Maternal Employment and the State: Varieties of Familialism in Post-Socialist Countries

State socialism has undeniably shaped institutional legacies of post-socialist EU member states; not only had it produced extraordinary leap in terms of female employment, it also heralded significant change in the role of the state in the family. Therefore, post-socialist countries are often homogenised - not only historically (“former Soviet Bloc”, “post-socialist”/”Eastern” group), but also on the ground of gender politics (“neo-/re-familialistic”). This paper challenges such overly simplistic characterizations and offers a more nuanced assessment via analysis of their socialist past. It explores the specificity of socialist experiences and explains how this period heralded change in the role of the state in the family, in social organisation of care, and how gender roles were inscribed in different institutional settings and practices within societies. It demonstrates that similar history notwithstanding, countries adopted different models of socialism, with different roles and influence of organised politics, as well as interventions via public policies. They endorsed and legitimized different “ethos” of gendered norms and practices, which broadly followed three trajectories: that of familialism in the Eastern Bloc, where states relied on families to produce childcare; that of liberal state in Poland, where parents were left with no public support; and that of defamilialism in Slovenia, committed to female continuous employment. This paper demonstrates that countries departed state socialism with mixed legacies and collective experiences about social organisation of care and female employment, and thus invites perspectives for further academic debate about the “common socialist legacy” and distinct “Eastern welfare regime type”.