The items selected below to exemplify recent literature on the European family policy process from national and international perspectives highlight the specificity of family policy research, as reported in the themed articles in this issue of the journal. The publications cited indicate both the need for country-specific solutions and for cross-national comparative research, where potentially transportable examples of best practice can be identified. In multinational studies that straddle the developed countries of western Europe and the emerging countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the contrastive dimension is a key and driving factor of the analysis. Notwithstanding the similarities – in demographic trends, changes in family formation, education and labour market participation – the contrasts remain overwhelming and reflect the specific conditions obtaining in any given country. In turn, these conditions are reflected in the central themes and preoccupations of the analyses of national policy agencies, non-governmental organisations and academics. The position of family-related issues in the respective policy hierarchy is most obviously reflected in the institutional location of these issues. In all European countries, the dominant imperative of economic growth and stability leads to family policy being subsumed predominantly under ministries of social affairs. The experience of former communist states with rapidly growing income disparities, unemployment and meagre state funding has produced a patchwork of institutional and policy initiatives, dominated by the imperative of economic growth and modernisation. The disappearance of the comprehensive infrastructure of childcare in former state socialist countries compounds the problems of adjustment and helps to define the focus of post-communist research. A common feature in many European countries is that, notwithstanding self-funded research on the part of university research groups and NGOs, the influence of ministerial funding priorities on family policy research also determines the focus and weighting of national research output.