Third-Party Support for Post-Separation Co-Parenting: NGOs, Family Practices and Institutional Change

In contemporary societies, family life can no longer be understood as a self-contained social group. It is made and sustained through connections with law, welfare, education, markets, and civil society. Parent–child intimacy has come to occupy a central place in how family life is imagined and practiced. This intimacy may strengthen the family as an exclusive site of belonging and responsibility while depending on coordination with other social institutions. This session examines third-party support for post-separation co-parenting and child contact. We invite papers on NGOs, community-based agencies, family support centers, mediation services, supervised visitation providers, and other non-state or semi-independent organizations that support, regulate, or complicate parent-child relationships after separation. We welcome empirical, comparative, and theoretical contributions. Possible topics include how these organizations mediate between parents, children, courts, welfare systems, and communities; how they address safety, trust, communication, children’s agency, cultural transmission, education, and emotional labor; and how local understandings of gender, parenthood, childhood, kinship, and welfare shape their practices. By bringing together diverse regional and thematic perspectives, the session identifies post-separation family support as a shared global sociological agenda while situating it in local contexts. It also explores the ambivalence of third-party support. Such organizations may offer flexible, tailored assistance that goes beyond state-led systems. At the same time, the externalization of family support can transform public responsibility, create unequal access, and link intimate family life to market logics.