Originally published in 1989, this cross-national study investigates the role and pattern of family life in fourteen countries in contemporary Europe. Providing a wealth of information on European families, it is a key source for anyone wishing to understand the changes in the family at that time. The contributors argue that, far from withering away, the family remained a very important social unit which continued to have considerable influence on other social institutions such as the state and the labour market. The central theme is the interrelation between changes in production and working life on one hand, and changes in family life and reproduction on the other. The contributors focus on the pressures and contradictions produced by the division of functions between family and work, and on problems which have arisen as a consequence of the sometimes incompatible and even conflicting demands of the two institutions. They show that the evolution of the nuclear family model in Europe had led to a great diversity of family patterns, and conclude that the family in modern European societies still had a contribution to make which no other institution could provide.

In this volume, guest editor Qvortrup brings together contributions representing structural, historical, and comparative perspectives on the study of children and youth. Here, childhood is conceived as a structural feature of society, subject to the stable and changing forces of the larger social context, and comparable across time and cultures. Such perspectives have been relatively under-represented in the "New Sociology of Childhood," which has tended both to stress children's agency, and to favour ethnographic methods of inquiry. The series editors are pleased to expand and enliven the foci of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth with this volume edited by the internationally renowned Danish Sociologist Jens Qvortrup, the first non-U.S. editor in the series' history.

In this volume, guest editor Qvortrup brings together contributions representing structural, historical, and comparative perspectives on the study of children and youth. Here, childhood is conceived as a structural feature of society, subject to the stable and changing forces of the larger social context, and comparable across time and cultures. Such perspectives have been relatively under-represented in the "New Sociology of Childhood," which has tended both to stress children's agency, and to favour ethnographic methods of inquiry. The series editors are pleased to expand and enliven the foci of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth with this volume edited by the internationally renowned Danish Sociologist Jens Qvortrup, the first non-U.S. editor in the series' history.

So far, research on the welfare state has usually neglected children and childhood. In the rare attempts to include childhood in welfare state analysis, too much emphasis was placed on children as future adults. However, only a full recognition of children as human beings and citizens here and now are compatible with new social studies of childhood as well as children's rights discourses. Thus the conceptual integration of children and childhood in the welfare state is still an open question. This book closes the gap by offering the concept of generational order as theoretical tool to both childhood and welfare state research. In analogy to gender analysis, this concept is an adequate tool in providing visibility to the adult bias of traditional welfare state theories and practices. The book includes contributors from ten predominantly European countries, exploring issues of children's social and economic welfare, such as child poverty in a theoretical, methodological, and practical perspective. Together with the companion volume below Flexible Childhood, also by the University Press of Southern Denmark this book is the final result of COST Action A19, Children's Welfare, which has been supported by the European COST Framework.