ABSTRACT
Family policies as a specific set of policies aimed explicitly at supporting socially desirable behaviours and relationships are relatively recent. An important exception is France, whose pro-natalist policies date back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Governments’ intervention in family matters, regulating what constitutes a family and what obligations family members have to each other, however, dates back to the formation of nation states, when these started to compete with kin, churches, local communities and traditions for the power to regulate this sphere of life and relationships. Social family policies, which constitute the focus of this chapter, are only a – certainly important – manner of public intervention in family matters.
