What does caring mean? Shifting the thinking about children and families

From research by The Frameworks Institute

Why can’t we seem to build systems that support all of our children? Leading for Kids is a non-profit in the USA whose mission is to create a culture where the health and wellbeing of children is central to all of our society’s decisions. In 2020, they began a research project with the FrameWorks Institute and this has produced several reports. These could be helpful and applicable to many countries.

The latest report, "What Does Caring Mean? A New Framing Strategy to Shift Thinking about Kids and Families", defines how to frame children's issues in order to effectively raise the knowledge and relevance of those issues and increase both our sense of collective responsibility for all children and our sense of efficacy about making positive change.

These tested framing recommendations have the potential to catalyse a significant change in the way our society prioritizes children. However, culture change takes repeated efforts to advance new ideas over time so children’s advocates will need to incorporate these frames in their daily communications efforts over a sustained period for them to create real change.

[Frames are ways of packaging and making sense of information. They involve choices about how an issue is presented - what is and isn’t emphasized, how it is explained, what connections are made, and which commitments are invoked. The frames we use shape how people make sense of and respond to what we’re communicating. They affect people’s understanding of the issue - what’s going on, and how does it work? They affect people’s support for solutions and the actions they’re willing to take. They also affect people’s attitudes - like who they see as responsible for an issue and whether they feel a sense of personal or collective efficacy.]

Leading for Kids believe the ideas in this report will be a critical part of creating the culture that all of us as child advocates hope for - one where whenever we make a decision, we ask one of the most important questions: “Is it good for the children?”

FrameWorks identified a frame that effectively centres children in our consideration of public policies and other collective decisions: the Collective Caregiving frame. The big idea at the heart of this frame is that caregiving is a collective endeavour.

Here is the idea: Taking care of children and youth is one of our society’s most important responsibilities. Whether or not we’re parents, we’re all caregivers as citizens. Collective caregiving encompasses all the decisions we make as a society, about every social issue, and we owe care to children and families of all races, backgrounds, and identities.

The research yields three key recommendations about how to convey this big idea:

1. Frame collective action as a form of caregiving. Talk explicitly about “collective caregiving” and explain how we care for children in our role as citizens. Connect collective caregiving to public policies. Talk about policies, not “the government.” Give parents and other caregivers a clear role in collective caregiving.
2. Emphasize that we owe collective care to children of every race, ethnicity, and identity, and not just “our own” children. Emphasize that as citizen-caregivers, all children are our children - no matter their race or identity. Explain how we currently provide collective care unevenly. Offer concrete solutions to extend collective care to children and families of all ethnicities while stressing the goal of universal care for all children. Highlight the need to listen to families across groups.
3. Illustrate how collective caregiving happens everywhere and through every issue. Tell stories that illustrate how policies of all types shape children’s experiences. Use the natural environment as an example of where collective action is needed to care for children. Provide a vision of a future where we prioritize children in decision making around all issues - and explain how we’re currently falling short.

As quick shorthand, we can summarize these recommendations as talking about caregiving as collective, inclusive, and expansive. By stretching existing understandings of care - from interpersonal to collective care, from exclusive care for “our own” kids to inclusive care for all kids, and from care at home and school to care across spaces and issues - we can shift basic understandings of society’s role in children’s lives.

Here are a few differences between the existing framing practices and the new strategy:

• The new strategy frames care as a collective activity as well as an interpersonal one. This differs from the typical strategy of talking about the need to better support those engaged in interpersonal caregiving.
• There is a tendency to focus on instrumental reasons to support children and families or the future benefits of doing so, such as enabling them to achieve their potential. The new strategy talks about collective caregiving as a responsibility in and of itself.
• By giving parents and families a role in collective caregiving, the strategy portrays parents as agents of change and actors to be engaged, rather than merely as recipients of support.
• The strategy moves away from making the direct case that government is good. Instead, it shows the value of government action by talking about how policies can help.
• The strategy moves beyond simply naming racial equity to explaining what’s needed to extend collective caregiving to children and families across race.
• Instead of talking about the vulnerability of children from marginalized groups, the new framing strategy locates the problem in inadequate and uneven collective caregiving.
• Often, existing field communications focus overwhelmingly on problems. The new strategy pairs a critique of the status quo with a vision of what it would look like to actually centre children in our collective decision making.
• The existing field often talks about “child wellbeing” in abstract terms. The strategy gets concrete about how we can improve kids’ lives by using stories to illustrate the real-life impacts of policies.

Read the full report here.