LIST OF PANELS

Within most countries, there is substantial diversity in children’s family experiences. A growing number of children have experienced their parents’ separation and an increasing number of these children are splitting time between both parental homes, while others live primarily with one parent. Many children whose parents separate then experience their parents’ re-partnering, bringing new potential earners and/or caregivers and perhaps new children into their lives. Another dimension of diversity is that many children around the world live in extended-family households for either short or longer periods of time. Moreover, these family changes are not uniformly experienced, but many are especially important for those with lower socioeconomic status.

Many social policies intended to help families were initiated during a period in which stable nuclear families with a breadwinning husband and caregiving wife were seen to be the norm. Have these policies been adapted to fit contemporary family patterns? What are a country’s family patterns, and are their current family policies working well in light of these patterns? It is important for parents and children living in non-traditional family settings to have access to social protections that suit their family arrangements.

Research across various countries does describe patterns of fertility, partnership dissolution, and children’s living arrangements after parental separation. There is also an evaluation literature that describes general family policies across countries and provides overviews of how they are working. But there is substantially less work that examines how policies work for those with different family patterns. How do income support programs work when children split time across families? Who is responsible for providing for children when a parent has had children with multiple partners? If a parent’s new partner is acting as a parent even though they are not the biological parent, should they be able to take some parental leave? Do the resources and needs of co-residing kin factor into benefits?

The overarching research questions for this panel are whether countries adapt their family policies in light of contemporary family patterns and how their policies are working for diverse family forms. Paper proposals could explore the following hypotheses (or related ones): (a) the extent to which a country has adapted or instituted policy that reflects diverse families is related to the degree of family change within that country, the level of gender equality, and ideologies about family; (b) policies that focus on individuals rather than families as the unit of analysis are more effective at supporting a broad array of family forms; (c) policies are less effective when they do not match what a country’s family patterns actually are (i.e., countries whose policies do not provide cohabiting couples with equal rights to married couples may experience more difficulties if they have high rates of cohabitation.

We anticipate the panel will provide new descriptions of family change across countries, highlight novel approaches to supporting families in different contexts, and address whether family policies seem to be effective. We foresee that addressing these topics though comparative analysis will lead to new insights.

In this panel we invite papers that describe differences in family policies around the world, with a particular focus on how these policies incorporate contemporary family patterns, including cohabitation, multiple-partner fertility, shared care of children after separation, and living in households with kin or others. We invite both reviews and original work on whether a particular family policy is working for contemporary family patterns. Papers could address a range of policy areas, including family leave, early childhood education, income support, child custody and child support, inheritance, housing; indeed, we are interested in how a broad array of policies respond to or are shaped by family change.  These papers could address the effectiveness of a policy based on its particular goals or broader goals like ameliorating poverty and social exclusion or increasing gender equality.  We also invite papers that propose new family policies that might fit better with current realities or those that assess whether family policies that seem to be working well in one country context would need to be adapted to fit another country context.

In this panel we are particularly interested in papers that consider more than one country. We are also particularly interested in papers that consider countries outside the rich countries that are the subject of many comparative studies. Finally, we are interested in papers advancing theory and those working with either quantitative or qualitative analyses.