should be assisted in their childrearing role through workplace policies such as paid maternity leave and child care programs. However, the gendered nature of the reconciliation norm can also account for the constraints on and current shifts in contemporary work and family policy.

French Politics (2004) 2, 247-271. doi:10.1057/palgrave.fp.8200061

child care; employment and family policy; France; ideas; norms; reconciliation