1 Introduction

Foster care is the primary form of out-of-home care provided for younger children in Sweden (The National Board of Health and Welfare 2022). This policy assumes that belonging to a family is something intrinsically good for a child and that family life can make a positive contribution to the child's health and development. The family—or life in a well-functioning family—is therefore a central treatment idea throughout foster care (cf Höjer 2001; Twigg and Swan 2007).

However, family-based foster care demonstrates certain contradictory features. For example, the carers providing treatment are volunteers, not professionals. They also have the role of a parent, but limited opportunities to make decisions regarding the child (cf. Thomson and McArthur 2009). Höjer (2007) points out that foster care is a form of public care, organized and supervised by public authorities, but given in the private context of the foster family's home. To meet the requirements of the public task, such as welcoming visits from birth parents and the social services in the family home, the privacy of the foster family's home is to some extent lost. Similar paradoxical features of foster care have previously been discussed in terms of family boundary ambiguity (Buehler et al. 2006; Coleman et al. 2022; Sinclair, Gibbs, and Wilson 2004; Tatton 2023; Thomson and McArthur 2009), as the borders or boundaries around the foster family—and its internal life—inevitably are affected when a family takes on a foster assignment (Höjer 2004, 2007). It has been suggested that stressful situations arising in foster care, and the quality and stability of such care, could be better understood and responded to if issues of family boundary ambiguity were actively addressed by social services and policymakers (Buehler et al. 2006; Tatton 2023; Thomson and McArthur 2009).

Today, we know that 40%–60% of looked-after preschool children have various stress-related symptoms due to early childhood trauma (see, e.g. Hockaday 2018; Lehmann et al. 2013; Leslie et al. 2005; Vasileva and Petermann 2017). We also know that lack of qualified support for children in out-of-home care can result in the breakdown of foster care placements. This is frequent even in cases where children have been placed in care in early life and have had long-term placements for many years (Chamberlain et al. 2006; Rushton and Dance 2004). In Sweden, 43% of all children who enter care during the first 6 years of their lives stay on in foster care for a long period. One of four long-term placements breaks down during adolescence, and children who enter care as toddlers or preschoolers often have to move five times or more during their upbringing (The National Board of Health and Welfare 2023; Vinnerljung, Sallnäs, and Berlin 2017). As instability in foster care constitutes a strong risk factor for the psychological well-being of looked-after children (see, e.g. Hjern, Vinnerljung, and Brännström 2019), the uncertainty surrounding these children's living conditions has been the subject of debate in Sweden during recent years. Several researchers have pointed out that the right to family life and socially stable living conditions of long-term looked-after children is seriously compromised within the Swedish foster care system (see, e.g. Mattsson and Vinnerljung 2016).

In Sweden, foster parents are viewed as complementary parents, sharing the parenting with the birth parents and the social services. This requires a high degree of competence, openness and flexibility regarding the foster care assignment (Höjer 2001). Younger children's specific need for ‘a secure base and a family for life’ has been emphasized in Swedish foster care policies in recent years (SOU 2015, 584). Attention has also been given to the importance of encouraging foster parents to fully, and with a long-term perspective, welcome the child into their home (SOU 2015). Furthermore, the importance of qualified support for foster parents caring for younger children has been acknowledged, as positive effects in terms of lower stress levels, more stable attachment patterns and reductions in breakdown levels have been identified when foster parents receive qualified interventions (cf. Bick and Dozier 2013; Dozier et al. 2006; Dozier and Rutter 2016; Fergeus et al. 2017; Linares et al. 2006; Spieker et al. 2012).

To secure long-term stability, Swedish law obliges the social services to consider a transfer of custody to the foster parents when a child has been in the same foster home for more than 2 years. At the same time, the law stipulates that children should not remain in care longer than necessary and that the social services should work towards the child's reunion with its birth parents. After a custody transfer, the foster parents become the appointed custodians of the child. All forms of support from the social services end, and it becomes the responsibility of the custodian to accommodate the child's need for further contact with its birth family. The foster parents—who may or may not be future custodians of the child—are thus asked to be willing to provide the child with a stable and secure family base for life but must also be able to let go of the child if or when the social services consider this to be in the best interest of the child. Current foster care policies thus reveal contradictions and uncertainties regarding the needs of the child and the expectations placed on the foster family.

This article is based on how foster families caring for younger children in Sweden display their family life and what implications this has for the welfare, stability and sense of family belonging of the children in their care. It is based on in-depth interviews with foster parents of toddlers and preschool children and investigates how the foster parents present the children, their needs and roles in the foster family and the conditions under which the foster family operates. Based on narrative analysis of the interviews with the foster parents, the concept of displaying families (Finch 2007), developed from Morgan's (1996) work on family practices, is used as an analytical tool to examine the foster parents' narratives about the children and how they are framed in the context of Swedish foster care. Finch (2007, 67) defines display as ‘the process by which individuals, and groups of individuals, convey to each other and to relevant audiences that certain of their actions do constitute “doing family things” and thereby confirm that these relationships are “family” relationships’. Viewed as a performative act, displaying can be understood as a way of narrating ‘linked to reproducing family as an institution, and to powerful discursive frames and meaning systems through which relationships are constructed, given meaning, legitimized and “othered”’ (Heaphy 2011, 21). As family displays are linked to the inclusion and exclusion of affinity, the concept of relational citizenship (Heaphy 2011) is also used to explore how younger children in out-of-home care are positioned as family members.

The aim of the study is to investigate foster parents' displays and narratives about family life as foster parents of toddlers and how these influence the welfare, continuity and sense of family belonging for younger children in Swedish foster care. Given the different legal and social status of looked-after children and children living with their birth parents, the theoretical framework used is helpful to explore how policies on foster care, differing family contexts and ideas of the family and the child play out in the narratives constructed by the foster parents and what implications this has for the understanding and visibility of the children's needs.

2 Methods

The study includes in-depth interviews with 10 foster families caring for children under the age of six. The interviews form part of a larger study on mental health needs of younger children in foster care, conducted in three Swedish municipalities. In total, 16 foster parents were interviewed, as a couple or with just one parent present or with a single foster parent. The research questions focused on how the foster parents display as a family, the needs of the looked-after children and their role in the foster family and what implications all this has for the visibility of the children, their needs and their sense of family belonging. Participants were selected based on anonymized descriptions of available foster families in each municipality. Purposive selection was used to include foster families caring for children with varying histories of trauma and of different ages. Further, the aim was to select foster families with different family compositions and types of experience of foster care assignments. In each municipality, the social services, on behalf of the research project, contacted the foster families who were selected for participation, and all families, except one, agreed to participate. The interviewed foster families had a total of 12 children aged 1–6 placed in their care. The ages of the children at the time of the interviews were evenly spread.

The interviews took place in the homes of the foster families. A semi-structured interview guide was used to conduct the interviews, and the foster parents were encouraged to freely answer questions regarding their family, the child in care, the foster assignment and what support they needed. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. The analytical process was inductively driven and was conducted through repeated deep readings of the interview material. A number of narratives about the family and the child emerged from this reading and therefore a narrative method was chosen for further analysis. Since several of the narratives were characterized by uncertain beginnings and ends (cf. Linde 1993), the concepts of temporality and causality (Johansson 2005; Richardson 2000) were employed to examine how ideas about the past, the present and the future influenced the narrating. Temporality focuses on how specific stories are framed around different time indications, which are then linked to causality, or causal explanations, regarding—in this case—the children's whereabouts and behaviours. Further, spatialization (Friedman 2002) was applied as an analytic strategy to study how space was narratively related to ideas of the family and the child. Based on a social constructivist perspective on the analysis, prevailing ideas and discourses are considered to have consequences in real life, since the available frameworks of interpretation create limits for what is considered desirable and possible. In this sense, narratives are also regarded as plastic, since alternative frameworks of interpretation can create new ways of viewing the child and the foster family and therefore also of acting regarding their needs (Riessman 2008). Thus, the foster parent's narration does not have to be exclusive to a separate story but could change depending on narrative context.

Ethical approval for the project was granted by the Regional Ethics Review Board at Lund University in Sweden. All names and places mentioned in quotations have been changed to protect the privacy of the participants.

3 Results

The following analysis begins by exploring how time and temporality constitute the framework for specific narrative conditions of foster family life. Here, stories of ambiguities reveal a persistent gap of uncertainty present in the foster parents' narratives of out-of-home care. How these ambiguous conditions challenge the overall possibility to elaborate safe stories of young children in care is further examined in relation to the narratives of the child identified in the material, the story of differentness and the resource story. Following this, two opposing family narratives—the competent and the remade family—are analysed in terms of their spatialization of family affinity and its implication on the looked-after child's position as a family member. Finally, there is discussion of the contextual significance of the identified narratives and their implication for the foster family's well-being and the welfare and safety of younger children in foster care.

3.1 Ambiguous Frames

The narratives presented by the interviewed foster parents are strongly influenced by the contradictions in existing Swedish law and foster care policies, which state that younger children in out-of-home care have specific needs for security and stability but at the same time must not stay in care longer than necessary. Unlike stories in general—with a clear beginning, a middle and an end—the story of the child in out-of-home care is in the interviews again and again narrated as having both an unknown beginning and an unknown end. Thus, there is a narrative ambiguity present connected to time, which forms a gap that the foster parents must themselves try to handle and—as far as they can—bridge. These stories of ambiguity are further explored in the analysis now following.

3.2 Unknown Beginnings and Unknown Ends

In the first story of ambiguity, the child's history as a riddle, the foster parents repeatedly assert that they do not know—and will probably never know—exactly what their foster child has experienced prior to being a part of their family. The uncertainty of what the child has been through is often linked to uncertainty as to why the child reacts and acts in particular ways and how this can be understood. This is illustrated by the use of phrases like ‘we don't know’, ‘a question mark’, ‘being blindfolded’ and ‘that time is a blank’. In relation to the whereabouts and behaviour of the child, knowledge—sometimes linked to subjective feelings—is at the same time articulated in respect of the issue of something traumatic having taken place. ‘I feel something has happened’. ‘Something has actually happened’. ‘But she has been exposed to things’. But exactly what the child has experienced seems uncertain. In narrative terms, this means that the foster parents are striving to fill a gap in a story without a beginning. Their relationship with the little child in their care begins with a fumble in the dark. Because of this, it is often hard to know why the child reacts as it does. The child's history as a riddle is thus a narrative that contains both a temporal void and a lack of causality (Richardson 2000). The void is filled with uncertainty and vagueness.

There are also recurring examples of narratives framing situations where the foster parent is powerless and uncertain about the child's future. Will the child be removed from the foster family? The second story of ambiguity, the unknown end, can most easily be illustrated by this quote:

He is mine now, within quotation marks.

He is mine. But within quotation marks. The foster parents do not have legal rights to the child. The future of both the child and the family is therefore in limbo. In almost all interviews, even when a transfer of custody will soon be before a court, the answer—here illustrated by three different foster parents—given to the question ‘What is the worst thing that could happen to you?’ is:

Well, worst case scenario to us, that would be if Danior had to move away from here.

One could imagine that they would take him away from us. That is, for sure, the worst.

[The worst] … is if Hannan could not stay here any longer, of course.

In all these accounts, the future—and the end of the story—is at stake. Power is held by the social services. ‘They’ can ‘take him away from us’. Therefore, the story of the unknown end also has the power to influence the present.

You don't really want to tell the social services ‘I am totally exhausted. I can't take anymore. I don't know how to manage this’. Cause you don't want them to take the kids.

There is a fear of asking for help and of the consequences this might have for the child's and the foster family's future. The past is also affected by the unknown end. One foster parent elaborates on this, when she talks about ‘… all the thoughts you have in the beginning. If she will stay, how will it go, and where are we? (…) … it disturbs the attachment tremendously. It really does’. The fact that knowledge about the end is not available, and that this affects the present, the past and the future, is therefore the central moral of the story of the unknown end. Again, the time-related void is filled with uncertainty and vagueness.

The narrative set of the stories of ambiguity thus reveals a persistent gap of uncertainty. Under these circumstances—with a start fumbling in the dark and an unknown end—the foster parents are nevertheless expected to welcome the child into their home and commit themselves fully on a long-term basis. In doing this, without having access to either a beginning or an end, the foster parents must try to make the stories complete on their own. And this they do, as far as they can.

Almost all of the foster parents present some kind of story about how ‘it was meant’ for the child to become a part of their family and how this happened in an almost magical way. The appearance of the magical story in many interviews is thus not a coincidence. Not only does this narrative create a point of attachment between the child, whose history is a riddle and the family it is now a part of. It also offers a beginning to the story of ‘us’ and ‘our family’. This is how it can be narrated:

It was very odd. Cause when they started telling us about Danior I just said ‘I recognize this. I've had a child with that background in school’. And everything just went quiet. ‘Yes, this is a sibling’. What are the odds for that? (…) So, it just felt like it was meant to be. (…) It sent shivers down my spine ….

Another foster mother says ‘well, sometimes things are just meant to be’, when she tells her story. She was in a temporary job and—with only 2 weeks' notice—asked her employer for leave of absence to become a foster parent. The answer was ‘How sweet! Of course!’, and not only did she get the leave, but also she did get a permanent position. In this magical story, all pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fell into place at the right time, because of the child. Yet, another foster parent, who is a close relative of the child she cares for, shares how when she gazed into the child's eyes for the first time—not knowing that she would later come to be the foster parent of this child—just intuitively felt ‘it is us now, and forever’.

With the magical story emphasizing ‘it was meant to be’ and ‘it is us now’, it carries a strong immanent force with temporal implications. Regardless of the enigmatic history of the child, the child is now narrated—and claimed—as a natural part of the foster family. Further, the magical story wraps itself around the uncertain end, as ‘it is us now and forever’. In this sense, the magical story could be understood as aiming to fill—albeit in a magical way—the temporal voids present in the overarching stories given of younger children in out-of-home care.

3.3 Stories With Blurred Contours

We will now move on to how the foster parents create narratives of the child. Two sets of stories evolve in this process. It also becomes obvious that the stories of ambiguity have overarching implications for the visibility of the child.

In the most common narrative of the child, the story of differentness, the young child in care is categorized as a carrier of some sort of otherness. Using reinforcing modifiers, the children and their behaviour are described as ‘very much this’ or ‘enormously that’. These representations are present in almost all the interviews. Such modifiers occurring in the descriptions—and here italicized—are, for example, ‘very much challenging the limits’, ‘the worst outburst’, ‘fully derailing’, ‘very active’, ‘hugely intimidated by men’, ‘an enormous need of confirmation’, ‘so unbelievably one track minded’ and ‘very difficult’. Very, worst, and enormously. That is how the children recurrently are portrayed.

Often, the reinforcing modifiers are legitimized through comparisons, where other children or ‘our own’ children are used as benchmarks.

I think about it all the time, that there's a risk of diagnoses. I compare her to other six-year-olds at school (…) as our children did not react in this way.

The behaviour of the looked-after children is thus binarily positioned against that of children at large, ordinary children or ‘our own’ children. While the comparisons with ‘ordinary’ children have legitimizing effects—our foster child is not like children in general—at the same time they mediate insecurity as to how the child's behaviour should be understood. The comparisons are, almost automatically, followed by negotiations.

Well, he is different from the other two. He is. And then … if it's somehow only his … It's surely just his personality, or something. Yes, what it is … Yes, but he is different from them.

Yes, the child is different, indeed. But might this be quite normal, and just a part of his personality? Or maybe, as another foster mother negotiates it, it is all acceptable considering the age of the child?

But then I don't know if it is age related. I mean, I have (x) children of my own, but no one—surely—is like this girl.

The narrative set-up is similar. Recurrent comparisons, where the child is portrayed in its differentness, are immediately followed by negotiations of normality. The outcome of the narrative is—just as in the stories of ambiguity—uncertainty and vagueness. Indeed, the child is different. But is the child's behaviour different from ‘normal’ development and ‘ordinary’ children? Or is not it? The question of how to understand the child and its needs is indistinctly sketched in templates with blurred contours.

An opposing narrative that appears in some interviews is the resource story. Just as in the story of differentness, the child's otherness is often described using reinforcing words, and occasionally by making comparisons with other children. But rather than shading into negotiations of normality, the behaviour of the child is here narrated with a focus on what is perceived as ‘normal’ behaviour considering the child's history.

Foster mum: As I said, there were a lot of things that was new to him. And just that if you don't like the food, you don't have to eat it. But then it backfired, a bit …

Foster dad: Yeah (laughing), then he wouldn't eat a thing.

Foster mum: Yes, it sure did. Then he wouldn't eat a thing. Should probably test a little. But normal behaviour, I would say.

Foster dad: Now, the behaviour is normal.

Foster mum: Yes, but lashing out was surely normal, I think, to test it.

Foster dad: Yeah, yeah. I see what you mean. Yes, yes. Absolutely!

Rather than negotiating a behaviour against a ‘normality’ and ending up confused about how to interpret the situation, the foster parents here construct the behaviour as normal considering the circumstances. Therefore, the layers of vagueness disappear, and the identification of the child's needs—to test a little bit and to lash out—becomes a constructive way to recover. Another pair of foster parents describe how their toddlers can scream for hours and react very strongly to new environments and people. One of the foster parents explains this as ‘clear signs of being traumatized, and not having received the care they needed’. Again, an explanation of the children's behaviour is given, where it is narrated as ‘normal’ considering their traumatic history.

Among the interviewed foster parents, the story of differentness is far more frequent than the resource story. The two emerging child narratives have different set-ups and implications. The story of differentness originates in a dichotomized way of thinking, where the child's differentness is constructed in direct opposition to a thought normality. The uncertainty central to the stories of ambiguity is reproduced here, with the implication that the understanding of the child is blurred. In the resource story, the child's otherness is not positioned as opposed to anything. Rather, the otherness is explained by the child's history and therefore constructed as a ‘normal’ and ‘adequate’ response to things happening in the past. Here, the child's history as a riddle is challenged: Because of the past, we now must deal with this. Since this has the effect of mending the temporal void of an unknown start, a sense of causality is also achieved.

3.4 The Ambivalent Family Member

Moving on to how families are ‘displayed’, the boundaries set around the foster family are constantly shifting. Negotiations related to space, rather than time, are therefore vital in the family displays of the interviews. The magical story, as previously described, stresses that the child is ‘ours’ now. In doing this, it includes the child as a full and complete member of the foster family. This idea is repeated in many interviews: ‘We were, like, in love with this little girl, and she was ours’. ‘He's of course a part of our family. That's how it is’. The child is narrated as a fully included family member.

However, similar statements can sometimes take a more sensitive turn. When a foster father is asked to introduce himself at the start of one interview, this happens:

Foster dad: Yes, shall I start? (…) Okay, Henrik Nilsson, (xx) years old, and living in (town). Married to this one sitting next to me. (x) kids of our own, and one foster child.

Foster mum: Don't say that! (…) No, you can't say that ‘(x) kids of our own’ …

Foster dad: No, but (x) biological children, then?

To categorize the child in care as something other than ‘our own’ is apparently a delicate matter. Later, the foster mother reflects on the relational status of the looked-after child, saying that as she has not been pregnant with him—as she was with the others—she has always worried that he would feel like an outsider in the family. The foster parents further share how the boy—who has been in the family since he was an infant—recently has started to question his position in the family, saying things like ‘you aren't my real parents’ when he is upset.

Foster mum: Well, and the last time he was a bit upset I told him (…) ‘But I … We have not chosen (name of the biological children) either …’ Our children. We haven't chosen them, either. ‘No, but we have got the (x) of you. And there is no difference’.

Although the foster mother was never pregnant with the boy, which causes her to worry about his sense of belonging in the family, and the boy himself has questions regarding this matter, the moral of the story as presented is that there is no difference.

A similar contradiction is visible in another interview, where the foster mother stresses that there is no difference between the girl placed in care, and her birth children.

… we are a family, and she is like all the other children. She is not placed in care. I mean … (…) She is just like … There's no… She is an ordinary kid in an ordinary family.

A couple of minutes later, the same foster mother says:

Cause, of course it aches a little bit extra in your heart, as you know …. Well, she is placed in care, and (…) all of that …

Again, contradictions occur in the matter of ‘no difference’. The idea of the child as a full and complete member of the family, repeatedly narrated as being just like everyone else, is obviously a delicate matter, as it has to do with the relational status—or relational citizenship (Heaphy 2011)—of the child in the foster family. As the relational citizenship is compromised, it seems best to put extra stress on the opposite. Hence, ‘she is just like everyone else’, and ‘there is no difference’.

More explicit negotiations are simultaneously taking place in other interviews, where the concepts of ‘we-time’ and ‘me-time’ are being discussed. For example, in one interview the family's biological child is said to have a need of ‘her own little me-time’ as the child placed in care is ‘so intense’. The interview continues:

Well, like (a specific holiday), then Althea was with her mum. And we went to (a family location) with some friends, and it was really nice, because she would only have … (…) I mean, we were so grateful that we didn't bring her with us. I know, we're not allowed to say such a thing, really. But actually …

When the foster parent says that it was nice to be on holiday without the looked-after child, she also stresses that it is not morally acceptable to verbalize this. Implicitly we are made to understand that this statement compromises the idea of the child as a fully-fledged family member. Another foster parent states:

… my biological children also need some breathing space and ‘just-us-time’ to be able to cope and not get fed up …

Here, breathing space and ‘just-us-time’ are framed as something the family needs to cope, when taking care of a demanding child. The concept of the family is here narrated in biological terms and does not include the foster child as a full member of the family. In these examples, compared to the earlier ones, the relational citizenship of the child in care is more explicitly framed as compromised. Here, the foster parents express their own need for rest, breathing space and recovery, as the foster assignment means challenges for the original family.

Thus, two different types of borders are drawn around the foster family, framing two different types of families. In one, there is one original family with ‘our own’ children. This family has needs of its own—for ‘us-time’ and breathing space. Then there is the foster family where the child in care is ‘ours’ now. Here, there is no difference between the different family members. Depending on which relational status the looked-after child has, different borders—and spatial understandings—are drawn around the family. These different displays suggest that there is greater relational and spatial complexity or family bounder ambiguity (cf. Thomson and McArthur 2009) in the foster family than in the family as traditionally understood. Additionally, this highlights the ambivalent— and sometimes compromised—position that looked-after children can have as family members.

3.5 The Competent Family

Two ways of narrating the foster family, as either a more traditional or complex unit, can be found in the material. These shifting understandings also have implications for the visibility of the looked-after children and their needs. The most frequent narrative, the competent family, is dominated by traditional and culturally hegemonic ideas of the family as a place of safety, trust and openness. The function of the foster family as a competent, and therefore independent, unit is also highlighted. Typically, this occurs when the foster parents discuss the support they do not need from the social services:

Well, I don't feel that I personally have those needs [for support]. (…) I also have the key, as I have adult children. So, because of that I feel that I have got it ‘right’.

Prior experience of raising children is mentioned in several interviews:

After (x) children of our own, we somehow knew that we were doing things right. (…) This creates safety and this … This is how we build a family. It has worked before.

Here, the family, and its competence, is narratively used to legitimize the foster family's independence. It tells us that ‘we know how to do family’, and hence, ‘we don't need any support’. Framings of the family as a place of open and trustful communication are also frequent. For instance, to ‘talk to each other within the family’ is often mentioned as a prerequisite for being a well-functioning family. When a pair of foster parents are asked how they handle the feelings of impotence that they describe regarding the foster assignment, they reply:

Foster dad: We talk about it.

Interviewer: … with the social services?

Foster dad: No, but we've talked a lot about it with each other.

Thus, the competent family manages on its own even when it is chafing and hurting. In this respect, the narrative also contains elements of integrity, as trust and open communication are seen as solely belonging to—and within—the family. Several interviews touch on family integrity, with foster parents describing it as uncomfortable to have ‘outsiders’ involved in their family. One foster mother describes her experience of receiving support about her interplay with the looked-after child, as ‘not super comfortable’, and she comments that ‘of course, there's a risk of feeling too observed’. Reluctance to let outsiders into the family system are also expressed in this quote:

Foster mum: Well, there have always been regular visits. So, I do feel that they [the social services] are there for us.

Interviewer: They are there.

Foster mum: And not too much. And really … I think it is a good thing because, as I said, I still want to feel that we are a family. And it should not disturb too much.

Displaying the family as a competent, trustful and well-functioning unit is thus central to the story of the competent family. This narrative therefore corresponds quite well to what Swedish foster care policies expect of foster families. They are supposed to be well-functioning and able to provide security, safety and stability to the child in care. Simultaneously, the frames drawn around the competent family imply that it is not particularly attractive to receive support aimed at the looked-after child. It disturbs the idea of the competent family, who functions and gets by on its own.

A contradiction within this narrative is that several of the interviewed foster parents describe their own children as different and ‘easier’ than the child placed in care. The role of foster parent is also repeatedly described as a new and somewhat uncertain practice. But this does not change the narrative's conclusion, which emphasizes that ‘we are a family, and hence we get by on our own’. As it is ‘I’ or ‘we’ as adults who feel and find, based on ‘our’ needs as a family, the narrative of the competent family assumes the adult point of view rather than a child perspective.

3.6 The Remade Family

An opposing narrative that appears in some interviews is the remade family narrative. Here, the idea of the family as a self-sufficient unit is challenged. Rather than concluding that ‘we get by on our own’, the framing instead indicates that support is something the family needs to function.

Foster dad: It's like you struggle and struggle, and you try to solve things. It becomes like a lump (…). We [husband and wife] fret at each other, and at the children … (…) Eventually, you couldn't think straight. You just became wacky. And that was still … To sit with this psychologist for an hour, that was at least some kind of lifeline …

Foster mum: Mm.

Foster dad: … I felt. Just to share these idiotic things you live in and have someone putting words to them and explaining them to you.

Help is construed as a ‘lifeline’, and therefore, the idea of talking about problems exclusively in the family is challenged, something that is also evident in this interview:

Foster dad: The hard part of this is that we, both me and Moa, usually do not open up to others …

Foster mum: … very easily.

Interviewer: No? Okay.

Foster mum: No, exactly.

Foster dad: And prefer not to talk to others, but just with each other, about things like this. (…) And now, we say that it feels like we have opened our home.

Foster mum: Yes.

Foster dad: And ourselves. (…) I mean, we really need help.

The common theme of these accounts is the remaking of the family, from a self-sufficient and closed unit to a more open entity that needs assistance and support. When there is a challenge to the isolation from insight into the family by others, the idea of ‘us talking exclusively to each other in the family’ also must give way. Instead, the assistance of social services, family therapists and child psychologists is described as necessary if the child and its needs are to be understood and for the family to function.

In one interview a foster parent expresses a wish to see a family therapist, in order to get insight into the family from the point of view of the foster parents and that of the children, and concludes: ‘I mean, we are a family, and we are supposed to be functioning together’. Here, a transformative idea of the foster family becomes visible. The family now has a new role and format as a foster family and must adapt to this to function. The looked-after child—being the new member of the family—is a central character in the narrative set of the story, which leads to the child and its needs also becoming clearly visualized. Because of the new family member, we must remake not only our understanding of our family but also our understanding of the child's way of functioning. To do this successfully, we need support from the social services and from therapists.

The implications of the two opposing family narratives are obvious. The needs of the looked-after child, as well as of other family members, are more transparently managed in the remade family narrative than in that of the competent family. In terms of the previously analysed different spatial borders of the family, the identified borders are both included in the remade family narrative: The child is allowed to be a full member of the family, but this does not compromise the possibility of verbalizing the needs of other family members. Therefore, the complex relations of the foster family and the family's bounder ambiguity are here handled in the more transparent way.

4 Concluding Discussion

The importance of offering long-term stability and lasting attachment relationships to younger children in out-of-home care is acknowledged as central to the children's development and their chances of recovering from trauma (cf. Dozier et al. 2006; Fergeus et al. 2017). This ambition is clearly reflected in Swedish foster care policy, which frames the role of the foster family as being able to provide a stable and secure base for the child in care (cf. SOU 2015). The stability ideal is also evident in the empirical material of the study. In the dominant family narrative, the competent family, the foster parents display their families as stable and competent units, able to offer the child in care the vital treatment method that is central to foster care: a well-functioning family (cf. Twigg and Swan 2007). In the magical story the child is further narrated as a naturally included part of the foster family—now and forever. Viewed as performative acts, these show the foster parents displaying the vital expectations put on them as foster families: to be competent, well-functioning and able to provide the child they care for with long-term stability (cf. Heaphy 2011; Riessman 2003). But, as one of four long-term placements ends in break-up, and children often must move several times between different foster families during their upbringing, issues of stability are a fragile matter. This fragility is also obvious in the foster parents' narratives of the children, which are imbued with uncertainties, mirroring the prevailing conditions of foster care, where the future of the child and the child's family affiliation is never certain. This demonstrates a central contradiction in Swedish foster care of younger children: It aims to provide security and stability, but its circumstances are neither secure nor stable.

The vague conditions governing foster care have further implications. The analysis shows how the looked-after child's differentness is often negotiated in ways that blur the understanding of the child and the child's needs. The relational status of the child in the foster family is also ambiguously narrated by the foster parents, which is palpable in the family displays showing the looked-after child as an ambivalent family member. The different spatial borders displayed round the family, as the relational citizenship of the looked-after child is negotiated, in their turn reflect the complex and ambiguous family relationships that characterize foster families (cf. Höjer 2001, 2007; Thomson and McArthur 2009).

Family boundary ambiguity is recognized as a difficult feature of foster care (Buehler et al. 2006; Höjer 2007; Tatton 2023; Thomson and McArthur 2009), and it is therefore unfortunate that the competent family narrative is based on a perspective of family integrity, rather than on readiness to acquire specific competence for the foster assignment and to handle its various ambiguities. From a child's perspective, it is also unfortunate that the focus on family integrity downplays the visibility of the child. As the competent family narrative reproduces normative ideas of the family as a stable and independent unit—and therefore in no need of support—it should be important for the social services to actively consider opportunities to encourage foster parents to reflect on how family boundary ambiguities influence their family life and their role as carers. This is especially important as the study shows how normative displays of the family as competent and self-propelled have negative implications for the visibility of the child in care and for the child's position and sense of belonging as a family member.

Alternative ways of talking about the children, their needs, and their role in the foster family, demonstrated in the analysis, amplify this conclusion. In the remade family narrative—where support is constructed as a lifeline and thus narrated by foster parents who have received professional support—both the understanding of the child and the complexity of foster family life are visualized in more nuanced ways. The resource story, which is mainly narrated by foster parents displaying their family in remade terms, further visualizes the child as an active and creative subject. This illustrates that narratives are subject to change and that professional support and alternative perspectives on the foster assignment can lead to new interpretations of the child in care as well as of the function of the foster family (cf. Riessman 2008). This narrative plasticity is further reflected in the foster parents' ability to move between different stories, depending on narrative context or perspective. In this, the study confirms that issues of family boundary ambiguity could be better—or more reflexively—responded to, when professional actors address such matters (Buehler et al. 2006; Coleman et al. 2022; Thomson and McArthur 2009). Further, the results suggest that this provides opportunities not only to develop stories with greater sensitivity to the internal life of the foster family but also to visualize the looked-after children's individual needs and strengthen their position as members of the foster family.