English Information

State Institute for Family Research at the University of Bamberg (ifb)

The institute was founded in 1994 and is affiliated with the Otto-Friedrich University of Bamberg. It is an institution of the Bavarian State Ministry of Labour and Social Order, Family and Women and is located in Bamberg. The academic staff consists of eight members and is composed interdisciplinarily. They represent the fields of sociology, psychology, education and law.

Organisational structure

Professor Dr. Hans-Peter Blossfeld is director of the State Institute for Family Research, Dr. Marina Rupp is vice-director.

The Institute’s Advisory Board consists of the Institute’s director, two full professors of the University of Bamberg, one representative of the Institute’s scientists and one representative of the Bavarian State Ministry of Labour and Social Order, Family and Women. It has the task to establish the annual research programme. Eligible for submission of proposals for that annual programme are: Bavarian State Ministry of Social Order, Family and Women, members of the Institute’s academic staff, and members of the Family Research Group of the University of Bamberg.

Goals

Among the ifb ’ s main goals are:

• Basic research in social science
• Applied research in social science
• Policy advice and scientific evaluation of demonstration projects

Key topics

• Social, economic, and legal living conditions of families
• Impacts of labor market and workplace on families and parenting
• Changes in family structure
• Gender relationships and the changing roles of women, men and children
• Evaluation of prevention- and support-initiatives for children and adolescents
• Longitudinal observations of family-related policy, including national and international comparisons

Main Research Areas

Family Reports and Forms of Family life: This key research topic, on one hand, includes the continuous observation of the state of the family in Bavaria ("Family Report on Bavaria”) and, on the other hand, focuses on conducting research on selected forms of family life and family situations for which only little research has been carried out, respectively.

Reconciliation of Family and Work: In addition to the challenge of new gender roles there are further demands for change, i.e., an adaptation of the societal conditions regarding work regulations. Given the present structures, there still are massive obstacles for a satisfying reconciliation of family and work. In this key research topic we address the situation and describe and disseminate approaches that may provide solutions.

Family Education: The necessity of alleviating the burden families carry with regard to raising their children results from a variety of societal developments. Among other reasons, the expectations regarding the quality of education and the advancement of children have increased: the participation of both parents in the labour market has risen, and the living situations of families have increased in diversity. Preventive family education should provide support in order to prevent – or at least to reduce – the discrimination against children living in certain family patterns or family situations. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct research that accompanies demonstration projects in order to establish new ways of intervention.

International Perspectives on Families: Increasing degrees of globalization call for an observation of living conditions from a comparative, cross-country perspective, for two principal reasons: on the one hand, the general globalization process has an impact on developments on the level of individual states and on the other hand, the strategies of other states can be tested regarding their transferability to the own country context. Currently, two projects with a duration of several years are being conducted at the ifb that deal with the cross-country comparison of the living conditions of families within their specific national contexts. In our project "International comparison of benefits for families”, the institutional and cultural framework of selected social security systems in Germany, France and Sweden will be contrasted for investigating differences in outcomes for the living conditions of families. The second project "International comparison of demographic change” investigates the impact of basic institutional and cultural conditions on the emergence of divergent patterns of fertility in modern societies.

Activities

The State Institute for Family Research addresses family-related topics through the following activities:

• Interdisciplinary empirical research
• Scientific evaluation of family-related policies and demonstration projects (childcare, work-time models, etc.)
• Large-scale representative surveys, secondary analyses, intensive interviews and case-studies
• Advising institutional parties (associations, unions, media, etc.) in matters of family policy and family research
• Lectures and seminars on family-related topics
• Regular congresses on family-related topics and issues
• International cooperation with scientific institutions

Publications

The following publications are the main products for regular dissemination of current ifb research results: ifb -research reports, Journal of Family Research ("Zeitschrift für Familienforschung"), congress proceedings and workshop reports.

Addresses

State Institute for Family Research at the University of Bamberg (ifb)
Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Blossfeld (Director)
D - 96045 Bamberg
Tel.: ++49 (0) 9 51/9 65 25 - 0
Fax: ++49 (0) 9 51/9 65 25 - 29
Email: sekretariat @ ifb.uni-bamberg.de
Internet: http://www.ifb-bamberg.de

Projects 2010: Overview and Selected Summaries

1. European Union platform for family research and family policies 
2. Development of the division of work within the family
3. Flexibility forms in later career and the transition to retirement
4. Same-sex life styles and the family
5. The way back to work after a ‚baby break‘
6. ifb Report on the Family in Bavaria
7. Implementation of the Overall Concept of Family Education within the framework of the youth welfare system in Bavaria
8. Midwives‘ aid for parents (MAJA). Completion of the evaluation and analyses
9. Scientific monitoring of the Nicolaidis Foundation (Support for widowed mothers, fathers and their children)
10. Scientific monitoring of the School Guidance Programme in the Bavarian city of Hof
11. Relationship development – Stability and transitions
12. Scientific monitoring of the Sara Project (Holistic support for couples with a desire for children)
13. Foundations of parental and family education
14. Family-friendly University of Bamberg
15. International comparison of demographic change
16. Completion of the project on prenatal diagnosis and trouble pregnancies
17. Provision of care for grandchildren 

Report on the State of the Family in Bavaria

The aim of this report is to give an overview of the current situation of families in Bavaria. In addition to providing basic data, this report focuses on identifying emerging (sociodemographic) trends, potentially problematic patterns and new challenges with which family policies might have to cope. Similar to the National Family Reports the Bavarian Family Report will regularly monitor the state of families in Bavaria. The information compiled in this report aims at politicians, administrators, associations and scientists.

The 2009 Edition of the ifb Report on the Family addresses the situation of families from a comparative European perspective. In addition to analyses of the development of demographic trends and family forms, the different benefits in family policies in the individual countries of the European Union are being highlighted. The current Report also deals with the division of work in the family as well with the material situation and financial exchanges between generations.

Family Education

Due to various changes in society, family life has become more complex. At the same time, additions to the list of educational tasks for parents have meant that the expectations on the performance have grown immensely – and all this began long before the results of the PISA surveys were even published! For a long time now measures have been in place with the aim of helping parents cope with a more varied – and partly more demanding – life style. Basically this objective is dealt with in two areas:

• the composition and structure of the offers to meet the criteria of easy access (i.e., low-threshold offers), to make them accessible to families from all walks of life, according to their respective demands.
• network activities for cross-linking the offers (including the dissemination as well as the guarantee of accessibility to these offers).

Family education issues have been on the research agenda of the ifb for a long time. In the past, the ifb has carried out several studies on family education. Among these studies, there were: the evaluation of mother-child groups, a survey on so-called "parental letters”, focusing on how these letters were perceived by both parents and youth authorities, and a survey among Bavarian parents that investigated their demand for counselling in raising their children as well as their strategies for retrieving information relevant to their daily routines of child-raising. Additionally, two manuals for the implementation of low-threshold measures in family education were being developed: "Co-operation and networking” and the "Manual on low-threshold family education”.

In addition to some small-scale projects on family education, we currently conduct a study to establish an overall framework of family education measures in Bavaria. Since societies have to deal with changes in the demographic structures and family patterns, increasing spatial and occupational mobility as well as extensive changes in the life course, families may be in need of support by family education measures at different points in time during the various stages of family formation and development. These demands are legally met by the assurance of support measures provision in accordance with article 16 of the federal Child and Youth Service Act (KJHG). Against this background, a multitude of projects and models for family education have been developed and tested so far. On one hand, the growth and the diversity of offers is a good sign for the growing importance of this educational field. On the other hand, however, this success is accompanied by a lack of clarity and low degrees of efficiency with regard to the total output of resource usage. Also, deficits exist in the connectivity among and beyond these programs.

In short, an overarching framework plan is missing, i.e., a plan that structures the contents, establishes connections between the individual models and thus serves as an integrating framework. Such a framework should be construed from modules that can be interconnected in a flexible way.

While a multitude of initiatives and activities can be noticed in practice, the still persistent lack of theoretical foundation in research on family education is considered to be its largest shortcoming. As of now, neither a uniform definition of family education nor adequate standards for quality requirements exist. Thus, it is the objective of this project to close these gaps. For doing so, we have been engaged in the development of an overall concept for family education since the end of the year 2006. It is a main task of this project to develop a definition of family education that, in turn, serves as a foundation for elaborating quality criteria. The exploration and documentation of the pool of model projects and concepts of family education that already exist constitute another building block of this project. Additionally, the rather small number of scientific analyses or evaluations of individual services are being investigated. Also, we have conducted our own empirical surveys on the actual inventory of services in family education supplied in Bavaria. Within the project’s framework, we also conducted two surveys on how the supply range as well as the overall situation of family education is assessed on the local and regional levels. Once more, the online survey confirmed that a multitude of supplying agencies and offered services already exist. By the same token, the findings from an analysis of selected Bavarian regions underscore the necessity for establishing concepts and structures that help optimized the activities in family education on the spot.

The results of our detailed analyses will be made available to the public via two publications:

1. A guideline for practice and,
2. A comprehensive compendium on family education.