Diagnosing child maltreatment in a welfare state: the dual role of Danish general practitioners in child protection

Child maltreatment is a pervasive global concern, and general practitioners, like other health care professionals, are legally and ethically obliged to report suspicions of abuse or neglect. In practice, however, general practitioners face moral and practical dilemmas in balancing their duty to report with their commitment to care, as they seek to support children and families who may be at risk. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Danish general practice, this paper examines how these tensions unfold in everyday clinical encounters. It explores how general practitioners navigate the ambiguous space between care and control when deciding whether to report suspicions to child protection services. The analysis shows how moral reasoning in these encounters is shaped by broader configurations of power, governance, and cultural norms of parenting, as well as by the intimate ethics of the doctor–patient relationship. By tracing how general practitioners negotiate these entanglements, the article argues that they occupy a dual and often contradictory position—as agents of the welfare state and as caregivers committed to family wellbeing. This dual role situates general practitioners within the contested moral terrain of child protection politics and contemporary ideals of responsible parenthood.