“We families form the main group of electors; our vote will be decisive for the elections; we make indispensable contributions to the State; we expect significant improvements; we are the future”. So begins the document issued by the Austrian association of Catholic families in view of the elections for the renewal of the national Assembly on 24 November. “Recognizing the services of the family, strengthening it, revaluing it, and permitting family life”: these are the requests being made by the “largest supra-party-political family organization in Austria”, which also proposes practical solutions to the various problems. “The family is the hinge of social and economic life: its services are indispensable for society, and must be recognized through proper encouragement”, says the statement, which urges the creation of “conditions such as to enable the family’s success”. “Family work and profession cannot be mutually exclusive”: it is therefore essential to “pass from a world of families geared to work to a world of work geared to families”. Warning that the “electoral programmes of the parties and the statements of the candidates need to be checked out” as far as they concern the family, the association concludes by asking “the parties that proper value be given to family policy also after the elections”.
