The Development of International comparative child and family polices.pdfVIP

The Development of International Comparative Child and Family Policies Shirley Gatenio Gabel In the 1970s, Sheila B. Kamerman and Alfred J. Kahn pioneered a new field of study: comparative child and family policy. At the time they wrote, Interest in family policy and its potential development as a field or as offering a criterion to guide public action also is clearly growing. Whether or not the two are directly related, and whether or not there is a natural progression from concern with the family to interest in family policy, is not yet clear. Nor is there consensus on exactly what is happening to the family in the industrialized world, how family change should be regarded, or what is meant by family policy (Kamerman Kahn, 1978, p. 1). In the decades following Kamerman and Kahn’s observations, the field of com- parative child and family policy blossomed in both the industrialized and developing world. Today, child and family policies are an essential component of most coun- tries social welfare schemes, though the scope, types of benefits and the allocation of resources vary widely. There is growing attention paid to evidence-based child- centered comparative research in both the industrialized and developing parts of the world and on the transferability of policies from one country to another. Interest in the portability of policies is not only among like-developed countries, but also from developed to developing countries and the visa-versa. This chapter reviews the international developments in policies affecting chil- dren and their families. It begins with definition of child and family policies and then a brief summary of the growth in family policy in industrialized countries and its attention to increasing family size and well-being. This is compared to the development of child and family policies in the developing world. Among devel- oping countries, child and family policies a