The overburdened mother: How social workers view the private sphere

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Authors

Child protection intervenes in situations of inadequate parenting. Analyses of child protection routines offer insight into the ideas about the proper care and handling of children that guide interventions in this field. This article is based on interviews with social workers that were used to reconstruct 70 cases of professional interventions by systematically categorizing social workers’ reasoning and the trajectories of their interventions. Our analysis shows that approaches to parents are strongly gendered and organized around mother-focused routines. Such routines aim at a concept of private life that – in the way it is fenced in and asymmetric regarding its gender and generational order – is out of step with broader conceptions of gender and family relations. Our data show that more innovative ideas about parenting and its enhancement are absent from child protection practices.
Translated title of the contributionDie überforderte Mutter: Wie Sozialarbeiter die Privatsphäre sehen
Original languageEnglish
JournalZeitschrift für Familienforschung
Volume2017
Issue numberSonderheft 11
Pages (from-to)153‒170
Number of pages18
ISSN0935-4018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 07.2017
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Journal of Family Research/
Zeitschrift für Familienforschung
Special Issue/Sonderheft 11 (2016/2017), Tanja Betz, Michael-Sebastian Honig and Ilona Ostner (Eds.): Parents in the Spotlight: Parenting Practices and Support from a Comparative Perspective, ISBN 978-3-8474-0502-3, eISBN 978-3-8474-0924-3, Barbara Budrich Publishers, Opladen