The European Family: The Family Question in the European Community

Abstract

European Family: Family Question in European Community. Jacques Commaille & Francois de Singly (Eds.). Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1997. 247 pp. ISBN 0-7923-4757-9. $97.00 cloth. aim of this book is to answer two questions: Does European family exist? Does European family policy exist? Answering them is a challenging task requiring a carefully selected multinational and multidisciplinary panel. Commaille and Singly recognized this and put together a notorious panel of experts. contributionsor reflections. as one of authors calls themcollected in this volume, however, are more focused on second question than first one. Perhaps topic was too broad for a single volume. Still, editors, after examining data presented in this volume, reply yes to first question and no to second. editors' contention is that if one looks at studies of family behavior and dynamics in Europe and contrasts them with studies done in other countries, it is possible to observe that there is such thing as European Those studies, however, are not systematically reviewed in this book, and only chapter by Be=eot and Fernandez shed some light on this issue by using empirical data. Begeot and Fernandez use official statistics to explore demographic patterns of population growth and renewal, marriage and divorce, family structure, and female labor participation. Their careful examination of these data leads them to conclude, in a more appropriate tone than that employed by editors in their initial statement, that although all countries of Union are moving in same direction, major divergences still exist, legacy of historical and cultural differences. Some of concept papers provide additional interpretations. Burguiere, for example, focuses on models of domestic organization, analyzes data on observed demographic patterns from a historical point of view, and concludes that sign of times has tended to wipe out regional contrasts in norms of household organisation which were formerly observable in Europe. Schulteis, however, notes different economic, educational, and social investment strategies of families across Europe in context of their functions of social reproductions. inclusion of three chapters on American, Australian, and Japanese families under confusing title The European Family as Seen Elsewhere invites further questions about meaning of construct, the European family. Indeed, these papers undermine discriminant validity of this conceptual category by noting common patterns among American, Australian, and European families, at least when one only focuses on macro-demographic patterns that editors seem to consider only source of legitimate comparative research. …