Towards Infrastructures of Feminist Care: An Inside-Out Perspective on Danish Family Child Care.
Abstract
This article is the result of a multi-year comparative study of the early care and education systems in Denmark and Wisconsin. I argue that Denmark’s family child care (dagpleje) system models a feminist ethics of care that takes collective responsibility for children through professionalizing the system. Employing autoethnography, an ‘inside-out perspective’ gives insight into intimate discussions of the challenges and benefits of the system with Danish family child care providers. Evidence of a feminist ethics of care includes weekly playgroups, called legestue, to answer whether a government institution can truly embody a feminist ethics of care, and how such care materially benefits the labor force involved and the publics they serve. By advancing attention to the Danish family child care context, this article is part of a larger goal to promote transnational knowledge exchanges between family child care systems across borders.
Keywords: family child care, dagplejer, feminist ethics of care, legestue, Danish early
care and education
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