Family diversity and reconciliation strategies. A comparative study. DIVERSIA final report

Abstract

DIVERSIA is the short name of the subproject “Family diversity and reconciliation strategies,” integrated in the PEOPLE program that seeks to approach sub-objective 1 of this project: Reconciliation of career, family and personal life. Partners from three European regions participated in this project: Andalusia (Spain), Malopolska (Poland) and Stockholm (Sweden). The aims of DIVERSIA are to deepen into the difficulties in reconciling career and personal life that new family models face, as well as to perform a comparative analysis of difficulties and resources for reconciliation between the several family models studied, across the three regions involved. A total of 330 families participated in this study; of these, 164 were from the region of Andalusia (Spain), 97 from the region of Malopolska (Poland) and 67 from the region of Stockholm (Sweden). Considering the family diversity, 135 participants were native heterosexual parents from each region, 69 gay/lesbian parents, 67 single mothers and 59 immigrant heterosexual families. The families participating in this study were phone interviewed by specifically trained experts on the subject. The interview (semi-structured) was designed specifically for this study. When the different family models were compared, the following results were found: in native heterosexual families the men were involved in family life, but not equally; immigrant heterosexual families presented the most traditional pattern and had less access to reconciliation resources at the work place; in the case of two same-sex parent families, the reconciliation of working, family and personal life was a joint responsibility of the couple; finally, the single mother families reconciled mainly through the greatest use of resources. Comparisons between regions report that in Malopolska the resources for reconciliation were limited; there were little co-responsibility within the couples and families showed low life satisfaction. In Stockholm, families were highly satisfied with children care resources; Swedish couples showed the most equal patterns of all those studied and families had high life satisfaction. In Andalusia, same-sex couples were much more equalitarian than heterosexual ones, families were relatively satisfied with children care resources and showed life satisfaction scores in intermediate positions between those obtained in the other two regions studied. Finally, we provide recommendations for the improvement of reconciliation in the several family models, based on the conclusions extracted from both the study and the analysis of good practices in the three regions, included in this report too.