Family Shifts: Families, Policies, and Gender Equality

Elaine Porter is an associate professor of sociology at Laurentian
University.

Family Shifts is a welcome elaboration of the multiple shifting points
of intersection between families and social policies that Eichler has
presented in her earlier work. Its virtues are many. Her three implicit
models of family underlying social policies—the patriarchal,
individual responsibility, and social responsibility family models—are
compared and contrasted with one another. Taxation guidelines are
thoroughly reviewed and presented in detail in an appendix. The
struggles of same-sex couples for legal recognition are given prominence
in her discussion of family types. She spells out the consequences of
new technology for motherhood in the composite 25 types that emerge and
shows how the term “parenthood” obscures them. Her discussion of
Poponoe and Okin allow the reader to see her propositions in relation to
other perspectives.

In characteristic style, Eichler boldly posits, from her review of the
family literature, criteria for evaluation of policy effects on
families. This series of eight questions forms the underlying structure
of her comparisons among family policy models. The individual
responsibility model— while superior in many respects to the
patriarchal model—is found wanting in its ability to take into
consideration the needs of dependants and to fully address continuing
substantive gender inequality. With such critiques in hand, she attempts
to define the brave new world, which would be ushered in by her social
responsibility model.

What is new in her discussion of the social responsibility model is her
effort to come to terms with the significance of relationships between
adults. Although the obligations of adults to one another pale in
comparison to the care required for “inevitable” dependents
(children and adults in need of care), both considerations touch on the
central question that the social responsibility model raises: how can
policies support the functions of families in a way that does not
disadvantage those who provide the services? Margrit Eichler’s
no-nonsense examination of these issues clearly defines the territory
even if it does not, by her own admission, provide all the answers.