European Societies 2007 [antikvár]

This issue of the journal carries articles grouped into a number of areas: the life course and welfare, social capital and social networks, and questions of class, employment, and their consequences. Margarita Leon of the University of Kent at Canterbury is concerned with issues of childcare in Spain, and she looks at how these issues have figured in policy debates and the formuládon of policy. Discussing the European Employment Strategy and its childcare benchmark, she examines the implications for family and work relations. She shows that the expansion of childcare provision in Spain has occurred within a decentralised educational system, but has not taken account of the requirement to reconcile work and family life. Recent changes in the law concerning the employment of women who have given birth have increased the visibility of the issue, but they have not helped with the issue of implementing existing policy over rights to benefit. Leon suggests that collective agreements in this area are likely to prove critical. The article by Róbert Maier, Willibrord de Graaf and Patricia Frericks of the University of Utrecht look at the other end of the life course in considering pensions problems in The Netherlands. Dutch policy has taken an explicitly life course perspective on pensions policy and introduced a lifetime saving scheme. The aim of the scheme was to establish flexible arrangements that would reflect 'peak hour' earnings. Its explicit aims were to encourage work force participation and individual long-term planning. The authors show that the scheme facilitates early retirement among men rather than parental leave among women. It alsó benefits older workers rather than younger employees at the beginning of their careers. Christoph Bühler and Ewa Fr^tczak of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, and the Warsaw School of Economics have examined issues of social networks and social capital in relation to fertility intentions in Poland. They look at personal networks as means for mobilising resources and managing social exchanges and for the eommunieation of information, opinions, and experiences. They show that these social networks are especially important in decisions concerning first and second children, but less so in relation to third children. Using data from Sweden, Alireza Behtoui of Linköping University and the National Institute for Working Life at Norrköping looks at opportunities and DOI: 10.1080/14616690701336476 313