Nations' Different Families? Contrasting Comparison of Finnish and Spanish 'Ideological Families'

Eriikka Oinonen

No 15, MZES Working Papers from MZES

Abstract: Northern and Southern welfare states form different families of nations, and it is claimed that the families typical of each nation are profoundly different. Family structure in Northern nations is described as modern and deinstitutionalised, whereas the Southern family structure is traditional and institutionalised. The stereotypical notions also indicate that the family ideology is modern in the North and traditional in the South. This paper questions these stereotypical notions and their validity by formulating and analysing Finnish and Spanish cases as representatives of Northern and Southern families. The cases are built of sets of laws and policies which are directly targeted at families, family formation and family life. Laws and policies are treated as representative of family ideological discourses and analysed from a contrasting comparative perspective based on the understanding that discovering similarities helps to place differences in proper perspective. As the focus is on ideologies and because ideologies are historical, social and cultural creations, the historical time span reaches from the early 20th century to the present day, although the stress is on the past few decades. Out of this context I bring up dichotomies that are behind the stereotypical notions of Finnish and Spanish ideological families. By deconstructing these dichotomies I claim that the differences between Finnish (Northern) and Spanish (Southern) families are exaggerated and oversimplified due to the fact that most comparative family studies are based only on quantitative data and methods, and concentrate on differences, thus producing unidimensional comparisons. I conclude that Finnish and Spanish families are different, though not so radically different as usually claimed. Fundamentally the family ideologies are the same, the ideological foundation of each nation's families is the same and the evolution of family ideologies has moved in the same direction. Thus Finnish and Spanish families are simultaneously modern and traditional, individual and collective, secular and religious, public and private. The ways these qualities have been shaped and the reasons for it lie in historical, social and political developments

Keywords: Finland; law; social policy; sociological institutionalism; sociology; Spain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000-02-15
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/publications/wp/erpa/wp-15.html Abstract (text/html)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/publications/wp/erpa/wp-15.html [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/publications/wp/erpa/wp-15.html)
http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/publications/wp/wp-15.pdf Full text (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/publications/wp/wp-15.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/publications/wp/wp-15.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:erp:mzesxx:p0005

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MZES Working Papers from MZES Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christian Melbeck ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).