Family Policy: A Critical Overview of 60 Years of Scholarship

ABSTRACT This article critically reviews research and scholarship on family policy over the last 60 years focusing on theoretical and methodological developments within the European welfare state context. The first part of the analysis reveals a field that is diverse and vibrant, although it may be more accurately characterised as a set of sub‐fields with distinct patterns of study. The main lines of work—historical, empirical and conceptual—are often quite distanced from each other and there is a strong tendency to study the fine details of policy absent theoretical analysis. In its second part the article identifies developments that merit further scholarship. These include the major demographic changes that are underway, the revisioning of family policy by the new right and the soft left, the need to clarify the socio‐cultural drivers of family policy and better understand the trade‐offs between family policy as addressing socio‐economic factors and socio‐cultural, value‐based tensions and the need for family scholars to engage with the study of care, which has taken much of the feminist and gender focus away from family.