On Family Change and Family Policy in Taiwan

This article examines the families in transition in Taiwan in the last three decades, and proposes a national policy on family to response the rapid social change. The author analyze the changing families by means of three dimensions: demographic and family structure, family resource, and family relationship, and find out that today's Taiwanese families have changing to more small, multiple, diversified, declining and vulnerable than that in the 1980s. Should the government intervene into families? Three ideologies on social policy-conservative, liberal and feminist, are introduced to realize the content of family policy. Based on the findings, this paper argues that the government should launch out a national family policy to support families as soon as possible.