Parenthood in the Contemporary Foster Care System

Dear Colleagues,

The aim of this Special Issue is to raise awareness of new perspectives on parenthood within the contemporary foster care system, as well as the methodological and theoretical challenges this entails. At the intersection of private family life and public state intervention, foster care systems across different contexts are marked by increasing diversity in family structures and complex negotiations of roles between biological parents, foster carers, professionals, and kinship networks. Children are at the centre of these dynamics, navigating multiple relationships over time. Parenthood in this context emerges as a relational and shared responsibility, where biological ties coexist with social and collective caregiving, raising critical questions about belonging, attachment, and the meaning of family.

In this context, the growing academic and policy interest in shared parenthood is particularly relevant. Concepts such as co-parenting, shared care, parenting plus, and three-part parenthood reflect the increase in multi-parent families and reinvigorate scholarly debate on the parent–child relationship. Within the academic field of pedagogy, this relationship and the notion of parental responsibility have long been regarded as foundational, traditionally conceptualized as an essential affective and guiding bond between adult and child. Foster care, particularly kinship placements, challenges and reconfigures this relationship by distributing parental roles across multiple actors, making it a key site for theoretical and empirical inquiry.

This Special Issue invites contributions from disciplines such as sociology, social work, psychology, pedagogy, and educational sciences on parenthood within the contemporary foster care system. We particularly welcome studies that explore how shared parenthood is conceptualized and practiced in foster care, how parental responsibilities are negotiated, and how children and young people themselves experience these dynamics. By drawing on diverse theoretical frameworks and innovative methodologies, this Special Issue seeks to advance critical reflection on parenthood in foster care within a broader socio-political context of children’s rights and participation, family diversity, social justice, and contemporary policy tendencies favouring out-of-home placements in family settings.

Prof. Dr. Lieselot De Wilde
Guest Editor

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• shared parenthood
• foster care systems
• child welfare
• parent–child relationship
• kinship care
• multi-parent families
• parental responsibility
• children’s rights
• family diversity