Governmental discourse surrounding families in Germany from 1968 till 2006 : A balancing act of family- integrity and societal change, with special attention to the mother’s occupation

In Germany, the family is historically that of a traditional one. A bourgeois family, in which the father takes care of the family’s existential situation, and the mother commits to housework and care of children (Fleckenstein, 2011; Nill& Schultz, 2010). This is mirrored in ‘subsidiarity’; that care and financial provision is first and foremost covered by the family itself, and then if first instance fails, covered by the state (Fleckenstein, 2011). Hence, ‘care’ is an explicit political expectation that the state has on families. Within this definition of family, contextualized is the mother; she constitutes a committed care-taker, and a less flexible employee on the labour market (Fleckenstein, 2011; Nill& Schultz, 2010). This bachelor’s thesis, studies governmental discourse surrounding German families and women within them. The aim was to identify definitional constants in the German Family-reports about the concepts of family, and working mothers. For this family- reports from 1968, 1994, and 2006 have been analysed. To do this, the researcher made use of the discourse historical approach formulated by Ruth Wodak (Wodak& Meyer, 2001).