INTERNATIONAL POLICY ANALYSIS Sweden’s Family Policy under Change: Past, Present, Future ANN-ZOFIE DUVANDER AND TOMMY FERRARINI August 2013 „ „ Sweden has come to represent a modern variant of family policy, within the frame­work of which social rights were designed early on to encourage parents’ labour force participation and the sharing of unpaid care work. „ „ Parental benefits, the expansion of public day-care, tax reforms and the enforcement of fathers’ rights and responsibilities are central aspects which supported the devel­opment of the Swedish earner-carer model. „ „ It has been shown repeatedly that countries with earner-carer models have consid­erably higher levels of female employment than welfare states with other types of family-policy model. Swedish family policy is often thought to stimulate both fertility and women’s paid work. „ „ During recent years the new turn in Swedish family policy has come to emphasize increased choice more than gender equality among all groups of parents. The major part of the parliamentary opposition(the Greens, the Left Party and the Social Democrats) favour a return to previous family policy paths and a reinforcement of earner-carer policy orientations. „ „ The history of Swedish family policy not only shows that the design of family policy has the potential to influence parents’ behaviour and well-being, but also that it may take decades to change age-old gender inequalities through policy reform.