Sociological Ambivalence: Relationships between birth parents and foster parents

Professor Margaretha Järvinen and Researcher Stine Tankred Luckow at VIVE have contributed to the journal Sociology 54(4), 825-841 with the article ‘Sociological Ambivalence: Relationships between birth parents and foster parents’.

Inspired by Merton and Barber’s sociological theory on ambivalence, the article analyses ‘co-parenting’ between foster parents and birth parents as prototypes of ambivalent relationships, i.e. relationships based on incompatible role requirements. This incompatibility is rooted in the conflicts between a) the professional role of foster carers and their emotional involvement in the child in their care, and b) the status of birth parents as ‘failed parents’ (from the perspective of the authorities) and their continuous aspirations to get their child home again.

The article is based on qualitative interviews with foster parents and birth parents of children in foster care in Denmark. It shows how the structural ambivalence in co-parenting relationships is associated with difficulties, for both foster parents and birth parents, in translating the principle of ‘the best interest of the child’ into concrete practice in out-of-home placements.

Link to article: Sociological Ambivalence: Relationships between birth parents and foster