Eva Moberg, author and debater, wrote these words in the edited volume Young Liberals. Her article came to play a large role in a debate that resulted in the transformation of family policy in the 1960s. The issues that she raised – whether caring were a task only for women, and whether women were only ‘on probation’ – disturbed the equilibrium of the family debate, which, despite all the reforms that had been enacted in the 1940s and 1950s, still glorified motherhood and the nuclear family.

Eva Moberg was not alone in showcasing the lack of gender equality. The new women's movement grew strong in the 1960s, demanding changes both in the political system and within the family. At the same time, family experts, from Norway and Sweden, from within psychology, sociology and education, studied the social processes behind gender differences and inequality between women and men. By highlighting how ‘sex roles’ were socially constructed, they claimed that they could explain how women became subordinated in society (Dahlström et al, 1962).

With a different starting point from the women's movement, but with similar aims, came the labour market parties. Their primary concern was to reduce the labour shortages of the period, which seemed to necessitate a much more structured inflow of women into the labour market. This, in turn, was an integral part of the active labour market policy, and the policy hegemon of the era, the National Labour Market Board (AMS).

As a result of the vivid and radical years of the 1960s, family policy reforms changed direction in the 1970s, from a focus on families and family functions, where women were the primary target for family policy reforms, to genderneutral ideals and gender equality in a wider context, in particular equality in the labour market.