The essential message of the ‘two regimes’ model is that the social politics of fatherhood have taken on a global significance and that the USA and Sweden represent two ends of an international continuum of ways of thinking about fatherhood. The key selling points of the two regimes model are its topicality, originality, its global appeal, and its particularised appeal to readers in the USA, the Nordic countries, Great Britain, Ireland, the European Union, Japan and China. The book offers students a comparative analytical framework and new insights into why some welfare states have ‘father-friendly’ social policies and others do not. The book makes an original contribution to the growing fields of welfare regime and gender studies by linking the epochal decline of patriarchal fatherhood to welfare state expansion over the course of the twentieth century and it raises new questions about the legitimacy of religiously inspired neo-patriarchy.

'In this book Michael Rush guides us through the academic, political and public debate on family-related policy in not just the US and Sweden but also the UK, Ireland, the EU, China and Japan. He brings together research on parental leave, responsibilities of non-resident parents and ideas of the centrality of marriage, resulting in a multi-dimensional understanding of the concept of fatherhood and its development. By contrasting the US and Swedish policy development he makes two distinctly different pathways very clear. The comprehensive descriptions of how ideas of fatherhood emerge, and the comparisons between countries are valuable contributions. Rush points out what is specific to the Swedish family policy and how this has influenced family policy development in especially the EU. He also facilitates the understanding of how the various dimensions of Swedish policy interact and strengthen the idea of gender equal parenthood. This is a very stimulating book to read.' Ann-Zofie Duvander, Associate Professor of Sociology and Demography at Stockholm University -- .

Michael Rush is a Lecturer in Social Policy in the School of Applied Social Science at University College Dublin