Family law scholarship is increasingly reflective of the state’s centrality in the lives of marginalized families. One way this shift has taken place is through a focus on the family regulation system. As increased attention is directed towards this system, two competing narratives have emerged. The mainstream narrative describes the family regulation system as one that, although flawed, protects children from maltreatment. The counter-narrative questions the system’s efficacy and purpose and situates it within a long history of surveillance, family separation, and subordination.
Against the background of these critiques, this Essay explores the family regulation system’s knowledge production problem. Knowledge production problem here refers to the compelling, excluding, and discrediting of certain knowers and their epistemic contributions. To the extent that scholarship addresses knowledge production in the family regulation context, it typically emphasizes silencing practices. Far less attention has been paid to the way the family regulation system compels knowledge that comports with existing family regulation scripts. This Essay provides a cursory look at how the law and institutional design of family regulation compress marginalized families’ experiences and constrains their ability to participate in the knowledge production process around state intervention. The compelling of family regulation scripts impacts not only individual families but also agenda setting, understandings of, and solutions around child safety.
This Essay examines how emerging scholarship has drawn on experiential epistemologies and interdisciplinary research to intervene in the mainstream narrative around the efficacy and impact of the family regulation system despite these barriers. After discussing the need for critical analyses of the system and identifying examples of emerging critical family regulation scholarship, this Essay conceptualizes this scholarship’s promise and grapples with future implications.
