Family Management

Existential Field 5: Family Management in the European Union

The report on Family Management has been written by Zsuzsa Blaskó & Veronika Herche at the Demographic Research Institute (Hungarian Central Statistics Office).

Keywords: family and work, division of labour, paid work, household work, parenting and childrearing, gender roles.

Abstract: This report provides a critical account of the literature on family-management patterns in European families, reviewing reports, reviews, statistics and overviews of related areas produced or commissioned by international bodies and also academic journals from 1990 to the present, concentrating on European resources, most notably on inter-country comparisons.

The term family-management comprises issues related to the allocation of tasks and duties that typically need to be carried out by members of households. The authors differentiate between the three domains - paid work, household duties and childrearing - and look at how these activities are shared by household-members. The review identifies general patterns and tendencies and cross-national similarities and differences in the field of family management across Europe, describes key factors that promote certain types of family management patterns, and outlines some of the major gaps in this research area.

The report concludes that there is notable diversity in the field of family management across Europe and this diversity is likely to be increasing. As far as the division of paid work is concerned, as the female employment rate increased the dominance of the ‘male breadwinner’ solution diminished, though no prevailing model has emerged so far. Instead, a series of co-existing models are present in European households with the rather heterogeneous set of dual-earner solutions being the most frequent.

Concerning unpaid domestic work, the gap in the number of hours men and women spend on such activities has narrowed somewhat in the past decades but women continue to do the lion’s share of unpaid work in the majority of the households. The distribution of unpaid work only loosely correlates with the distribution of paid work which leads to further variations in the models followed. In addition, families do not make their choices of family management model for a life-time but instead adapt their actual behaviour to their situation in the various phases of their life-cycle. When looking at the division of paid and unpaid work simultaneously and describing the major trend in family management as such, the “dual earner-female carer” model seems to become the most widespread one in Europe. This is so despite the increasing relative role men take in unpaid work: variations within the model are numerous and significant.

Download and Comment

Please find available to download the summary and the full working reports (to the left of this text). The Summary highlights key points and findings of the work, whilst the Full Report should be read by those wanting a more in-depth knowledge of the subject area.

Stakeholders are invited to comment on the report, making reference to their own findings and policies as appropriate; these critical comments will be analysed and processed as part of the Critical Review of the Existing Research on Families. Please note that only registered stakeholders are able to comment and download the full reports. To register, click here.