A New Paradigm for Family Policy: Civic Education, Equality and Public Reasoning

Abstract

Family, as a civic institution, has been progressively undermined. To renew family as a civic institution and a space where progressive values such as mutualism, interdependence and reciprocity thrive, requires a new paradigm, and not a mere rearrangement of policy goals or nudge policies. Family policy needs a new epistemology to make the paradigmatic transition from old and reheated arguments about families failing in their duties to possibility thinking about alternative futures for children and their parents. Paradigmatic transitions need what Sen refers to as ‘positive freedoms’ and capacity for critical reflection and public reasoning, the pillars of a civic society.* The remaking of a civic society can start with the family as a key unit and with policy that accounts for the neoliberal pressures and the gradual erosion of families’ public space. A capability approach to individual well-being should be brought to the heart of family policy and public debates about parenting and children.