This book focuses on care-related policy and practice in six countries. The book is a collection of chapters oriented to the analysis of the experiences of working carers and the welfare and labour policies that affect them in a range of welfare state settings. The countries covered are chosen to represent a range of types of welfare state: Finland and Sweden, Australia and England, Japan and Taiwan. The globally oriented collection also contains two substantial introductory chapters and a concluding chapter.

The book fills a number of gaps and can claim uniqueness in several respects. First, it broadens the analysis of the policy field of work‒family reconciliation by bringing in the situation of three different groups of carers: those supporting older parents, those supporting sons and daughters who are disabled or seriously ill and those caring for their disabled, sick or dying partners. Second, in focusing on the combination of paid work and care, the book as a whole problematises and seeks to engage with an important – and almost ubiquitous ‒ mismatch between rising demand for us all to be workers and increasing expectations around family engagement in care for those adults who need it. Policy has hardly responded to people in this situation, preferring a narrow interpretation of reconciliation, essentially reserving it for those with young families. Thirdly, in a unique twist, the countries are considered in pairs and there are three different chapters on each country pair, each covering the specific sub-groups of carers which are identified as the driving focus of interest. A further claim to uniqueness is the countries covered and in particular the inclusion of two Asian welfare states with the more familiar Nordic and liberal models. Comparisons are made not only between but also within each welfare state type, thereby enabling two variants of the same welfare state type to be compared.

What will the reader learn from this book? In the first instance, while it runs the risk of being fragmented – given the wide coverage of countries and sub-groups of carers – it is actually a very comprehensive source of information on the situation of employed, family-based carers in each of the countries. As well as telling us the experiences of what it is like to be a carer in these different situations, we learn also about the policy provisions, on the part of the state and other providers (including employers and NGOs). The chapters are organised in a way that makes them inherently comparative and the summarising overview tables in the introductory and concluding chapters are very helpful in this regard. In many ways, the comparison is exemplary; the editors and authors opting for a chapter and book design that presents more or less similar information for each country. Furthermore, it is important to learn that while there are specificities in the situation of different kinds of carers they share common experiences across countries. On the basis of the lived realities of these people, caring is at once an optimistic and a pessimistic project. The state has a key role to play in affecting exactly how caring is carried out, but ultimately it is only part of a constellation of factors. Finally, it is interesting to consider the extent to which and how the needs of the three different types of carers have been recognised by policy. Of the three groupings, partner-care is the one that seems to be least recognised by policy but the variations across countries are complex and make for interesting reading.

The strengths of the collection lie in the empirical information provided and the careful analysis offered, rather than, say, in a theoretical contribution. It does broaden our understanding of care but the collection does not really address questions around whether we need a specific understanding of care as against a more generic understanding, and in particular whether the three types of caring that they consider are different types or variations on a single type. In my view, the book could also have made more of the family basis of care and how we should theorise this. How does the fact that caring is located in close family relationships affect the nature and conditions of the care provided across countries and cultures and how is it significant in understanding the dynamics of state engagement with care? It would also have been interesting to hear more about the life course dimensions how these influence the experience, resources needed and capacity to care.

As a whole, the book's claim to address issues of critical importance for policy and practice is realised. The collection offers empirical insights that one will not find elsewhere. Kröger and Yeandle and the individual authors have together taken a critical step forward to showcase and broaden our understanding and knowledge of care in different family situations, illuminating the complexities and the variations by culture and welfare state type. Their main conclusion – that states will inevitably have to broaden their understanding of reconciliation to take account of caring for adults – indicates the continuing significance of this groundbreaking work.