This thesis examines the extent of family care for older people, primarily filial care, and the costs of caring in the Swedish welfare state. Costs of caring are understood as the negative effects of caregiving, primarily on the caregivers’ working life. The analysis is inspired by feminist theories on the importance of welfare state provisions for care for women’s citizenship, including personal autonomy and economic independence. The main aims of this thesis are twofold. The first is to explore the extent and development of family care for older persons in Sweden, primarily filial care, and the consequences of caregiving for well-being and working life. The second is to explore how older persons’ family members have been represented and the possible consequences of these representations for the development of publicly financed eldercare services and other forms of support for family carers, as well as for family members’ living conditions. The thesis consists of four studies. The first reviews the literature concerning the extent and consequences of family caregiving for older persons and the welfare state’s policy responses to older people’s care needs. The second study analyses how older persons’ family members and their role in eldercare have been represented in Swedish eldercare policy since the 1950s. The third study analyses surveys to explore changes during the 2000s in the role of the family, the public sector and the market in providing care for older persons in Sweden. The fourth study is a survey analysis of the extent, content and consequences of filial care among middle-aged women and men in Sweden in 2013. The policy analysis found that the expansion of eldercare was motivated solely in relation to older persons’ needs; thus working daughters’ needs of eldercare have been a blind spot in Swedish eldercare policy. Since 2000, every fourth residential care bed has disappeared and the increase in homecare services did not fully compensate for the decline, resulting in a significant increase in filial care in all social groups, and among both sons and daughters. Daughters of older persons with shorter education, however, remained the primary providers of filial care. Both daughters and sons are affected by caregiving. They suffer to the same extent from difficulties in managing to accomplish their work tasks and taking part in meetings, courses and travels. They are also equally likely to reduce their working hours and to quit their job. It is however clearly more common that daughters experience mental and physical strain, difficulties in finding time for leisure and reduced ability to focus on their job. Although more daughters than sons retire earlier than planned due to filial care, this is very rare. Managerial care (handling contacts with health and eldercare services) has a more salient role in a welfare state such as Sweden, with generously provided care services, less intense filial care and high employment rates among both sexes. The high labour force participation however makes middle aged children more vulnerable when their parents’ care arrangement does not work. The decline in eldercare services since 1980 has reinforced co-ordination problems in health and eldercare services. The managerial care required to handle this development, while living up to the demands of work and family life, stands out as especially demanding for the well-being and working lives of daughters. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Accepted.</p>

This thesis attempts to extend the historical scope of divorce research in Sweden by providing an analysis ofhow the variations in the divorce rate over time and across geographical areas are connected to the economic, normative and institutional restructuring of Swedish society during the period 1915-1974. The thesis finds that the economic reshaping of Sweden into a modern market economy is at the center of the process that has resulted in decreased marital stability during the twentieth century. The shift from a single- to a dual-provider model and an increased integration of both men and women into market processes outside the family have resulted in lowered economic interdependence between spouses, which in turn has decreased the economic constraints to divorce. This conclusion is supported by the empirical finding that indicators of female economic self-sufficiency are associated with increased propensities for divorce, during the entire period under research in this thesis. That changes in the constraints experienced by women have been important is further emphasized by the finding that women have been more prone than men to initiate divorce, and that this gendered pattern of divorce was established already during the early twentieth century in Sweden.The results further indicate that the growth of divorce is connected not only to a shift in the provider model but also to the way sustained economic growth has resulted in a general increase in the resources available to individuals, as proposed by the socio-economic growth hypothesis. During the 1920s and 1930s, high-strata groups, such as lawyers, journalists, engineers and military officers, exhibited a divorce rate on the same level as in the general population of Sweden today. By the early 1960s, however, this positive associa- tion between social class and divorce had changed: by then it was rather couples in working-class occupations who exhibited the highest probability of divorce, which is a pattern that appears to have persisted since then. These findings indicate that a general increase and more even distribution of economic resources betweenboth genders and social classes have facilitated individuals’ possibilities to sustain themselves independent of family ties. This democratization in the access to divorce has meant that growing segments of the populationhave gained the means to act on a demand for divorce.However, another result of the thesis is that it is not possible to limit the analysis to a strictly economic perspective. Rather, economic changes have interacted with and been reinforced by changes in values, as wellas in institutions, during the periods when widespread and rapid behavioral change has occurred. In Sweden, like in most other Western countries, this was primarily the case during the 1940s and a period covering approximately the second half of the 1960s and first half of the 1970s. The studies of the thesis suggest that these two periods of rapid growth in the divorce rate stand out as periods in Swedish history when attitudes also changed more rapidly toward values that can be regarded as permissive, secular and more open to indi- vidual freedom of choice. Trenchantly, these two periods also correspond to the two harvest periods in Social Democratic welfare state policy. In the thesis it is argued that the marked increase in government services and social security at these time points integrated with and reinforced economic restructuring in a way that worked to “de-familializate” individuals by making them less dependent on family ties for social security. Institutional changes of this type have been particularly important for making single life more feasible for women and low- income groups. In the thesis, it is argued that the timings of substantial behavioral change become difficult to understand if the analytical perspective does not explicitly incorporate how such contextual-level changes in values and institutions have integrated with changes in the provider model and the economy during thesedynamic periods of the divorce transition in Sweden.

Ce mémoire examine le traitement politique des services de garde au Québec, dans son articulation à l'expansion de l'État néolibéral. Nous nous intéressons au rôle attribué à ces services dans la « régulation d'ensemble » de l'économie, à leurs effets sur l'organisation des rapports sociaux de genre et de classe, ainsi qu'aux discours légitimant l'intervention (ou non) de l'État dans ce secteur d'activité. Trois périodes sont examinées : 1) le moment providentiel (1945-1979) ; 2) la période de transition néolibérale (1980-2003) ; 3) le moment néolibéral (2004-2015). Par le biais d'une analyse des publications gouvernementales et de la « littérature grise », nous cherchons ainsi à comprendre les logiques guidant l'élaboration des politiques gouvernementales dans ce domaine. Les principes et les idées dégagées du corpus sont évalués au regard des concepts de défamilialisation, de démarchandisation et de collectivisation. Après avoir soutenu la familialisation des activités domestiques dans l'après-guerre, l'État québécois s'intéresse de plus en plus aux services de garde à partir des années 1980. L'investissement dans ce secteur d'activité connaît ensuite des avancées spectaculaires à la fin des années 1990 avec la création des centres de la petite enfance. Observons qu’au même moment, le gouvernement adopte une série de réformes visant le retour à l'équilibre des finances publiques et la « modernisation » de l'État québécois. On procède alors à des compressions budgétaires importantes dans la plupart des programmes sociaux. Enfin, après avoir rallié la faveur des élu.e.s, la politique de services de garde connaît plusieurs changements au cours des dernières décennies suivantes, menant progressivement à la privatisation de l'offre. Ce changement est principalement observé à travers les phénomènes de fiscalisation des subventions gouvernementales, c'est-à-dire l'investissement dans les programmes fiscaux et l'abandon progressif du principe de prix unique. Ce mémoire vise à contribuer à une meilleure compréhension des débats et des discours entourant les services de garde au Québec depuis l'après-guerre. En retraçant la sociohistoire des services de garde sur le temps long, nous montrons l'influence considérable des discours et des cibles économiques du gouvernement dans l'évolution des politiques publiques rattachées à la petite enfance. / This thesis examines the political treatment of childcare services in the province of Quebec, as it relates to the expansion of the neoliberal state. We focus our attention on the role attributed to these services in the "overall regulation" of the economy, their impact on gender and class relations’ organization, as well as on the rhetoric legitimizing, on the one hand, state intervention in this sector of activity and, on the other hand, its absence thereof. Three periods are examined: 1) the welfare period (1945-1979); 2) the neoliberal transition period (1980-2003); 3) the neoliberal period (2004-2015). Through an analysis of documents (both governmental and from the “grey literature”), we seek to understand the logic guiding the development of government policies in this field. The principles guiding state action in this matter that we have identified are evaluated through the lens of the following concepts: de-familialization, de-commodification and collectivization. After supporting the familialization of domestic activities in the post-war period, the Quebec government became increasingly interested in childcare services in the 1980s. Investment in this sector of activity then experienced spectacular growth at the end of the 1990s with the creation of early childhood centers. At the same time, the government adopted a series of reforms aimed at restoring balance to public finances and the "modernization" of the state. Significant cuts thus followed in most social programs. Finally, after gaining the favor of elected officials, daycare service policy underwent several changes over the following decades, gradually leading to the privatization of services. This change is mainly observed through the taxation of government subsidies, the investment in tax programs and the gradual abandoning of the unique price policy. This thesis contributes to a better understanding of the debates and discourses surrounding childcare services in Quebec, in a context of neoliberalization of the state. By studying the social history of childcare services over a long period, we show the influence of government discourse and economic targets on the choice of whether or not to invest in childcare services.