Unequal Paths to Clienthood: Child Protection and Domestic Bliss

As child protection programs allow for a variety of constructions of clienthood, they might be susceptible to enforcing inequalities among their target population: children and their parents. Three steps on the unequal path to clienthood are presented on the basis of 70 case narrations from German child protection professionals. In a first step, child protection’s focus is shifted from children to adult clients. In a second step, this shift is gendered as it is geared specifically towards “mothers” and not “fathers.” Finally, not all mothers are considered equally: Child protection works on the premises of domestic bliss regulating poor mothers with the explicit goal of establishing a properly ordered household, thus promising “improvement” for the clients. On the basis of such a premise, children (in general), male caretakers, and mothers who are able to deliver a proper family performance may be underserved by child protection services, whereas poor mothers who are unable to follow the expectations of domestic bliss are further marginalized and placed under control.