Participating institutions

The Research Association

Topic and Objectives

What happens in and around families is highly relevant for future social developments. At the same time, families are extremely diverse, dynamic and complex in their day-to-day manifestations.

If decisions are to be made about the conditions needed to provide support for families – whether it be by politicians, public institutions or civil society actors – their modes of functioning and existence must be comprehensively understood in order for the measures to be effective. The research association ForFamily aims to contribute to this comprehensive understanding of family.

How it all began, the funding application…

Family is where people take on long-term responsibility for one another. It can be understood as a committed community of care and solidarity between generations (Jurczyk/Thiessen 2020, p. 123)*. Such family communities manifest in a wide variety of legally defined, culturally significant, practically lived and institutionally recognized or unrecognized forms. This continuum of the self-conception of the family as a practically realized, long-term ‘community of care and solidarity’ thus empirically encounters a high degree of dynamism in its forms and requirements. Social change takes place and becomes visible through family; at the same time, families are important drivers and pacemakers of social transformation processes. (Funding application for the ForFamily research network, 2022/23)

Research topics

The ForFamily research association conducts a wide range of empirical studies on family change, with a regional focus on Bavaria. The research topics of the ten sub-projects of the research association focus on questions in various fields:

Family models in social work – what are practitioners’ perspectives on family?
New forms of housing for families
Family from a child’s perspective – children also help shape the family
Inheritance and family – a historical perspective at how wealth is passed on
Family law with a focus on multicultural family constellations
Refugee families and their education and counseling
Negative childhood experiences – how do they affect later life?
Family in film – what ideas of family are conveyed?
Co-parenting as a new form of parenthood and the transformation of the normal
Civic engagement – does it help to achieve social justice for families?

Detailed descriptions can be found on the individual pages of the ten sub-projects.

In addition, collaborative research topics are being worked on:

How do social transformation processes affect families in Bavaria and, conversely, what transformation processes are triggered by families for society in Bavaria?
Which negotiations of the family itself – e.g. conflicts between generations, parents or siblings, division of labor or the organization of everyday life – take place in the family? Which negotiations of family become comprehensible in the media, in institutions or in the law?
What resources are used to realize the family in Bavaria? Resources are understood here, for example, as education, time, money, networks, rights or space. In which constellations or material forms (e.g. infrastructure, housing) are these realized in concrete terms?

Interdisciplinarity

The format of interdisciplinary research networks in Bavaria is ideally suited for the cooperative research of a multidimensional, empirical and socially central subject such as the family. Interdisciplinarity is understood as a deep exchange and linking of different knowledge from the disciplines as well as their methods and conceptual understandings: law and media studies, history, economics, sociology, architecture, social work and biosciences will each contribute their share to the joint development of sustainable insights and expertise.

Contribution to the social discourse on family

The interdisciplinary research association ForFamily aims to place the concerns and needs of families in Bavaria at the center of scientific and public debate. The research projects are motivated by the desire to recognize and explain the effects of social developments on families and to incorporate the results into discussions and decision-making processes on the future of families in Bavaria. The aim is to provide research-based insights into the complex interrelationships between family life and the institutional framework conditions and cultural interpretations that determine family life.

* Jurczyk, Karin & Thiessen, Barbara (2020): Familie als Care – die Entzauberung der ‚Normalfamilie‘. In: Jurczyk, Karin (Hrsg.). Un/Doing Family. Konzeptionelle und empirische Weiterentwicklungen. Weinheim. Beltz Juventa, 116-141