Shared responsibilities – from a closed and affective privacy to an open network of emotional commitment

Abstract

Development and realization of parenthood depend on the historically specific problematization of child welfare/well-being. The practices of youth welfare service and modern parenthood are primary orientated towards the collective protection and strengthening of the child’s autonomy. According to Foucault, family could be understood as a disciplining architecture and simultaneously as a biopolitical regime of the child’s body. In this regard, the second step would be to discuss the main regulative effects of the judicial concept child welfare/well-being (Kindeswohl) and the major transformational processes of the German youth welfare service. Historically, the regulations of family and socialization were based explicitly on rigid gender norms (traditional family framework). However this article intends to examine how these rigid norms are getting replaced by a decentralized manifold networking and screening of socialization. Instead of a disciplining architecture with a relatively closed, affective and heteronormative privacy, family becomes a relatively open and networked commitment of prevention.