Welfare transformations and children’s reproductive labour: Advancing social reproduction theory through interdisciplinary dialogue

This project advances understandings of social reproduction by developing an innovative interdisciplinary framework for exploring and conceptualising children’s reproductive labour in the context of (post-)neoliberal welfare transformations. In the UK, ‘(post-)neoliberalism’ references a cost-of-living crisis, hollowing out of public services, state-funded corporate bailouts, and increasingly targeted welfare provision shaped partially by resurgent nationalism (1). Together, these transformations mean previous modes of social reproduction, or the making and sustaining of lives, are no longer sufficient or available. Children occupy an ambivalent position in this context. Social reproduction theory emphasises that responsibility for childrearing has been transferred back to families, creating hardship and even destitution. Calls for welfare support are often articulated based on children’s perceived vulnerability, making them exceptionally deserving of assistance. Sociological scholarship on childhood, however, suggests that such exceptionalism reduces children to ‘emotionally priceless’ (2) burdens, obscuring children’s reproductive labour or rendering it problematic in classed, racialised, and gendered terms. Despite these complexities, there have been surprisingly limited attempts to explore children’s reproductive labour in (post-)neoliberal contexts and minimal efforts to elaborate theories of social reproduction that approach childhood holistically.