Paper short abstract:

The paper investigates the interplay between child welfare policies of individual states, different ideals of childhood and parenthood, and questions of child vulnerability, through the examination of two debates on parents' labour migration that unfolded in the Norwegian media in spring 2006.

Paper long abstract:

The paper investigates the interplay between child welfare policies, different models and ideals of childhood and parenthood, and questions of child vulnerability. The analysis is built on a comparative examination of two different media reportages dealing with parents' labour migration to Norway. The reportages concern the migration of Filipino women and Polish men respectively, and the role of a particular kind of child allowance in attracting foreign labourers to Norway. The reportages and their subsequent media debates are analysed with regards to the way the issue of the child allowance come up, and, most importantly, with regards to the messages they convey about child vulnerability, childcare and the ideas they entail about good and proper parenthood. On the background of a discussion of the notion of "global childhood" vs. "local childhoods", it is argued for the necessity of taking gender into consideration when analysing different ideals and practices of care as well as child welfare policies. Encounters between different models of childhood and ideals of childcare- global, state, local - are always also encounters between different notions of proper gendered parenthood.