The Oxford Handbook of Family Policy

Abstract

Abstract The Oxford International Handbook of Family Policy has two main aims: to identify key developments globally in regard to the forms and modalities of relevant policies, and to take a critical look at the developments regarding those policies. The overall goal is to uncover the extent to which concerns about the family and the role and practices of parents are mobilizing public policy and related agency in different parts of the world. The Handbook draws mainly from research carried out for UNICEF in 2014 and covers nine countries: Belarus, Chile, China, Croatia, England, Jamaica, Philippines, South Africa, and Sweden. Analysis reveals a strong trend cross-nationally toward providing a range of resources (typically termed “support”) to improve familial functioning and increase parents’ information and knowledge, resources, and competence for childrearing. The measures are not uniform, however. Parenting support frequently sits alongside family support policy, but it can also be a stand-alone policy in a setting where there is no developed family policy. In some national settings the growth of family and/or parenting support involves the introduction of new policies and provisions; in others it involves a reorientation or reframing of existing policies. In a further clarification, one has to distinguish between the high-income countries where policy is very well developed and where parenting support represents a specialization of existing policy and the low- and middle-income regions of the world where family support and parenting support are expected to achieve a more generic set of outcomes and where they are much less specific in concrete policy terms.