Caring Children: Exploring Care in Post-Divorce Families

Abstract

This article draws on information from in-depth interviews in addition to a survey from a Norwegian ‘Families after divorce’ study, in which the perspective of children and younger people are emphasized. We describe the complex relations between care-giving and care-receiving among children and adults in post-divorce families and challenge and nuance the traditional western picture that emphasizes children as the receivers of care and adults as care-givers. Inspired by the notion of ‘caringscapes’, the article seeks to incorporate the spatial and the temporal into the analysis of care and caring, and three ‘caring routes’ are identified: i) the ‘money squeeze route’, ii) the ‘emotional considerations route’ and iii) the ‘time squeeze’ route. The three routes are verified by the interview data as having both direct and indirect effects on the phenomenon of caring. We argue that children's care-giving should be further investigated both empirically and theoretically and that a caringscapes approach might provide insight and departure for further research.

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