Introduction

In recent decades, the reconciliation of work and family life has become a key focus in social research and policymaking at both national and European levels. Thanks to the altered gender composition of the labour force and a new feminist-inspired understanding of the interconnections between work and family, many policymakers no longer see the public sphere of paid work and the private sphere of family life as two separate worlds. A long-standing resistance to any kind of intervention in family life in many welfare states, including most English-speaking and East Asian countries, has given way to new policy approaches addressing the needs of working families, and many areas of family policy, including childcare services and parental leave, have been reconceptualised as support measures for work–family reconciliation. The European Union (EU), aiming to increase overall employment rates and generate economic growth in Europe, has become an active advocate of women's labour force participation and has begun to require member states to develop and extend their reconciliation policies. Faced with struggling economies and falling birth rates, many European nations have adopted the reconciliation agenda and launched new measures to support families, especially working mothers of young children. These changes represent a remarkable policy shift and have led to the rapid development of family policies in Europe.

Despite its significance, the scope of this policy reorientation has nevertheless been limited. Research and policy on reconciliation have focused almost exclusively on parents of young children, even though, in most countries, it is not growing numbers of children that are putting pressure on families’ capacity to provide care. Instead, as ongoing and anticipated changes in population structures confirm, it is people who are ill or disabled, especially in old age, whose numbers and needs are growing fast (Colombo et al, 2011). Previous research has shown that in virtually every nation, the bulk of care is overwhelmingly provided by the family. It is therefore hardly surprising that the growing needs of disabled and older people are expected to place greater demands on adult family members. Meanwhile, the ‘adult worker model’, with its expectation that everyone – including women, who in the past provided most family care unpaid – will participate in paid work (Lewis, 2001), has been adopted as a normative assumption almost everywhere.