Abstract

The author argues that the interplay between social security and labour policies on the one hand, family policies on the other is a constitutive feature of European welfare states. The specificity of the Italian situation is the persistent limitation of family policies to policies addressed to dependent workers. She analyses recent developments in Italian policies, indicating that on the one hand they strengthen and enlarge existing policies focusing more on gender equality and on conciliating work and family obligations, on the other hand there is a more closely targeting on the basis of family income. She argues that the latter development, by disincentiving married women's paid work, risks re-introducing, at least among the working poor, the male breadwinner model which the former apparently attempts to weaken.