For over a decade, Steven Saxonberg has been publishing work on the developments of family policies in post-communist countries in Europe, focusing mainly on gender aspects of these developments. His recent book in this field is probably the most comprehensive comparative project that seeks to explain both the similarities and differences in family policies of the four post-communist states in Central Europe: Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. The main research question in his book is ‘why do the countries of Central Europe differ so greatly in the area of family policy today, notwithstanding their shared experience of Stalinism?’ (p. 5). However, the weight of the theoretical arguments and the evidence provided to support these arguments are at least equally distributed between the reasons for the similarities and the grounds for the differences between the four countries. The book is also rich in comparisons of the post-communist states with three Western European countries ‒ United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden ‒ which Steven Saxonberg uses as counterexamples to strengthen his arguments on the role of policy developments in Central European states.

The author sets his analysis in a historical-institutional framework and uses this theoretical perspective consistently throughout the book. As he fairly declares: ‘This book presents one of the first comparative historical-institutional explanations of post-communist family policies’ (p. 9). He justifies his choice of this particular analytical framework by claiming that ‘The typical alternative hypotheses, such as those citing economic situation, political parties, the role of international organizations, or the mobilization of women are not able to explain the differences in family policies’ (p. 9) and consequently deals with these hypotheses in separate chapters. But Saxonberg goes further than simply applying existing/mainstream historical-institutional theoretical findings to his research. He tries to critically develop them by, for example, further expanding Rothstein's (Reference Rothstein1988) argument that political actors may not correctly predict the outcomes of their choices, and shows, moreover, that ‘the actors may not even be aware that they are making critical decisions which will strongly affect the course of future development’ (p. 13). He also provides evidence that contrasts with Pierson's (Reference Pierson2000) contention that critical junctures arise when an exogenous shock causes a crisis. What is more, unlike most other contributors to the literature, he does not confine his research to a purely historical approach, but also draws upon the theoretical findings of sociological and discursive institutionalisms, which importantly enrich his narrative and contribute to the fairly comprehensive institutional analysis of family policy developments in the countries under consideration.

The book comprises nine nicely structured and well-connected chapters, with each introducing the next, seamlessly spelling out the book's logic, which is clearly laid out in the first, introductory chapter, and which also provides an excellent summary of the book.

Chapter 2 describes the post-communist family policies, compares them to Swedish, British and German policies and clearly depicts the major similarities and differences between all of the countries. This chapter sheds light on how implicitly or explicitly genderised the family policies of Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia have been in recent decades as well as on what have been the major differences between them (for the genderisation-related criteria for typology of family policies the author refers to his previous work: Saxonberg, Reference Saxonberg2013).

In the third chapter, which in my view is the most essential of the nine, Saxonberg extensively develops his argument on the theoretical historical-institutional underpinnings of the present state of family policy mixes in post-communist states. He traces the historical backgrounds of the family policies of the post-communist states back to 1870, when the two-tier model was institutionalised ‒ with separate care for younger (0‒2) and older children (3‒6) at nurseries and kindergartens ‒ in all four countries (three of them and a part of Poland were at the time under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). This, according to Saxonberg, constituted the first ‘critical juncture’.

The author argues that the political choice to move to a two-tier system in the late eighteenth century, followed in the mid-1950 by a technical decision (‘a simple ministerial reorganization’; p. 83) made by communist regimes to shift oversight of nurseries to the ministries of health, proved crucial to gender relations in Central Europe and therefore also to the genderisation of family policies in these countries. His justification for this thesis rests on the commonsensical hypothetical explanations for the occurrence of interrelations between institutional developments, general public discourse and attitudes of society in general. However, the author often supports these with references to the theoretical concepts drawn from both historical and sociological institutionalisms.

He explains that during the general Stalinist shift in communist countries in the mid-twentieth century, the ministries of welfare were closed down since ‘“socialist economics” was supposed to solve all social problems’ (s. 83) and the oversight of nurseries was shifted to the ministries of health (the administration of kindergartens had earlier been moved to ministries of education). This created a second ‘critical juncture’ because, as Saxonberg argues, it contributed to the organisation of nurseries as overcrowded institutions like healthcare facilities, where there was no focus on pedagogical development, and which were treated as last-resort childcare institutions. This, in turn, led to the creation of the ‘norm/myth of treenees’ (s. 249/265), which holds that the best place for a child under three to be is at home, as the public debate became dominated by psychologists and paediatricians.

Saxonberg also provides counterexamples from the Western Countries to strengthen his arguments. In Sweden, as the author notes, ‘“treenees” did not emerge in the discourse – because children were not divided into groups of preschool children above and below the age of three’ (s.87) and placed under the tutelage of the ministry of education. As a result, as the author explains, the discourse around early childcare was dominated by sociologists and pedagogues, rather than doctors.

According to Saxonberg, the myth of treenees has heavily charged further family policy developments (for example, maternity leave reforms) both under the communist regimes and after their collapse. However, the four post-communist countries examined here still differ importantly in terms of the details of their family policy schemes. In his effort to explain why, Saxonberg again digs into the pre-communist historical legacies of these countries, and shows that all four countries turned to them after the collapse of their communist regimes: ‘Poland stuck to its residualist policy legacy from the pre-war period . . . Czechoslovakia . . . to its Bismarckian policy legacy’ and Hungary, to first Bismarckian, and later to it's ‘ethnic/pro-natalist legacy’ (s. 253).

Although Saxonberg's considerations are highly sophisticated and most of his explanations appealingly convincing, readers with quantitative research expertise may be bothered by the very high frequency with which the author formulates cause-and-effect conclusions without providing adequate empirical evidence for such relationships. Saxonberg offers us a very interesting and convincing, but still mainly descriptive narrative. He provides statistical data, and for his analysis of the attitudes of the populations (Chapter 6) even some basic statistical analyses (logistic regression and confirmatory factor analysis), but he makes no attempt to identify relevant strategies which would enable him to draw cause‒consequence conclusions (in some parts of the book even an honest attempt to eliminate alternative explanations is lacking). Of course, the possibilities for sophisticated analyses of this kind are very scarce when it comes to explanations of historical socio-political developments, but Saxonberg's analysis would benefit from greater effort to seek out such opportunities. Given their absence, he could have been more careful in drawing cause‒consequence conclusions.

Nevertheless, I would recommend Saxonberg's book as a must-read for all scholars and anyone interested in the peculiarities of policy developments in post-communist Europe, as it is highly accessible, unusually rich in detail and deep insights into the interrelations between institutional developments, public discourse and societal attitudes in that part of Europe.