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Historically, and well into the 20th century, Portugal's pathway is linked to the male breadwinner model and to a rudimentary and familialistic welfare state underlining women's role as primary caregivers and low state support for families. Family policies after the transition to democracy (1974) rejected unsupported familialism and introduced an explicit focus on state responsibilities to support a gender-equality oriented dual-earner model, leading to a gradual but steady increase in entitlements to family benefits and paid leave schemes, in public and publicly-subsidized services for young children and in gender equality incentives (Wall, 2011). Family policies shifted toward a "mixed" welfare state model focusing on family care supported by services and benefits and underlining a specific "solidarity" welfare mix in which different actors - families, public, private profit and non-profit institutions - take on responsibility jointly (Wall, Samitca and Correia, 2013).

The focus of this article is on family policy reforms in four European countries – Austria, Finland, Portugal, and Slovenia – between 2008 and 2015. These years were marked by the 'Great Recession', and by the rise of the social-investment perspective. Social investment is an umbrella concept, though, and it is also somewhat ambiguous. This article distinguishes between different social-investment variants, which emerge from a focus on its interaction with alternative social-policy perspectives, namely social protection and austerity. We identify different variants along the degree of social-investment: from comprehensive, over crowding out, towards lean forms. While the empirical analysis highlights variation, it also shows how there is a specific crisis context, which may lead to 'crowding out' of other policy approaches and 'leaner' forms of social investment. This has led to strong cutbacks in family cash benefits, while public childcare and parental leaves have proved more resilient in the investigated countries. Those findings are revelatory in the current Covid-19 pandemic, where countries are entering a next, possibly larger economic crisis. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Ovaj je rad usmjeren na reforme obiteljske politike u četiri europske zemlje – Austriji, Finskoj, Portugalu i Sloveniji – između 2008. i 2015. godine. Te su godine obilježile "velika recesija" i uspon perspektive socijalnog ulaganja. Međutim, socijalno ulaganje je opći pojam i pomalo je dvosmislen. Ovaj rad razlučuje između različitih varijanti socijalnog ulaganja koje proizlaze iz usredotočenosti na interakcije socijalnog ulaganja i alternativnih perspektiva socijalne politike, i to socijalne zaštite i štednje. U radu se identificiraju različite varijante u smislu stupnja socijalnog ulaganja: od sveobuhvatnog, preko istiskivanja do "skromnijih" oblika socijalnog ulaganja. To je dovelo do oštrih rezova u obiteljskim novčanim davanjima, dok su se područja javne skrbi i roditeljskog dopusta pokazala otpornijima u analiziranim zemljama. Ovi su zaključci indikativni u sadašnjoj pandemiji COVID-19, kada se zemlje suočavaju s novom, možda i većom gospodarskom krizom. ; The focus of this article is on family policy reforms in four European countries – Austria, Finland, Portugal, and Slovenia – between 2008 and 2015. These years were marked by the 'Great Recession', and by the rise of the social-investment perspective. Social investment is an umbrella concept, though, and it is also somewhat ambiguous. This article distinguishes between different social-investment variants, which emerge from a focus on its interaction with alternative social-policy perspectives, namely social protection and austerity. We identify different variants along the degree of social-investment: from comprehensive, over crowding out, towards lean forms. While the empirical analysis highlights variation, it also shows how there is a specific crisis context, which may lead to 'crowding out' of other policy approaches and 'leaner' forms of social investment. This has led to strong cutbacks in family cash benefits, while public childcare and parental leaves have proved more resilient in the investigated countries. Those findings are revelatory in the current Covid-19 pandemic, where countries are entering a next, possibly larger economic crisis.

What are the building blocks of the new societal architectures after COVID-19? What are the evolving lifestyle patterns, social connections and relationality, and what can biographical research bring to explore these unprecedented societal circumstances? This first book in a new series Advances in Biographical Research focuses on the place of biographical research in analysing and shaping social futures characterized by physical distancing and isolation, social fragmentation, trauma and vulnerability, including breaks in biographical trajectories. Written by experienced and early career researchers, it demonstrates how biographical research responds to new societal architectures: theoretically and empirically