Balancing work and family care: european experiences

In a rapidly changing world a multitude of new challenges are emerging and affecting families, companies and the welfare state. In particular, families are facing increasing difficulties in managing their educational, work and care tasks, in the attempt to balance their internal and external requests. The goal of reconciliation measures is therefore not only to support the work-family balance in terms of material aids, but also to find new strategies to improve the quality of the well-being of individuals and families relationships. This special issue is concerned with work-family challenges or, more exactly, it aims at developing new insights into the work-family issues in different European countries. It addresses the "hot issue" of managing care and work in everyday family life within the societal context of policies, cultural patterns, and welfare regimes. In this perspective, different phases of family life and different aspects of social and cultural behaviours are explored. Specific attention is given to effects of past decisions about intimate relations and family instability in a life-cycle perspective, to caring exchanges between generations, to the impact of social policies and their cultural background, to the mismatch between expected and received care in family networks and between ideals and effective family practices. In such a framework, this special issue underlines the limitations of the classical approaches to work-life balance based on family-work spill over. Both work and family imply identity-oriented behaviours which require much more than easy choices and preferences. Addressing family and work reconciliation issues in situations of underemployment and/or precariousness is an increasing challenge faced by many countries in contemporary Europe