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The Relationship between Familizing and Individualizing Policies and Mental Health in Parents in Europe
[journal article]
Abstract Previous studies suggest the relative importance of the impact of childcare policies on mental health in parents. There have also been studies showing that welfare states have differing policy packages, consisting of a mixture of familizing and individualizing policy measures. This study builds on a... view more
Previous studies suggest the relative importance of the impact of childcare policies on mental health in parents. There have also been studies showing that welfare states have differing policy packages, consisting of a mixture of familizing and individualizing policy measures. This study builds on and extends this knowledge by carrying out a European comparison of the association between mental well health and family policies. We use Lohmann and Zagel’s familizing and individualizing policy indices to describe family policies. Our main interest is differences in mental health depending on the country, household, and individual-level characteristics. Therefore, we apply a multilevel model to 26 countries included in the 2013 wave of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey (N = 141,648). The analysis found that, in general, parents of children under 13 have better mental health than other adults. We found individualizing policy measures to be positively related to mental health in parents, while familizing policies had a negative relationship. No evidence was found for the combined presence of individualizing and familizing policies making a difference to mental health in parents. These results suggest that welfare states could help parents by promoting individualizing policies to make parenthood a less stressful experience.... view less
Keywords
family policy; child care; multi-level analysis; mental health; parents; parenthood; well-being; Europe
Classification
Family Policy, Youth Policy, Policy on the Elderly
Health Policy
Family Sociology, Sociology of Sexual Behavior
Free Keywords
familizing policy; individualizing policy; multilevel modeling; European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2013
Document language
English
Publication Year
2021
Page/Pages
p. 1-16
Journal
Social Sciences, 10 (2021) 2
Issue topic
Work–Family Arrangements: Variation across and within Countries
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10020055
ISSN
2076-0760
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed