Welcome to the ifb

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 in Bamberg. It is an institution of the Bavarian State Ministry for Labor and Social Affairs, Family and Women. It is located in Bamberg, with a temporary branch office in Munich. The ifb is interdisciplinary. The 12 staff scientists represent the fields of sociology, psychology, education, and economics.
Organisational structure
The director of the State Institute for Family Research is Professor Dr. Hans-Peter Blossfeld; deputy-director is Dr. Marina Rupp.

The Institute's Advisory Board consists of the Institute's director, two full professors of theUniversity of Bamberg, one representative of the Institute's academic staff and one representative of the Bavarian State Ministry of 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
• Political counseling and scientific evaluation of demonstration
  projects

Key topics

• Social, economic and legal living conditions of families
• The 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 youth
• Longitudinal observations of family-related policy, including national and international comparisons

Main Research Areas

Men in the Family: Although gender roles have undergone major changes, they have remained quite stable in their traditional core. While the indisputably serious difficulties involved with combining motherhood and employment are already widely recognised in scientific and public discourse, the destabilising of men's roles has hardly received attention.

Family Reports and Living Forms of the Family: This key research topic, on one hand, consists of 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 family living forms and family situations for which only little research has been carried out.

Reconciliation of Family and Work: In addition to the problematic of new gender roles there are demands for change, i.e., an adaptation of the societal conditions regarding work regulations. The present structures given, there still are massive hindrances for a satisfying reconciliation of family and work. In this key research topic we deal with addressing the situation as well as with describing and disseminating approaches that may provide solutions.

Family Education: The necessity of lightening the burden families carry with regard to raising their children results from a variety of societal developments. Among other things, the requirements 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 gained diversity. Preventive family education should provide support in order to prevent - or at least reduce the discrimination against children living in certain family patterns or family situations. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct research accompanying demonstration projects in order to establish new avenues for intervention.

The State Institute for Family Research addresses family-relevant 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
• Counseling institutional parties (associations, unions, media, etc.) in matters of family policy and family research
• Lectures and seminars on family-related topics
• Regular conferences on family-related topics and issues
• International cooperation with scientific institutions e.g. in Austria, Canada, Hungary, the Netherlands and Slovakia.

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

Addresses

State Institute for Family Research Bamberg University (ifb)

Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Blossfeld (Director)
96045 Bamberg
Tel.: +(49) 951/96525-0
Fax: +(49) 951/96525-29
Email:

Project Title

1. Basics of Counselling Single Mothers
2. Voluntary Work Addressing Families
3. Division of Family Work in the European Union
4. Assistance for Children and Young People with Handicapped Siblings
5. ifb-fFamily Report Bavaria 2002: Report on the State of the Family in Bavaria
6. Life-Styles within the Family
7. Guideline for Easy-Accessible Family Education
8. Men in the Family
9. The Challenge of New Media: Changing Perspectives in Family Education and in the Work with Parents
10. Practical Testing of a Family Education Concept
11. Foster Children and Adopted Children in Residential Care

Report on the State of the Family in Bavaria
The aim of this report is to provide an overview of the current situation of families in Bavaria. In addition to providing basic data, this report will focus 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 report frequently on the state of Bavaria's families. Politicians, administrators, associations and scientists are to have access to the information compiled in this report.

Life-Styles within the Family
Life-styles indicate personal living arrangements encompassing the areas of family, leisure time, culture and attitudes towards life. The term "life-style" is preferably employed for the performance of modern, young, well-educated people (especially singles). The question, however, is: what's the matter with life-styles in the context of the family? The database of this project are the German Social Survey (ALLBUS 1998) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP 1998). Contrary to common belief, the findings show that the greatest multitude of life-styles has not been developed by independent, young people, but by families. Families show a significantly greater variety of patterns. Typically, people who do not live in a family choose very specific life-styles only. For example, young singles can often be found among those individuals falling into the "entertainment category" or the "self-realisation category". Families, used almost the entire variety of life-styles, Age, i.e., the phase in life, does play an important role for their choice. With increasing age the interest in cultural issues, a desire for living in harmony or retreat into the private sphere become more prominent than the modern pursuit for experiences and self-realisation. Basically, family members tend to prefer the same or, at least, similar life-styles, thus there is no potential conflict triggered by that.

Voluntary Work Addressing Families
The issue of voluntary work has increasingly gained prominence in both public debate and research. The International Year of Volunteers in 2001 has underlined this development. With this project, we address a research question that had been neglected until now: What contribution does voluntary work make for relieving the burden of families?
For addressing these research topics we have chosen two complementary methodological approaches: secondary analysis of the Survey on Volunteers, supplemented by 35 telephone interviews with experts.
It can be assumed that families benefit from approximately 40% of the total amount of voluntary work rendered in Germany. A large proportion of that voluntary work relieves the burden of young families in general terms. Aside from that general form of relief, there exists a broad range of offers that address very specific situations and thus taking the multitude of family living forms, circumstances, and problematic situations into account. Volunteers who are working in these areas show exceptional engagement. Altogether, it becomes clear that almost all families with minors receive some form of support by volunteers, at least at certain stages in their lives.

European Network on Policies and the Division of
Unpaid and Paid Work
Women are still discriminated against by the distribution of unpaid work among the sexes. The number of men doing household chores as well as the number of fathers looking after their children is substantially lower than the number of women taking charge of these activities. Based on a representative, international data record, pertinent theories on the division of work in the home were tested. Particular attention was paid to the analysis of the dependence of the scope and the distribution of unpaid work on household requirements, on the optimised use of human capital, on the resources put in for negotiation as well as on the perceptions regarding gender roles.