A new book chapter by Jana Tschurenev, titled "Contested Equality: Co-Parenting, Child Welfare, and Gender Politics in Contemporary History”, has just been published in the anthology Querying Childhood - Feminist Reframings, edited by Edited By Mary E. John, Barbara Lotz, Elisabeth Schömbucher.

Out now & open access! https://routledge.com/.../John.../p/book/9781032783499

Abstract

The chapter looks at the history of equally shared co-parenting in Germany (both West and East) and India over the past 70 years. With the post-war, post-colonial expansion of democratic citizenship rights, familial care, and reproductive relations have undergone radical changes. This included significant changes in the rights and relationships of parents towards each other, their children, and the judiciary and the state. This chapter traces these politically highly contested changes in three domains. First, this chapter discusses tendencies towards a harmonisation of mother’s and father’s custodial rights over their marital and non-marital children. In recent decades, parental rights were reframed in gender-neutral terms, abstracting from prevalent gender differences and inequalities. Second, this chapter looks at new legal, judicial, and extrajudicial regulations of non-marital co-parenting. How were conflicts to be settled among unmarried, separately living, legally equal custodians? Finally, this chapter discusses the politicisation of child custody settlements, child welfare concepts, and gender equality in the context of parental rights. The chapter argues that there is a new regulatory regime of separate-but-equal co-parenting emerging in contemporary global history, which will continue to pose important challenges to lawmakers, jurists, child welfare advocates, parents, and children in the 21st century.

Cite

Jana Tschurenev (2025). "Contested Equality: Co-Parenting, Child Welfare, and Gender Politics in Contemporary History", in Querying Childhood - Feminist Reframings, edited by Edited By Mary E. John, Barbara Lotz, Elisabeth Schömbucher, pp 290-314. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003465256