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Questions about whether love can be offered in residential child care units, whether combining child protection and safeguarding in social work with loving care or care with love is possible, and whether children and young people feel loved by someone who is paid to care for them, have raised long-standing issues. Social pedagogy puts such questions at the core of its philosophy and practice, and has been a fundamental part of care in Denmark for many years. Drawing on a Danish survey of 1,400 children in out-of-home care, this paper analyses the subjective feeling of love amongst children living in out-of-home care. The main moderating factors for feeling loved are the feeling of security and the feeling of social support, the tangible counterpart of Honneth's concept of recognition.

ABSTRACTThis paper concerns the prevalence of mental health problems among children in family foster and residential care within a Danish context. All children, born in Denmark in 1995, who are or formerly have been placed in out‐of‐home care (n= 1072), are compared with a group of vulnerable children of the same age, subjected to child protection interventions but living at home (n= 1457, referred to as the 'in home care children'), and to all contemporaries who are not child protection clients (n= 71 321, referred to as the 'non‐welfare children'). Prevalence data are established on the basis of national administrative register data, including data on psychiatric diagnoses of the children, and on survey data scoring children in out‐of‐home care, in home care children, and non‐welfare children by means of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Results show that 20% of children in out‐of‐home care have at least one psychiatric diagnosis compared to 3% of the non‐welfare children. Almost half of the children in care (48%) are, furthermore, scored within the abnormal range of SDQ, compared to 5% of the non‐welfare children.

AbstractChildren and young people's right to participate in decisions affecting their lives has received considerable attention in recent years; however, there is no fixed definition of what their involvement means in practice and there is no consensus regarding how to determine the level of involvement. The purpose of this study was to quantitatively investigate the involvement of vulnerable young people in their own case processing. Based on quantitative measures of young people's relationships to their caseworkers, how well informed they feel and how much influence they seem to have, we analysed how involved young people feel in their own case processing and we show significant differences in involvement using a combination of survey and administrative data. We found considerable co‐existence of poor well‐being and poor involvement. By sampling a large proportion of the total group, and by receiving answers from 2334 young people, corresponding to one in five of all vulnerable young people in either out‐of‐home care or receiving in‐home preventive care, we are able to show significant differences in involvement. Consequently, we argue that questionnaire‐based surveys can help nuance the understanding of involvement challenges.

In this paper we investigate the net income distribution across Europe using data from the 2000 wave from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). The determination of female income is explored using conditional quantile regression with selection correction. The results show that differences in labour supply and family structure are important across both the income distribution and regions; additionally, the interaction terms between regions and family structure show a large variation. While the incomes of women in some regions are unaffected by having children or by being in a couple, women in other regions experience varying effects on their income. This implies that differences in family structure are important determinants of female income across Europe.

Objective. Focusing on housework activities, we hypothesize that the degree of specialization is influenced by economic notions of efficiency, as well as by time constraints and egalitarian values.Methods. Employing time‐use data on U.S. and Danish couples, we construct a composite index measure of intra‐household specialization. We analyze the comparability of reported time use and our specialization index using different types of data, and then model specialization using a multivariate two‐limit Tobit.Results. We find evidence that Danish households specialize less than U.S. households and that children, particularly preschool‐aged children, are associated with significantly increased specialization in the United States but not in Denmark.Conclusions. We postulate that the more egalitarian social structure in Scandinavia is a driving force behind the lower rate of specialization observed in Denmark. Further, we believe the subsidized child‐care services provided by the Danish welfare system reduce the impact children have on specialization in ordinary housework tasks.

Previous research suggests that young adults from out‐of‐home care (OHC) are at high risk of low education and unemployment. However, there are no studies on their risk of long‐term NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training). This study compared the risk of NEET at age 21–23 among OHC youth across Denmark, Finland and Sweden, using register data for an entire birth cohort born in 1987. The Nordic countries share many features, but there are differences in the provision of after‐care support and in the linkage between the educational system and the labour market. The results show that about a fourth in Denmark and Sweden and a third in Finland were NEET, suggesting that the welfare systems were not able to compensate for the OHC youth's childhood disadvantages. To a significant extent, the excess risk of NEET was attributed to poor school performance. Implications for research, policy and practice are discussed.

In recent years, several OECD countries have taken steps to promote policies encouraging fathers to spend more time caring for young children, thereby promoting a more gender equal division of care work. Evidence, mainly for the United States and United Kingdom, has shown fathers taking some time off work around childbirth are more likely to be involved in childcare related activities than fathers who do not take time off. This article reports on a first cross-national analysis of the association between fathers' leave taking and fathers' involvement when children are young. It uses birth cohort data of children born around 2000 from four OECD countries: Australia, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the United States. Results show that the majority of fathers take time off around childbirth independent of the leave policies in place. In all countries, except Denmark, important socio-economic differences between fathers who take leave and those who do not are observed. In addition, fathers who take leave, especially those taking two weeks or more, are more likely to carry out childcare related activities when children are young. This study adds to the evidence that suggests that parental leave for fathers is positively associated with subsequent paternal involvement.