Care dialogues: shifting family engagement from risk to rights in the USA

Though family engagement has become a priority in early childhood education and care, there are problems in our understanding of the phenomenon. First, there is uncertainty about the target of outcomes—namely, should it be children or families? Second, the early childhood field lacks ethical guidance to address the complexity of this relationship. Finally, the field has not articulated the political potential of family engagement. This paper responds to the problem by developing “care dialogues” as a framework for ethical engagement. There are two dimensions. The ethical dimension builds upon dialogue’s potential for change, and the importance of recognizing particular relationships. The political dimension defines rights as the ability to act within those relationships. As a framework, care dialogues attend to the respective needs, rights, and beliefs of particular early childhood institutions and families while connecting to larger political concerns. The paper uses focus group data to build an illustrative case study demonstrating care dialogues’ potential to inform early childhood practice under non-ideal circumstances. This methodological choice is critical to allaying concerns about care as a utopian approach. Using the parameters of care dialogues, the case study addresses three themes—getting personal, agency and care, and narrative as advocacy. The case study concludes that: care dialogues facilitate intimate relations essential to family engagement; the concept of inappropriately adaptive preferences addresses the agency problem; and the political impact of care dialogues extend beyond the immediate exchange between families and institutions. The implications of care dialogues to policy are discussed.