The (ab)sense of shared parenthood in foster care

PhD student: Céline Cannaert
Summary: Today, definitions of parenthood are mainly limited to the classical image of the Western middle-class family where biological, social and legal parenthood coincide. Foster care is a challenging case to question that dominant idea given its complicated nature and the ambition to realise ‘shared parenthood’ in order to meet the child's right to parents and family. However, within the existing body of (inter)national foster care research, shared parenthood is mainly defined as a procedural and divided concept and each perspective of the various actors in foster care involved is always studied separately. This project aims to contribute to the international framework of shared parenthood knowledge by 1) theorizing the concept of shared parenthood from a holistic family resemblance approach and 2) empirically examining the different ways in which all various actors in voluntary foster care trajectories involved actually negotiate, perceive and fulfil their (parenting)role in the long run.
PhD in Educational Sciences
Promoter(s): Lieselot De Wilde
Periode of time: October 2021 - October 2025