The chapter discusses the ways in which the new welfare state policies towards care work in European welfare states can be analysed. According to the common thinking in comparative welfare state research, care work takes either place in the private sector where it is informal and unpaid, or it takes place in the public sector where it is formal and paid, and only welfare state policies that support extra-familial care work can lead to more gender equality. It is argued here that the clear embedding of care work into one of the two spheres of family and gainful employment can easily become a conceptual cul-de-sac and tends to hinder the recognition of new welfare state policies that have established new semi-formal and formal forms of paid family care work between informal family care work and formal extra-familial care work. The chapter introduces a new multidimensional approach for analyses of the development of care work, which offers a more adequate basis for the analysis of welfare state policies towards care work within and outside the family household than the old dualistic approach. It also analyses how welfare state policies towards care work within and outside the family have developed during the past decades, with regard to the different dimensions of care work. The findings show that care work within and outside the family has become more similar, and that the boundaries between extra-familial care work and family care work have been blurred as a consequence of policy reforms. It also discusses what this means for our understanding of the relationship between welfare states and the family.