https://www.bib.bund.de/EN/News/2025/2025-07-29-Call-for-Papers-WorkMum-Workshop.html
Workshop on
Contemporary Challenges
for Parents and Children
20-21 November 2025, Berlin, Germany
Families today are navigating a complex landscape shaped by multiple, intersecting structural shifts. Volatile labour markets, population ageing, persistently low fertility, geopolitical turbulence, and the accelerating digitalisation of work and daily life are jointly reshaping family composition, time use, resource flows, and risk exposure. These developments have rekindled policy and public debates about the gendered division of labour, care regimes, parenting norms, and family policy design-debates now unfolding amid counter-movements that contest earlier egalitarian gains.
The workshop invites scholars to examine contemporary family life through diverse theoretical frameworks, methodological approaches, and disciplinary perspectives.
We welcome submissions that address current challenges facing families and parents, recent advances in family research, or emerging societal dynamics shaping household behaviour. Core topics include, but are not limited to:
- Maternal employment
- Unpaid work and childcare
- Child well-being and development
- The role of fathers
- Family decision-making in workplace contexts
- Research using linked data in family dynamics
We particularly encourage submissions with a quantitative empirical focus that connect micro-level family processes to macro-level economic and social change, and that engage critically with policy implications. The workshop features two keynote lectures that will anchor the workshop's discussions: Prof. Arizo Karimi (Uppsala University) and Prof. Pablo Gracia (Autonomous University of Barcelona & Centre for Demographic Studies).
Submission Guidelines
Please submit an abstract or a paper draft by 22 September 2025 to workmum@bib.bund.de. You will be
notified of acceptance by early October.
Travel Planning
The workshop will take place on 20-21 November 2025 at the BiB Berlin (located at the Berlin Office of the Federal Statistical Office, Friedrichstraße 50, near Checkpoint-Charlie), beginning Thursday morning and ending by early Friday afternoon. A get-together is planned for the evening of 20 November (optional, not covered). There is no participation fee, but participants are expected to cover their own travel and accommodation expenses.
Organising committee
This workshop is part of the research project "Understanding the role of maternal labour markets and workplace contexts for children's development," funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG - German Research Foundation)
Dr Mathias Huebener & Malin Mahlbacher (Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB)
Prof Dr Gundula Zoch & Susanne Schmid (Carl von Ossiezky University Oldenburg)