“…If we classify welfare states focusing on family policies and the way in which they structure gender and economic relationships through support of mother's employment, organization of care, the equal support of all forms of parenthood and partnership, and the promotion of "agency equality", i.e., the equal access of all persons to societal institutions that grant welfare (education, market, social security, care, etc. ), we arrive at a different classification of welfare-state regimes: The Nordic countries still largely constitute a welfare-state regime of their own, but the pattern of the conservative welfare states becomes more diverse, with France, Belgium, and partly the Netherlands being clearly set off against the German-speaking and the Mediterranean countries (Gornick, Meyers, and Ross 1997;Meyers, Gornick, and Ross 1999;Anttonen and Sipilä 1996;Lewis 1992;Langan and Ostner 1991;Neyer 2003aNeyer , 2005Korpi 2000). This implies that if we want to investigate the effect of family policies on fertility we cannot simply resort to pre-determined classifications of welfare states.…”