Introduction

Multi-activity is a fact of daily life. However, there is a huge gap between daily life and the institutional organisation of society. Difficulties in reconciling working life and family life and persistent inequalities between men and women are two challenges (partially different, partially interdependent) with which our contemporary societies continue to struggle. We have to note that despite institutional responses and efforts by public authorities to develop certain support services for working parents, no comprehensive, satisfactory and durable solution has so far been found, even in Europe which may well be the most advanced region for equal opportunity and work/ life balance policies. Many researchers have long accepted this fact but continue to work towards understanding how best to both pose the problem and open new paths to achieve social progress.

This chapter contributes to this collective task and seeks to deepen reflection on the work/family regime. Our hypothesis challenges the foundation on which, in the nineteenth century, the industrial labour society forged its coherence, namely a decoupling of productive functions (the production of goods and services needed for existence) from reproductive functions (the biological reproduction of human beings and of the labour force). That decoupling undermines any attempt to find an equilibrium and any scenario offering a more just and egalitarian future. First of all, we will justify our hypothesis; and second, we will try to show why the provisions of certain social policies seem to us to foster an alternative ‘reconciliation’ scenario, with the creation of a ‘multi-active society’ as the central goal (Fusulier and Nicole-Drancourt, 2015).

Traditional foundations of the work/family regime

Regardless of their cultural and regional identities, all the industrial labour societies that developed in the nineteenth century and all the welfare states that developed in the twentieth century were built upon common founding principles (Nicole-Drancourt, 2011). What concerns us here are the principles that mobilised the labour force in activities producing goods and services in public and private spheres.