| Sumario: | Taking the position that the structure of family policies plays a large role in shaping the lives of families, this paper argues that comparative research should place even greater emphasis on approaching family policies as being components of a larger welfare state. In this way, cross-national comparisons of family policies and their impacts on the lives of families can take fuller advantage of well-established research on the factors that give rise to particular overall national policy approaches. In order to facilitate this, this paper contextualizes family policies within a welfare state regimes framework by analyzing characteristics of family policies using the method established by welfare state regimes theorists. In doing so, this analysis also focuses on the extent to which family policies reinforce various forms of class stratification, where most current analyses have seen family policies primarily as impacting on gender stratification. It is argued that this will be helpful in working toward an understanding of welfare state regime histories and characteristics as underlying key differences between national approaches to the welfare of families. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
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