Money, Love, and Work: Transcending Dichotomies in Analyses of Foster Care

Most research on engagement in foster care is located within a moral discourse characterized by dichotomies, with the economic aspects of foster care being especially contested. In this article, the following question is discussed: How could the engagement of foster carers in a late modern welfare state be conceptualized and researched? A theoretically inspired and empirically informed analytical model is suggested, constituting foster care as a culturally and historically situated case of care arrangements. An interview study with children and adults in 18 Norwegian foster families has informed the analytical model, and empirical illustrations are drawn from this study. The discussion is mainly at a conceptual level, aiming at challenging dichotomized and decontextualized conceptions of foster care. “Money, love, and work” are interrelated discursive themes and represent a simplified figure of the complex activity that constitutes foster care. They are involved in all care arrangements, parenting, as well as foster care. In the case of the latter, the significance of these themes is negotiated at a political, an institutional, and a cultural level. Further, they are negotiated at the personal and interpersonal level by the children and adults who share their everyday life in foster families, as they make sense of the care practices they are involved in. It is argued that foster care studies should transcend the individual level and include more levels of analysis.