Restructuring Family Policies: Convergences and Divergences.

• Author: Angus, John
• Position: Critical essay

RESTRUCTURING FAMILY POLICIES: CONVERGENCES AND DIVERGENCES BY MAUREEN BAKER UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS, 2006

Maureen Baker's latest volume on family policy is a solid and well-crafted book, both in content and presentation: over 250 pages of text, 30 pages of works cited and a comprehensive index. Unlike many modern publications, the reviewer's copy has a hard cover, a sober but stylish title design and secure bindings. The text is well set out and Baker provides good chapter summaries and frequent guides to what is ahead.

The qualities of the book capture what I suspect are the best qualities of Maureen Baker's scholarship. A Professor of Sociology at Auckland University, formerly from Canada, Baker has published extensively in the field of family policy, looking at the interactions between family behaviours and choices and government policies. Her recent publications include chapters in a long-standing series on family trends in Canada (which she edits); books on families, work and caring, and on choices and constraints in family life; and articles on aspects of women's experience as mothers. One gets the impression that she is one of those academics who is an indefatigable gatherer of information and knowledge in her field, which she then subjects to some analysis before applying an admirable ability to "knock things into shape" for publication.

Baker's analysis in this work draws on her feminist frame of reference, a good understanding of the operation of politics in liberal democracies (she worked as a researcher for the Canadian Parliament for several years), and what would seem to be a keen eye for national variations.

In Restructuring Family Policies, Baker compares the way in which OECD countries (with a focus on the liberal welfare states of the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) have restructured social programmes for families with dependent children. She argues that whatever "category" of welfare state a country might be placed in (a la Esping Anderson and other analysts of the welfare state) and despite some common pressures, what counts most in determining national policies is country-specific. She identifies each country's "welfare regime" as unique and important. It comprises the institutional structures, vested interests and prevailing ideologies about women, families and the role of the state in personal life, and forms the context for changes. And because change is usually incremental, the current regime is also the starting point.

The change process itself, Baker argues, involves negotiations among stakeholders, fiscal and budgetary choices by government, and the politics of justifying and selling reforms through what she calls "carefully constructed political discourse that portrays new family programmes as improvements over the status quo". In short, politics matters. Baker writes later in a section on political action:

Feminists must join the mainstream debates and deal...