“Ageism towards children in the Nordic Welfare Systems: an intersectional perspective "

Keith Pringle, Professor of Social Work, Aalborg University, Denmark; Guest Professor in Social Research, Malardalens Hogskola, Sweden; and Honorary Professor at the Centre for the Study of Safety and Well-Being, Warwick University, UK.

Focusing primarily but not exclusively on Sweden, this paper draws upon the outcomes from three research projects: first, and primarily, a large qualitative study of the ways in which the Swedish child welfare systems addresses (or does not address) power relations in the lives of service users associated with the power dimensions of age, gender, ethnicity; together with two linked European Union-funded research networks on men’s practices, including those related to the lives of children. These networks contained thirteen countries including Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Using data from these projects, the paper (re-) considers the largely positive international reputation of the Nordic welfare systems as seen, for instance, in the welfare paradigm offered by Esping-Andersen. In particular the global image of those systems as being “child-friendly” is critically re-evaluated: whilst aspects of that image seem to be grounded, the paper suggests that there are also significant elements of child ageism intersecting, for example, with other social divisions such as those clustered around dimensions of gender and ethnicity. It develops this analysis to an extent by focusing on the well-being of children in terms of issues of “bodily integrity” – especially how far those societies respond to sexual violence towards children and aspects of racism in the lives of some children.

The paper argues that the responses of the Nordic societies to these issues and to a range of others are, in a number of important ways, less impressive than the research, policy and practice responses of a generally less well-regarded welfare system such as that of the United Kingdom despite all its well-known and very real faults. On the basis of this analysis, the paper suggests that, in some respects, one should consider inverting Esping-Andersen’s well-known welfare typologies when seeking to apply them to the promotion of childrens bodily integrity. The paper goes on to propose a culturally and historically-located explanation for this state of affairs in relation to Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Finally, the paper argues that whilst a truly empowering welfare system for children cannot currently be found in either Nordic or UK settings, such a system might be possible if the best elements of both could be combined – and that such a development seems more likely to develop within the Swedish welfare context than in either the Danish or English one.