Diversification in family forms in nine OECD countries – challenges for policy and research

Abstract

The authors discuss how family diversity is promoted and curtailed in the laws and family policies of the different welfare states, with a particular interest in changes in gender regimes and policies that move beyond heteronormativity, biological reductionism, and ethnic homogeneity. The cultural hegemony of one standard family form, composed of a married couple living together in one household with their biological children, has been eroded by a diversification of family forms. As the country cases examined here demonstrate, different social processes have advanced the destandardization of this family form and the diversification of families. Family policy is progressing in all nine countries by moving away from the primary focus on supporting the standard family and increasingly recognizing the diversity of family forms. While the diversification of family forms has become an important topic in Japanese family research, policy-makers are only slowly beginning to recognize this as a basis for political action. A.