For decades the Nordic welfare states have been held up as global exemplars of gender equality and expansive public care systems. Yet beneath this image of egalitarian modernity, cracks have begun to widen. Across Europe and North America, scholars increasingly speak of a mounting care crisis — a systemic imbalance in which society’s care needs outstrip the institutional capacities meant to meet them. The Nordic countries, once shielded by generous welfare infrastructures, are no exception.
In Sweden, this crisis is not a sudden rupture but a slow political shift: welfare retrenchment, austerity-driven reforms, marketization, and an intensifying moralization of family life. As public systems fail to keep pace with rising needs, more and more responsibility for the reproduction of daily life is quietly pushed back onto households. This process — what feminist scholars call refamiliarization — has become a defining feature of contemporary social policy. And, as always, the costs fall unevenly: on mothers, on low-income families, on people with disabilities, and on those navigating the intersecting inequalities that make care both more necessary and harder to access. But something else is happening too. Across Sweden, groups of mothers are refusing to silently absorb the state’s abdication. Instead, they are organizing.
In recent years, Sweden has seen the rise of several mother-led movements demanding public accountability for children’s right to care, safety, and recognition. These movements differ in constituency and political issue, yet they share a common insight: care is political, and its organization reflects deeper struggles over responsibility, resources, and democracy. For example, Funkismammor (Special needs moms), a loose network of mothers of children with disabilities, fights the chronic underfunding of support services and the discrimination woven into everyday encounters with welfare agencies.
For several years, mothers involved in…
Auteur: Evelina Johansson Wilén
