1. INTRODUCTION: A PLEA FOR A ‘CARING LAW’ APPROACH

Over the course of a lifetime, all human beings need care and support by others, and nearly everyone, at some time, takes care of others. Care is universal and existentially necessary. Enabling and supporting caregiving is one of the tasks of society, and it is the object of legal regulation in the welfare state. Care can be unpaid or paid, provided in the family or within private relationships, and by social services or through the market. But many care activities are insufficiently socially recognised, poorly paid, or pushed offto the ‘private sphere’ without sufficient support. The Covid-19 crisis highlights both the social significanceof care and its crises. Confronted with the fragmented and often contradictory regulation of caring in different parts of law (especially in family law, social law, labour law, constitutional law, European and international law), scholars have suggested developing a new approach of a ‘caring law’. There are different fields of public and private responsibilities for care, such as caring for children, the elderly and adults in need of special care, etc. This contribution focuses on care for children and young persons.

For the ‘caring law’, care activities and caring relationships are central to law and society; care must be taken into account in the formation and interpretation of legal rights and duties, and of principles such as human dignity, social justice and social rights. Starting from a relational concept of autonomy and participation, the ‘caring law’ approach focuses on the regulation of care relations within a dialectic of autonomy and dependency in asymmetrical power relations. The question from the perspective of a ‘caring law’, here, is how family law and social policy developed, and how the assignment of caring rights and obligations has changed. This is being discussed in relation to German family law and social policy (including the former German Democratic Republic).