Familienlabor

In the organizer's words:

Special exhibition

Special exhibition at the Forum in cooperation with Bielefeld University, Department of Educational Sciences

04.05. - 29.08.2025

Everyone has a family - for everyone, family means something different: happiness and security, routines and celebrations as well as hardship and violence, and often some of these together. From a scientific point of view, we speak of a family where at least two generations are committed to caring for each other in the long term - regardless of gender and the various forms of cohabitation. Families are not islands, but are integrated into social, cultural, economic and legal orders. They are influenced by social, historically evolved ideals of "proper" parenting or "good" cohabitation. At the same time, however, families are also decisively changing society through new lifestyles, gender patterns and parenting ideas, thus contributing to social change.

A research workshop at Bielefeld University for the Master's degree in Educational Science, led by Prof. Dr. Barbara Thiessen, has asked itself how family life is shaped today and in Bielefeld/OWL. Do different family forms have an influence on the organization of everyday life? What are families guided by when it comes to parenting? What impact does violence in partnerships have on families? And what do family celebrations as highlights of everyday life tell us about intergenerational relationships and cultural change? In addition to selected families, professionals from counseling and educational institutions were also interviewed about their experiences of everyday family life.

In-depth qualitative interviews and group discussions were used as research methods. In this way, we were able to shed light on family life in Bielefeld against the background of the theoretical concept of "Doing Family" and in relation to existing, also quantitative, knowledge about families in Germany.