Charting New Courses for Families and Family Policies

Among the new social risks of the last few decades is the increased precarity of labor. Combined with shifting family composition and new conceptualizations of gender and gender roles within families, labor precariousness has contributed to a shifting landscape that contextualized and defined social policy directions. The lag in social policies responding to changing social risks has reinforced increased change and tenuousness in family composition, social care arrangements, housing situations, and economic security. This chapter introduces readers to current conceptualizations of precariousness in labor and beyond across gender and the lifespan. These concepts are grounded in statistical trends for Europe and Eastern Europe.