Patterns of family salience and welfare state regimes: sociability practices and support norms in a comparative perspective Open Access

There has been in recent years a growing concern in the literature about the link between state development and family salience. Some authors stress that welfare states are detrimental to family sociability and solidarity (Daatland 1997), while others underline the complementarity between the state and the family (Kohli 1999; Wall et al. 2001). Historically, modernity is linked with an expanding economic autonomy of individuals from family ties and their increased dependency on the state (Durkheim [1892] 1975; Pitrou 1978; Bourdieu 1989; Elias 1991; de Singly 1993; Schultheis 1997). Although in no country, the state replaced the family, these historical changes lead to a ‘symbiosis’ of social security arrangements (Heady and Kohli 2010). The consequences for family salience of such a trend may vary across Mediterranean, corporatist, liberal, and social-democratic welfare states, as each of those impose distinct constraints on family sociability and promote other normative expectations about family solidarity. Previous research stressed the importance of institutional features and state organization for family salience in social norms and solidarity practices considered independently from each other (Kaariainen and Lethonen 2006; Van der Meer et al. 2009; Van Oorschot and Finsveen 2009). Based on a large international dataset, this article moves forward by showing how such norms and sociability practices form distinct patterns throughout various western countries, which relate with welfare state regimes. We achieve this goal by performing cluster analysis, one of the major procedures for finding patterns in multidimensional data (Romesburg 2004). Following state-of-the-art procedures to compute a cluster analysis on large number of interrelated variables, we first ran a factor analysis (Lebart and Mirkin 1993; Lebart et al. 1997; Lê et al. 2008). This enabled us to summarize the main structural information of the large series of interrelated variables to be considered, into a smaller and more consistent set of factors that were in second inputted in the cluster analysis (Husson et al. 2009). Variables measuring solidarity practices include the frequency of individual contacts and visits to parents, siblings, children, uncles, aunts, cousins, parents-in-law, brothers- or sisters-in-law, nephews, and godparents, аs well as the participation in various associations: political party, club, trade union, church, sport group, or hobby-related group. Variables measuring solidarity norms include measurements of expected help between adult children and elderly parents, friends and friendship and government's responsibility for everyone or for the old persons.

The salience of family depends on defamilization trends that welfare state regimes have unequally promoted. Defamilization, defined as the decreasing economic dependence of individuals on their family (Esping-Andersen 2009), has been considered a central dimension of modernization (Durkheim [1892] 1975; Finch 1989; Giddens 1990; Esping-Andersen 2009). One of its origins is associated with the nuclearization of the family, first stressed by Durkheim ([1892] 1975). The shift from extended to nuclear family units meant a weaker economic dependence of individuals on their kinship networks, with an emphasis on the conjugal unit as the basis of economic solidarity (Parsons and Bales 1956). The residential separation from adult children supposedly leads to a functional isolation of the parental couple (Parsons and Bales 1956). Although the thesis of the isolation of the nuclear family from its kinship network was rightly criticized, the primacy of the conjugal dyad over other relationships for solidarity in modernity was never questioned (Widmer 2004).

A second origin of defamilization stems from individualization (Elias 1991), a process stressing the individual as the main unit of social life, with strong institutional pressures on economic and social self-reliance. Individualization is incited by various institutions associated with modernity, such as the educational system, the labor market, and the welfare state. Social control, constraints, and opportunities stemming from such institutions are imposed on the individual rather than on the family as a group (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002). The increased institutional pressure toward individualization has produced greater normative autonomy between parents and children; social protection schemes have contributed to a move toward residential and financial independence between the generations (Attias-Donfut and Arber 2000). Modern welfare states have also promoted a multiplication of the levels of integration in society beyond the family (Elias 1991). The individualization of societies and the development of self-reliance as a social norm placed a strong emphasis on associations and formal memberships as main contributors to collective solidarity. These trends have changed the basis of family interdependencies from obligation to intimacy and created new solidarities that are not predefined by family statuses and kinship norms, therefore potentially decreasing family salience in society (Giddens 1992; de Singly 1996; Heady and Kohli 2010).

Another origin of defamilization is associated with the crowding-in and crowding-out effects of state policies (Castel 1995; Segalen 1996; Kohli 1999; Daatland and Lowenstein, 2005; Albertini et al. 2007). Crowding-out effects relate to the weakening of family economic interdependencies and norms of intergenerational support under the expansion of the welfare state, especially concerning the kinship network (Van Oorschot and Arts, 2005; Van der Meer et al. 2009). Crowding-in effects relate to the ‘activation’ or ‘social investment’ of welfare state triggering economic transfers between generations (Esping-Andersen 2002). In the stronger welfare states of the North, parents support children more frequently but with less intensity than in the southern and continental European countries (Albertini et al. 2007). This effect relates to the complementary functions between the welfare state and the family (Attias Donfut and Wolff 2000a) within a specialization or ‘functional differentiation’ apparatus (Motel-Klingebiel et al. 2005). This specialization may lead to families tending to concentrate on the emotional aspects of relationships and occasional practical help (Wall et al. 2001). Indeed, the expansion of welfare state services has created, in some instances, new niches for family care (Brand et al. 2009) and has contributed to fostering new forms of interdependencies between generations in families (Albertini et al. 2007). The interaction of public and private transfers helped in some instances the reduction of social inequalities between the generations (Attias Donfut and Wolff 2000b).

Finally, defamilization has been associated with the decreasing financial interdependence of individuals within the nuclear family itself (Esping-Andersen 1990). Measures of conciliation between family and work life indeed have allowed a growing share of women to be more financially autonomous from their male partners’ earnings (Lewis 1997). The existence of state provision and the measures of conciliation between family and work promoted by some welfare state regimes have increased the financial flux in kinship networks (Esping-Andersen 2009). Intergenerational exchanges within kinship networks are stronger and more frequent if the amount of childcare within the nuclear family is made more manageable by state support (Esping-Andersen 2009). Overall, increasing state interventions have had contradictory effects on family interdependencies throughout western countries: some dependencies between family members (such as between parents and their adult children) may have been promoted as others (such as between married partners) may have decreased.

Various results suggest that the effects of defamilization trends have to a large extent depended on welfare state regimes. The liberal and social-democratic welfare states promote early financial independence of young adults from their parents. Quite to the contrary, in the Mediterranean and corporatist welfare states, financial independence is acquired much later and with greater difficulty (Reher 1998). In such welfare states, support given to vulnerable individuals is expected to come from the family, while in the social-democratic welfare state, public services play a much greater role (Reher 1998). The financial independence of women from their partners is also dealt with distinctly by welfare states (Martin 1997). The male-breadwinner model is dominant in conservative or corporatist regimes, while the two-breadwinner model gets more prominence in liberal or social-democratic social regimes (Lewis 1992).

Overall, the development of various welfare state regimes may have had distinct consequences for the salience of family in society. Policies that stress the necessary financial and care autonomy of individuals from their family members (liberal and social-democratic regimes) are expected to be associated with a lower salience of family ties. Those regimes that promote solidarity within the nuclear family, while weakening interdependencies within the kinship network or intergenerational solidarity between adults, may downplay the salience of family at the normative and practical level. It is likely that welfare states that stress the importance of collective identities created by memberships in formal associations help individuals go beyond defining their social obligations and practices primarily in reference to family.

Based on this set of considerations, we expect that welfare states differently shape the salience of family in various nations. In countries with social-democratic regimes, social policies are expected to take care of individuals who cannot sustain themselves. In such an institutional context, family support is considered to be complementary rather than an alternative to state support. Indeed, social benefits, commitment to full employment and income protection provide the basis for more economic autonomy from family members. Therefore, we expect norms of solidarity to focus less on the family in this institutional context, as the universalism of the welfare state decreases the need for family support. Generous policies about parental leaves and stronger policies in favor of gender equality make women less financially dependent on their partners. Because of the importance of associations supported by the state and the emphasis on citizenship as a major pathway to collective solidarity for autonomous individuals, family ties may have less centrality in sociability and may be complemented by sociability within various groups such as friends, colleagues, representatives of state social services, and relationships developed in associations supported by the state. Therefore, we expect individuals in social-democratic regime countries to develop sociability practices and solidarity norms with a variety of alternatives to the family.

Quite distinctly, the corporatist and Mediterranean regimes may promote greater salience of family at the normative and sociability levels as they are based on the premise that the state should support individuals only when the family has exhausted all its own resources in helping its members. Following the importance of this principle of subsidiarity (Kalmijn and Saraceno 2008), a sense of obligation develops in their ‘earning-related’ and ‘breadwinner’ welfare programs that constrain women to remain financially dependent on their partners while investing in giving care to their children and parents. Because of this emphasis on family collective identity and gender distinction, we expect individuals in such regimes to develop a stronger focus on family interdependencies and therefore to have less heterogeneity in their personal networks. The family is held responsible for providing assistance to its members, especially to those who are unemployed, and the family group remains a central actor of social integration (Elias 1991). Because countries among the Mediterranean regime are more oriented toward extended kin than countries of the corporatist regime, we expect the salience of the family to be even stronger in their case.

Liberal regime countries are expected to promote the autonomy of individuals from the state and their dependence on the market. In this case, family solidarity may have a pragmatic twist because state support is minimal. Such regime however puts a strong emphasis on individual self-reliance and on the independence of nuclear families from their kinship networks, following the needs of the market for spatially mobile and socially autonomous individuals (Schneider and Meil 2008). Thus we expect the sources of sociability practices to be heterogeneous and freed from family solidarity norms in that case. In this context, family membership is not considered an entitlement status for family support, as individuals are normatively prescribed to be autonomous actors. In such a regime, the family as a group super-seeding the individual may be considered a social and economic nuisance. The commitment to self-reliance at the normative level may make the salience of family decrease. On another hand, the lack of state supported sociability may lead individuals to promote family sociability. Overall, we hypothesize that sociability practices and solidarity norms form distinct patterns, giving a particular flavor to family salience in each regime.

In order to describe patterns of norms and sociability practices associated with family salience across welfare regimes, we use data collected by the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) in 2001. Since 1984, ISSP has grown to include 43 nations. The module ‘Social Relations and Social Network’ includes information from the respondents of 28 countries.¹ Research institutions in each of the participating countries collected the data. The sampling procedures for respondents above 18 years old were different among the countries: partly simple, partly multi-stage stratified random samples. Data collection was conducted in face-to-face interviews or postal interviews with a standard questionnaire.

We selected individuals living in a subset of countries from the social-democratic, corporatist, Mediterranean, and liberal welfare regimes (Esping-Andersen 1990), disregarding countries from other types of regimes, such as antipodean countries (Esping-Andersen 1996; Arts and Gelissen 2002) and post-socialist countries (Van Oorschot and Arts 2005). This selection was done in order to focus on regimes for which the relation between the state and the family was already researched (Liebfried 1993; Ferrera 1996; Bonoli 1997; Albertini et al. 2007). We focused on developed countries from Western Europe and North America in order to partial out the potential impact of too large developmental differences among national contexts. The number of individuals from the available Mediterranean regime countries, including Spain, Italy, and Cyprus, was 3219 (19% of sample). The number of individuals from the available corporatist regime countries, including France, Germany, and Austria, was 3778 (22% of sample). The number of individuals from the available liberal regime countries, including the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Northern Ireland,² and Switzerland, was 5584 (33% of sample). The number of individuals from the available social-democratic regime countries, including Denmark, Finland, and Norway, was 4292 (26% of sample).

To study sociability practices, we took into account visits and contacts with various family relatives. We distinguished visits of respondents with their relatives: parents, siblings, and children and contacts by telephone and the Internet. The frequency of visits was based on an interval from 1 (daily) to 7 (never). The same question was asked for uncles, aunts, cousins, parents-in-law, brothers- or sisters-in-law, nephews, and godparents, with a response scale ranging from 1 (not at all in the last four weeks) to 3 (more than twice in the last four weeks). To study the importance of associations in the sociability of individuals, we used a question that asked them to report their membership in various associations (political party, club, trade union, church, sport group, or hobby-related group). Frequency of sociability in associations was measured on a four-point scale ranging from not belonging to associations to participation more than twice a week. The ISSP data include a large number of items related to family solidarity norms, however, it unfortunately does not provide information about the conjugal relationships and conjugal solidarity. We considered the following statements related to various dimensions of family normativity: Adult children have a duty to look after their elderly parents; one should take care of yourself and ones family first before helping other people; people who are better off should help friends who are less well off; it is alright to develop friendships with people just because you know they can be of use to you. We also selected two items about government's responsibility: On the whole, do you think it should or should not be the government's responsibility to provide care for everyone who wants it; provide a decent standard of living for the old.

In a first step, we ran a factor analysis on items measuring the frequency of contacts with various family members, friends, and associations. We considered all respondents of the ISSP data, including individuals from other countries, because the whole data set provides much more information than is available in the sampling frame alone, which provides more effective weighting coefficients (Stoop et al. 2010). Six factor scores with eigenvalues greater than 1 were retained. Factor 1 corresponds to participation in associations. Factor 2 corresponds to visits to parents and vertical-oriented contacts with uncles, aunts, and godparents. Factor 3 is associated with contacts with in-laws (parents and siblings-in-law). Factor 4 is centered on contacts with parents as well as brothers and sisters. Factor 5 focuses on contacts with cousins, visits to brothers and sisters, and contacts with friends, whereas factor 6 focuses on contacts and visits with children.

In a second step, we kept the factor scores of individuals from the selected countries (n = 16,873) and inputted them in a cluster analysis with Varimax rotation and Kaiser normalization. We chose cluster analysis because it made it possible to move beyond the consideration of one dimension of sociability practices at a time and to see how various dimensions related with each other in patterns or configurations of dimensions (Meyer et al. 1993). Indeed, a low score for the factor measuring participation in associations has a distinct meaning whether or not it is compensated by a high score for the factors measuring sociability with parents, friends, and relatives. Because the number of selected individuals was large, we used the k-means algorithm (Everitt 1993). Missing values were replaced by the mean value scores across the whole sample, a standard procedure in survey research (Stoop et al. 2010). We used factor scores and not raw scores in the cluster analysis in order to reduce the number of items to be considered into a smaller but more consistent set of factors, following state-of-the-art procedures to compute cluster analysis on large number of interrelated variables (Lebart et al. 1997; Lê et al. 2008). The number of clusters was set to 5 on the basis of statistical efficiency (Everitt 1993). Table 1 describes the five clusters or patterns of sociability practices by their means for the initial variables.

The first pattern, children (27%), includes individuals who have frequent contacts with their children and visit them often. The second pattern, parents (21%), includes respondents who had frequent contacts with their parents and visited them often. The third pattern, kinship (27%), stresses kinship ties, either vertical (with parents, aunts, and uncles) or horizontal (with brothers, sisters, and cousins). The fourth pattern, associations (14%), includes individuals who developed frequent connections outside the family and the friendship network by participating in associations. The fifth pattern, sparse contacts (11%), includes respondents who seldom pursued contacts or visits with family relatives and children. Additionally, they were not involved in associations.

In order to test the association between welfare regimes and indicators of sociability, the influence of regime and country membership is presented in a series of logistic regressions (Table 2). Effects of regimes and countries are tested by controlling a series of individual characteristics: age, sex, degree of education, occupational status, sector of activity, place of residence (rural or urban), and level of social trust. In order to estimate the interrelations between welfare states and sociability practices, as well as the heterogeneity of countries belonging to each welfare regime, models in Table 2(a) consider the impact of welfare state regimes overall, as models in Table 2(b) consider countries of each regime separately. The regressions apply a deviation or contrasts from the mean model (Chambers and Hastie 1992). This corresponds to a parameterization making the sum of the regression coefficients be zero. These contrasts make it possible to have regression coefficients for all countries and regimes. Note that a significant positive coefficient indicates a stronger presence of the cluster in the regime or country than on average in the sample, a significant negative coefficient indicates a weaker presence of the cluster in the regime or country than on average in the sample, whereas a non-significant coefficient means that the importance of the cluster in the country or regime is close to its average importance in the overall sample, controlling for individual characteristics.

The results in Table 2(a) show that welfare regimes are significantly associated with the patterns of sociability practices. As expected, the Mediterranean regime emphasizes sociability with family, especially with patterns parents, children, and kinship. Individuals living in a country of the Mediterranean regime more rarely belong to type associations and are underrepresented in the type sparse contacts. The corporatist regime is oriented toward the patterns of kinship or sparse contacts. There is however some heterogeneity between countries belonging to this regime, as respondents from Austria stress the pattern sociability with children while respondents from France and Germany stress the pattern kinship. The liberal regime is oriented toward the pattern associations, which is especially strong in the United States and Canada. Living in these two countries is also associated with the pattern sparse contacts. Other countries from the liberal regime such as Switzerland, Great Britain, and Northern Ireland, have a weaker emphasis on associations and are more strongly oriented toward family sociability (either patterns parents or children). In sum, there is heterogeneity of types of sociability practices across countries with the liberal regime. The social-democratic regime is associated with patterns associations or sparse contacts. This is true for all countries belonging to the social-democratic regime, although contacts with parents are also strong in Finland and contacts with kin strong in Denmark. Overall, results confirm the link between the patterns of sociability practices and welfare state regimes. In the liberal and social-democratic regimes, the patterns of sociability practices are oriented toward participation in associations while in corporatist regime countries they focus on kinship or are rather weak. In Mediterranean regime countries, the patterns of sociability practices focus on parents and children. A deficit of sociability is observable in liberal and social-democratic regimes countries.

Following similar procedures as for analyzing sociability practices, two factor scores with eigenvalues greater than 1 were retained for solidarity norms. Factor 1 corresponds to the normative obligation of support between friends and family members. Factor 2 corresponds to the normative obligation of the state to support its citizens in need. In a second step, we obtained four cluster types or patterns (Table 3).

The first cluster features a pattern of normative family support (14%), which includes respondents who strongly believe that adult children should take care of their elderly parents. The second pattern, normative state support (25%), includes respondents who think that it should definitely be the role of the government to take care of children and the elderly. The third pattern, normative mixed support (36%), includes individuals who stress the obligation of adult children to provide support for their elderly parents. They also strongly stress the responsibility of the state to provide child and elderly care. The fourth pattern, self-reliance (25%), is characterized by a comparatively low level of normative family and state support. In order to confirm the interrelation between the welfare state regimes and patterns of family solidarity norms, we again ran a set of regressions for solidarity norms by including social regime (Table 4(a)) and country membership (Table 4(b)) while controlling for the effects of age, sex, degree of education, occupational status, sector of activity, place of residence (rural or urban), and level of social trust.

The Mediterranean regime is associated with the pattern normative mixed solidarity, between the family and the state. Countries of this regime are uniform in this respect. The pattern normative state support is rejected in all its associated countries. However, the pattern self-reliance is unequally present across the countries of Mediterranean regime: respondents from Cyprus promote the pattern self-reliance while respondents from Italy and Spain reject this pattern. Unexpectedly, the corporatist regime is associated with the patterns normative state support and self-reliance. This is true for France and Germany, while Austria promotes the pattern normative family support. Aside, Germany and Austria share a similar orientation toward the pattern self-reliance. The liberal regime is associated with patterns normative family solidarity and self-reliance. Respondents from the United States, Canada, and Switzerland strongly stress this model while it is less so for respondents from Great Britain and Northern Ireland, who also stress normative state support. The emphasis on self-reliance is stronger in Great Britain, Canada, and Switzerland than in the United States and Northern Ireland. The social-democratic regime is associated with normative state support. This pattern is homogeneous across all countries of this social regime. Also, all countries of this regime reject the patterns normative family solidarity and self-reliance. The pattern normative mixed support between family and state is however strong in Norway.

Overall, the results confirm the link between patterns of normative solidarity and welfare state regimes. For solidarity norms, the social-democratic regime is associated with the pattern state support while the liberal regime is oriented toward the patterns family support and self-reliance with the exception of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Mediterranean regime is associated with the pattern mixed support between family and state. Quite distinctly and unexpectedly, countries from the corporatist regime are heterogeneous and stress either the patterns family support (Austria) or state support (France and Germany).

This research assessed the unequal salience of family in society according to welfare state regimes by referring to various patterns of sociability and solidarity norms in a large number of countries. As expected from the literature, individuals from the Mediterranean regime develop a pattern, which put a stronger emphasis on family sociability than individuals from other regimes. Interestingly, the hypothesis of a normative focus on family support in the Mediterranean regime is however rejected. Indeed, at the normative level, individuals from the Mediterranean regime more often choose a pattern featuring interplay between state support and family support rather than only family support. In Mediterranean countries, the emphasis on family sociability might be strong because the state, which is expected to help, is often absent for budgetary reasons when help is needed.

Contrastingly, sociability practices in the liberal regime often depend on associations rather than on family. Indeed, high level of associational activity in liberal regime countries occurs as a substitute for a strong welfare state (Curtis et al. 2001). Overall, our results reveal that there is heterogeneity of family sociability across countries with a liberal regime. At the level of solidarity norms, there is a focus on the family in most of these countries. The emphasis on self-reliance is also high, except in Northern Ireland. In contrast, the state guarantees of the social-democratic regime are associated with an emphasis on state support for solidarity norms. As expected, the normative focus on family solidarity is weak in countries with a social-democratic regime, as family solidarity is considered to be a more complement to state support. Only the respondents from Norway also stress the interaction between family and state as the right solution. Family sociability is generally under-used, except for sociability with parents in Finland. This confirms the high degree of participation in associations of individuals in social-democratic regime countries (Scheepers et al. 2002; Kääriäinen and Lehtonen 2006). Note, however, that there is also a larger share of people with weak sociability in those contexts than in others. Overall, the results of this study reject the divide between familialistic Mediterranean-corporatist regimes, and individualistic liberal-social democratic regimes, by stressing the presence of more complex patterns of family salience in both regimes, with normative and sociability dimensions often going in opposite directions in the same national context. Overall, the results of this study show that it is necessary to consider patterns, rather than independent measurements, of sociability practices and solidarity norms, in order to understand how macrostructural factors such as social regimes shape family salience in various national contexts.

There were also several national deviations from the expectations associated with the defamilization hypothesis. The use of the welfare state regime typology (Esping-Andersen 1990) as an heuristic encapsulating various macrosociological processes raises indeed some issues. Its classification of countries has been challenged for a lack of sensitivity to the specific sub-dimensions of social policies, including pension system, female employment, and achievement permanency on the labor market for young generations (Grandits 2010). The salience of family in national contexts also stems from institutional practices regarding inheritance, household formation, employment, marriage, divorce, parenthood, and education, which have developed differently across countries (Castel 1995; Grandits 2010), with no obvious link with welfare state regimes. The processes underlying defamilization depend on macro factors partly disregarded by the typology, such as the countries’ social development (Elias 1991) and their institutional history. This may explain why the corporatist regime deviates from the Mediterranean regime, and why countries with a liberal regime, whose shared non-interventionist state orientation conceals distinct family regulations, are heterogeneous for the salience of family in sociability and norms. Overall, the typology of welfare states account for a significant share of the patterns of family salience across countries but it should obviously be complemented by the inclusion of other morphological dimensions in future research. Finally, the indicators available in the ISSP data concerning the salience of family are limited. In particular they do not make it possible to distinguish practical support and financial support, and the extent to which family values interfere in the defamilization process (Lucifora and Meurs 2012).

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Olga Ganjour is Ph.D. researcher at the Department of Sociology of the University of Geneva. Her research interests include the family studies, social network, and welfare state regimes. Currently she is engaged in the project of the Observatory of Family.

Eric D. Widmer is professor at the Department of Sociology of the University of Geneva, and a member of the board of NCCR LIVES. His long-term interests include intimate ties, family and other interpersonal relations, life course research, and social networks. Along with others, he has been developing for two decades research on families in a configurational perspective. He is the author of various books and articles. Information on his work and publications are available at www.edwidmer.org.