State Secretary Ingunn Yssen, The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Children and Family Affairs

Opening of the conference Familes at present. Analysing family forms and developments

Leangkollen 20-21 June 1996

I am pleased to have the honour of opening this conference, which is the result of cooperation between two major research programmes: "Children, Adolescents and the Family" and "Welfare and Society". The programme is full of themes that are within my ministry's area of responsibility, and the ministry gives high priority obtaining well-researched, reliable information about precisely these areas. I wish you all welcome and I should like to congratulate the organisers on having gathered together such a good professional mixture of delegates. It will be particularly interesting to hear the contributions from the many international research institutions represented on the programme.

I believe contacts between researchers, administrators and politicians are fruitful for all parties. During these two days, projects by leading family researchers from abroad will be presented and debated. In an increasingly mobile society where more and more problems transcend national borders, it is important for both research and government that understanding and solutions are generated through international dialogue.

The Ministry of Children and Family Affairs is responsible for promoting research and expertise in all areas of our sector, i.e. children, family affairs and gender equality, and it is important for us to ensure that we have national research institutions with good network of international contacts. On 1 July a new institute will be established, entitled NOVA. NOVA will be an important institution with a broad mandate covering research on children and adolescents as well as research on families, and of course welfare in general. It will provide cohesion and coordination in important fields for which my ministry is politically responsible. We are also responsible for the National Institute for Consumer Research and the international Childwatch organisation. The Ministry of Children and Family Affairs invests large sums of money in research. These are extremely important allocations and we are confident that the money is well spent.

In my work, I move daily in an area of heated debate and conflicting opinions. This debate largely concerns the future. What will tomorrow be like, and what do we want it to be like - for children, for women, for men and for families. The old and the new are moving hand in hand into modern society. The welfare society of tomorrow must be shaped in the conflict between old and new values, in the struggle between tradition and innovation. Much has happened in this country in recent years as regards childhood, upbringing, care, family forms and occupational structures. In this arena, it is impossible to act without knowledge. Knowledge is essential in order to be able to design as focused a policy as possible. That is why we need to constantly develop our expertise and continuously update our knowledge.

Research tells us about the current situation, about how society functions and hangs together. But knowledge alone does not build a society. We must also have the will to implement a political strategy. We must put knowledge in a political context, and in order to do that we need a vision - we must know what we want - what is our goal! Tomorrow's society must be based on equality between women and men, in the family and in working life, and on children's need for two parents. Our choice of instruments in this area is based precisely on knowledge, combined with the political will to change society in the direction we believe in.

What does knowledge mean for me as a politician? I will give you two examples.

The first example has to do with time. In designing family policy, giving time to families with small children has been a crucial issue for me. With full commitment at work and at home, this generation lives a life under pressure. Researchers confirm this picture. How can we give people more time? This is where strong conflicts emerge between, on the one hand, those who believe that cash support will give families a less stressful life, allowing one of the parents to choose to stay at home, and, on the other hand, those who believe that the family primarily needs servicesand theright to leave of absence from work. I belong to the latter category. I want to give more time to parents with small children without this resulting in women having to go back to the role of full time housewife.

This is where the man comes in:

Instead of cash support, we must involve the fathers. We want to exchange the kroner of cash support for the caring potential of men. To me it is obvious that a combination of day care centres and equal status at home will relieve the pressure of time. The life of a modern woman consists of a job, child care and housework. Women have adapted rapidly to change, men far less so. A man's life still includes only a very small proportion of housework and child care. Men must now take up the challenge, anything else would be a defeat. Men now have the opportunity of designing a new role for themselves which few men in the western industrialised world have tested. They should take action.

On this point, researchers say that men are in the process of assuming more responsibility for children, and that they work less overtime than before. At the beginning of the 1990s, 41 per cent of fathers with small children worked at least a 45-hour week in this country. Today that percentage has been reduced to 34. Researchers link this trend to the public debate on the male role, where fathers are challenged to give priority to children and the home, and they believe that this may be part of the reason why they work less and take more responsibility for their children. What it tells me is that it is possible to take political steps to ensure that men spend more time at home. I do it by challenging men to give priority to children and the home and by giving them rights and opportunities.

The Government did this with considerable success with the introduction of the father's quota. Of total parental leave of one year, the father must take four weeks or the family loses this month of paid leave. The result is that 70 per cent of fathers who are entitled to parental benefits utilise the scheme. Before the introduction of the father's quota, this figure was 2-4 per cent! The father's quota was a conscious measure to persuade more fathers to care for their own children.

The Norwegian Children's Act is at the moment under revision. A central point is how much should be paid in child support after a divorce. The question is whether the income level of both parents should be taken into account. Under the present law only the income level of the parent who does not live with the child, in the vast majority of cases the father, is considered when determining the level of payments. The law needs to be adapted to the changing gender roles, where practically all women have their own income.

Political conflict is essential. We need disagreement, debate and argument. That is precisely why knowledge is so important. We must know reality. At the same time, we must also realise that there may be various realities, and policy must be designed accordingly. In order to make the right policy changes, we must have good information, and this is also a precondition for a sensible debate on important social issues.

The other example of what knowledge means to me as a politician has to do with fertility. We in the Nordic countries have a high fertility rate. Far higher than countries where more traditional family values and gender roles prevail, such as Italy and Spain. Over time, a decline in fertility rates has a dramatic effect on the age structure of the population, which may be a serious threat to the future welfare society. This is causing considerable concern in many European countries, particularly in southern Europe. Forecasts show us that today's relatively high fertility rate is expected to continue for some time into the future. When researchers analyse the reaons for differences in fertility rates, they point explicitly to the opportunities people in the Nordic countries have for combining care with a career. I believe the young people of today prize this opportunity very highly. So do those who have confidence in the division of responsibility between the family and the authorities. Researchers also tell us that 70 per cent of today's young women in Norway, independent of educational levels, are determined to combine a career with care of children. It is an important goal to maintain a stable population, and good schemes which, also in a modern society, provide security for those who start families.

Knowledge is therefore extremely important and guides the way in which the Government designs policy. This contributes towards the legitimacy of research. On the other hand, it is clear that knowledge involves interpretation. Research can be used for so many things. Research does not tell us where to go. It does not always point in one direction. This is no one answer a question, no one incontrovertible truth. There are always several. A minister or a political leader from another party would be able to use the same knowledge and draw different political conclusions than my minister or my party does. Knowledge alone is not enough. The decisive point is how it is used!

For me, it is clear that good access to information is a good administrative tool. Not least in an area where everone, young and old, married and unmarried, man and woman, parent and childless, has immediate empirical experience. The job of the social scientists is to disclose patterns and connections which we cannot necessarily see as individuals. We all have opinions about family structures, family finances and the use of time. But we only get the larger picture, which enables us to design the right policy, from good sociological research. That is why it is important to contribute towards the development of good research institutions so that professional expertise is renewed and developed - in areas such as family sociology, demography, women and gender research and research on children and adolescents.

I wish you good luck in these two very exciting days by saying, finally, that I believe that knowledge that stands the test of time is knowledge that has been crystallised through good, professional debate between experts and an active, involved public - including politicians.

Thank you for your attention.