Társadalmak átalakulása, demokratizálódás, társadalmi mozgalmak
Family policies in Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary – when viewed against the background
of their different socioeconomic framework conditions – are based on concepts that
are primarily geared to the family as a unity and not to the individual person. These
concepts assign individual family members to different societal positions, contribute
to a conservative restoration of the roles of women and men, and stabilize traditional
gender hierarchies. Social spending cuts and the privatisation of services are even
more precarious in the transformation countries, which are additionally burdened with
the economic and social costs of system change, than in Austria. In none of the three
countries, though, the social and family policy prerequisites for reconciling job
and family obligations are satisfactorily fulfilled. An insufficient supply of public
child care facilities is an important structural obstacle in this regard. A familialisation
of women, in association with an idealisation of the mother role and private child
care, tends to be one of the consequences. It should be noted that experiences from
various countries show that it is not the amount of transfer benefits, but the opportunity
for women to earn their own income in combination with a qualified public child care
scheme and partnership-based family models that account for higher birth rates. Austria,
Hungary and Bulgaria are still far away from any such solutions as formulated in Scandinavian
family and social policy concepts.
