TY - JOUR
T1 - Regulating working families in the European Union
T2 - a history of disjointed strategies
AU - Busby, Nicole
AU - James, Grace
N1 - This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law on 29.10.2015, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09649069.2015.1081217.
PY - 2015/10/29
Y1 - 2015/10/29
N2 - Families in market economies worldwide have long been confronted with the demands of participating in paid work and providing care for their dependent members. The social, economic and political contexts within which families do so differ from country to country but an increasing number of governments are being asked to engage, or better engage, with this important area of public policy. What seems like a relatively simple goal – to enable families to better balance care-giving and paid employment – has raised several difficulties and dilemmas for policy makers which have been approached in different ways. This paper aims to identify and critique the nature and development of the means by which legal engagement with work-family reconciliation has, historically, been framed in the European Union. In doing so, and with reference to specific cohorts of workers, we demonstrate how disjointed the strategies are in relation to working carers and argue that the EU is unlikely to provide the legal framework necessary to bring about effective change in this fundamentally important area of social policy.
AB - Families in market economies worldwide have long been confronted with the demands of participating in paid work and providing care for their dependent members. The social, economic and political contexts within which families do so differ from country to country but an increasing number of governments are being asked to engage, or better engage, with this important area of public policy. What seems like a relatively simple goal – to enable families to better balance care-giving and paid employment – has raised several difficulties and dilemmas for policy makers which have been approached in different ways. This paper aims to identify and critique the nature and development of the means by which legal engagement with work-family reconciliation has, historically, been framed in the European Union. In doing so, and with reference to specific cohorts of workers, we demonstrate how disjointed the strategies are in relation to working carers and argue that the EU is unlikely to provide the legal framework necessary to bring about effective change in this fundamentally important area of social policy.
KW - reconciliation
KW - work-family
KW - EU
KW - working carers
KW - elderly dependents
UR - http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjsf
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84945339709&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/09649069.2015.1081217
DO - 10.1080/09649069.2015.1081217
M3 - Article
VL - 37
SP - 295
EP - 308
JO - Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law
JF - Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law
SN - 0964-9069
IS - 3
ER -