Fra børns behov til forældres valg

– et kritisk blik på de sidste 50 års danske familiepolitik

Abstract

This article is based on my PhD defense and provides knowledge about how a good every- day life for a toddler has been articulated in the Danish family policy in the period 1960-2010 as a basis for policymaking.

Beginning in the 1960ties where the breadwinner family was on the decline children’s everyday life became a focus point in a new family policy agenda. Until then the Danish family policy only had an interest in families who lived in economic or moral poverty. What was new was a focus on children and families in general. New questions as part of the family agenda were: Where are the youngest children

supposed to be when the mothers work outside the home? What are children’s needs? What kind of family policy can support children’s needs? Questions like these characterized the knowledge based family policy that continued until the 1980ties where an ideological fam- ily policy arose. Thus, in the first years of the 1980ties an ideologically based family policy developed and the family policy became a part of the differences between left and more than earlier right wing parties. Later the politi- cal parties got a more similar family policy influenced by a common neo-liberal view of humanity. While an important question used to be “What are children’s needs?” The im- portant question became “How can we support parent’s choices?” Thus, most politicians had their focus on the parents and no longer on the children.

How changes in perception and focus in family policy can be understood in a discourse analytical framework is the basis for this ar- ticle. Thus, the article shows how Danish fam- ily policy manifested itself with an increased focus on the general life for children during the 1960s and ended up with a focus on the parents a few decades later.