Workshop on welfare policies and the everyday life of families

The purpose of the workshop was to facilitate dialogue between researchers working in the contested field of parenting, childhood and early interventions.

The workshop departed from the observation that in recent decades welfare policies have become focused on children as human capital and as an investment that must be protected and promoted. Such policies are becoming more instructive and prescriptive and are being used to legitimize state interventions - for instance parenting programs targeting families. This global trend is reflected in Danish political debates which refer to scientific studies linking children’s academic performances to parental resources such as social networks and socioeconomic status. Early interventions identify parenting as a decisive factor in fighting inequality, making parenting and early years high politics.

While researchers have worked diligently and extensively on this topic, little dialogue takes place between the different strands of research. The workshop provided the participants with the opportunity to establish cooperation and explore synergies between different research environments.

The workshop included 20 senior and junior researchers, and two prominent international scholars gave the keynotes: Professor Mark Feinberg from the International Center for Coparenting Policy and Research who talked about coparenting theory, and its’ implications for intervention and policy. Professor Ellie Lee from the Center for Parenting Culture Studies, who talked about the rise of parenting in a global historical context. 

In addition to these keynotes selected participants presented their ongoing research on the relationship between family everyday life and welfare policies, while addressing three overall themes:

• The relation between research and risk-preventing policy agendas.
• Research contribution to the development of interventions targeting family contexts.
• The inclusion of parents’ perspectives, experiences or perceived benefits in research.

The participants presented research from anthropological, sociological and psychological traditions embedded in different fields such as clinical and intervention research as well as ethnographic studies on everyday life. The presentations ranged across a variety of topics including transitions to parenthood and first-time parents, couple conflict and divorce as well as early interventions and the implications for family living.  

Stine Faber studies preventive interventions in the context of the Danish Government’s ‘1000 days policy program – a better start in life’. She showed that interventions that were previously only initiated when specified problems occurred are now introduced as prevention, based on the logic that everyone may benefit from the intervention. According to Stine Faber this logic seems to be that “every parent can always do more or work harder to become a better, happier, version of themselves – it is parenting without limits”.

The subsequent discussion revealed that when interventions are initiated based on potential risk factors, even before problems are identified, they often have consequences beyond their intended aim in the everyday life of families.

Associate professor Tea Trillingsgaard, who research couple conflicts and develop interventions to parents adds that “…our research shows that what parents are asking for is often the least intrusive approach. We need to adapt our interventions to what the parents are requesting and need, and we need to design our interventions to do both. This contrasts with the idea that all parents should have everything as early as possible."

Discussions further revealed how welfare state policies and provision are always also part of historical and cultural contexts, and that interventions developed in one social setting may have a different meaning in another.