The integration of national economies into a world economy drastically expanded the demand for goods, intensified international trade and thus raised the compet-itive pressure in particular in developed economies and high-wage and export-oriented countries. The ongoing transition towards more knowledge-based and service oriented economies strongly augments the demand for well qualified work-ers. The simultaneous demographic change in many highly developed countries towards an aging population, a declining share of people in working-age relative to the overall population, falling birth rates which will further reduce the number of potential employees in the future uncover a more severe problem, namely the impending shortage of skilled labor. These new challenges force the economy, society and hence policy-makers to develop new concepts to mobilize all available resources. The fastest way is to exploit the underutilized potential of skilled females and older workers in a better and more comprehensive way. Various debates within national governments as well as with employer and employee associations over the configuration of employment policies and work arrangements were triggered as to how to achieve this aim. In the focus of these debates is the question of how to enhance opportunities for workers and in particular for parents to enable them to reconcile work and family as it is one major prerequisite for female labor force participation.
For policy makers and economists likewise, the drastic increase of female em-ployment and also the intensified demand for female workers was one of the major achievements of the past decades. However, this development is also critically debated. Becker (1981) notes that the “large increase in female labor force partici-pation of married women, including mothers with young children, has reduced the contact between children and their mothers and contributed to the conflict between the sexes in employment as well as in marriage.” The fear is that the positive aggregate employment effects are outweighed to some extent by potential adverse social consequences on the individual or household level. The new challenge for policy-makers nowadays is hence to deal with such social consequences while simultaneously further encouraging female labor force participation. Additionally, the combination of an ageing workforce, the drop in birth-rates and the shortage of skilled labor of recent years requires countries to emphasize their endeavors
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to activate their female population. To retain employees and also to attract new skilled labor, firms must offer family-oriented work arrangements and national government should further promote such measures. A possible step in this context is the intensification of measures granting flexibility of working schedules and thus to strengthen incentives for women to enter the labor market and to re-enter after child birth.
Family politics is thus a highly important area of research as it defines the framework as well as the incentives for current and future economic activities and consequently for growth. Modern family oriented employment policy balances incentives to work with support for togetherness of parents and children that caters the needs and development possibilities of dependent children to a significant extent. In this context, parents support every form of reconciliation of family and work which they deem to be worthy, necessary and achievable.
Today’s orientation of current family politics in Germany is better understood after highlighting some important historical trends. Traditional gender roles are still wide-spread nowadays and can be traced back to family politics during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. Family related policies were first integrated into the constitution of the Weimar Republic in 1919 (Gerlach, 2008). Articles 119 to 121 protected the marriage and the equality of both genders directly. Accordingly, the paramount duty of the family was the education of children. Under the Nazi reign, the family received even greater attention but was also instrumented for the population and race related intentions of the regime. A general family policy which was accessible to everybody was not yet achieved.
The demographic and economic situation after World War II required the usage of the total available labor potential to rebuild the destroyed country (Schröder, 1998).
Both parts of post-war Germany approached this task differently and consequently, the orientation of their family policies diverged drastically. In the former GDR, it was recognized already during the 1950s that the integration of women into the domestic labor market is essential. In addition to the difficult demographic situation after World War II, the country had to deal with a massive outflow of qualified labor to the Federal Republic of Germany during the 1950s. To offer work environments that allow women to work full-time but to also have children, the expansion of childcare facilities was one of the main objectives of family policies in the GDR.
The peak was reached in 1989, when almost every child had access to formal childcare facilities. According to Schröder (1998), family policies were primarily based on economic and demographic principles, yet achieving an equalization of household tasks between the spouses was not an issue. Consequently, traditional roles persisted which enforced a double burden on these women who had to simultaneously juggle work and family without receiving much support from their husbands.
In contrast, the Federal Republic of Germany approached the demographic situation after World War II in a different way. The main goal of family policies during the 1950s was to improve the situation of post-war families in particular of those being affected by missing family members, expulsion or the lack of housing and workplaces (Gerlach, 2008). The traditional family consisting of a husband who was working in the labor market and a housewife who cared for household and children was strongly promoted by policy makers. West Germany was additionally strongly influenced by the Catholic Social Teaching which further shaped the role models. The law of equal opportunities that was enacted in 1957 postulated that women should have the same opportunities than men to earn income and that both fathers and mothers are equally responsible for the education of their children. I reality, however, women were supposed to ask their husbands for permission to work and until 1977 he even had to additionally sign the work contract. This situation was not changed until June 1976 with the reform of marital and divorce laws. During the years of the economic miracle, the role of women being housewives was further advocated as a promise of men towards their wives to not have the need to work in the labor market. Public incentives based on tax advantages for married couples (“Ehegattensplitting”) intensified traditional gender roles and the traditional division of labor and still continue to do so.1 The aim of the joint taxation of married couples is to mitigate the burden of progressive taxes. The tax advantages of joint taxation increase with a widening of the income gap between the spouses so that one earner households benefit most.
Nowadays, firms play an ever increasing role among the non-governmental actors to shape and apply family policies. In the face of the demographic change towards an aging population as well as an increasing shortage of skilled labor in many firms, a family-oriented company policy is now indispensable in order to use the underutilized potential of females and older workers. Since 1994, many OECD countries have enacted reforms to expand the options of workers and employers to make use of flexible working-time arrangements. The objective of these reforms (OECD, 2006) are to allow for a greater deal of variability of working schedules over time (e.g. annualization of working hours), but also for a more flexible recourse to work outside of the conventional workweek (e.g. evening/night, weekend work and shift work).
According to theUnternehmensmonitor 2010by the Bundesministerium für Fami-lie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend (2010), more than 70 percent of all interviewed firms offered either individually agreed or flexible working hours within some predefined range in 2006 and in 2010. Among these firms, about 69 percent indicate that family-friendliness of employment policies is important to experts, managers and executives and even 80 percent recognize its importance for other employees but
1See also Juster and Stafford (1991) who find that countries in which couples are taxed by a single marginal tax have weaker tendencies towards an equalized division of labor among spouses.
also the firm itself. Between 2003 and 2009, the share of respondents recognizing the importance for the firm itself doubled reflecting the rising awareness of flexibility measures for a reconciliation of family and work which additionally benefits the firm. More than 90 percent of all interviewed firms report to offer such measures in order to keep or even to attract qualified workers and to improve their workplace satisfaction. The reconciliation of family and work is not only important for German firms. According to the Europäischer Unternehmensmonitor 2010 by the Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend (2010) more than 80 percent of firms in Poland, France and Italy agree. Swedish employers even indicate it to be the main priority in about 95 percent of all interviewed firms. The UK is bottom of the league with only half of all firms considering the reconciliation of family and work as important determinant of a firm’s employment policy. However, more than 70 percent of all British firms already offer flexible or even individually agreed working hours. The percentage is significantly lower in the other countries and ranges between 46 and 57 percent in France, Poland and Italy.
For a long time it was no objective of policy makers to intervene into the personal sphere of families. The division of labor within German households was viewed as being the result of a bargaining process within the household in which the responsibilities of earning earning and rearing children are determined only between the partners (Becker, 1985). Yet, the family as institution is important to society as a whole in that it offers services for its preservation and social cohesion. In this respect, it is a powerful institution for the socialization of the current but also of all future generations. It is responsible for the formation of fundamental attitudes.
Developmental psychologists as well as neuro-scientists further emphasize the importance of close relationships between children and parents in particular during the first years of a child’s life for the cognitive and social development (Hartup, 1989; Maccoby, 1992; Thompson, 2001; Landry et al., 2003). It is therefore essential to better understand the interaction between economic and social activities in order to draw better informed policy implications.