The place of children in the imaginary of welfare states

Child protection services represent a fruitful point of departure for researchers wishing to explore the complex relation between the state and parenting. One main reason for this stems from the mandate granted to these services by industrialised societies to intervene in the lives of families. In this article, we wish to show how one keyword – that of the child – functions in decisions made by Norwegian child protection services. We will be arguing that the notion of the child writ large occupies a crucial position in the imaginary of the Norwegian welfare state. Its centrality, we wish to show, justifies the strong legitimacy found in Norwegian society at large about state intervention in the lives of families. In so doing, we wish to provide a clearer picture of how the state shapes, in a rather authoritarian way, parenting in Norwegian society.