The Workplace as an Arena for Negotiating the Work-Family Boundary: a Case Study of Two Swedish Social Services Agencies

The Swedish welfare state has for a long time been distinctive in developing radical social policies in the area of reproduction, particularly as far as children are concerned. For more than 30 years, the government has implemented a family policy with the clear aim of gender equality, with parental insurance and public childcare being two of its most important developments. The potential for working parents in Sweden to successfully combine work and family life is good. The number of working mothers has increased in recent decades, and at the same time, relatively high fertility rates (see Chapter 4) have been maintained, although with considerable fluctuations. For many years, Sweden has had a high percentage of working mothers, and 80 per cent of women aged 25–54 with two children or more are currently in work, with 60 per cent of them employed in the public sector (Fagnani et al., 2004).