Measuring state de-familialism: Contesting post-socialist exceptionalism

This article offers a methodology to reveal the latent constructs that underlie policies on parental leave and childcare services. It is constructed to uncover state assumptions about the social organization of childcare and gender roles in a country-comparative perspective. Legislation is central to this analysis, and combinations of policy components take centre stage. An index of state de-familialism is proposed and its analytical potential tested on eight post-socialist European Union (EU) states. Grounded in Leitner’s conceptualization of “varieties of familialism”, it gauges three policy types: (1) Slovenian and Lithuanian supported de-familialism incentivizes women’s continuous employment and active fatherhood; (2) explicit familialism in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Estonia supports familial childcare and reinforces gendered parenting; and (3) implicit familialism in Poland, Slovakia and Latvia leaves parents without public support. These groups share core characteristics with developed welfare state regimes. This methodology has the potential to discredit claims of post-socialist exceptionalism and allows researchers to test new hypotheses.