ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that, through human rights obligations, liberal democratic welfare states claim to be committed to protecting and enforcing the rights of their citizens. This chapter will test this claim by focusing on the fundamental right to respect for family life. The chapter will examine whether Norwegian and Romanian general welfare state policies, as well as child protection policies, align with the right to respect for family life. The chapter develops a rights-informed family interests triangle to analyse and evaluate how the interests of children, parents and the public are balanced across the two countries, along with what it means for such interests to be balanced according to a human rights standard. The analysis will show that neither Norwegian nor Romanian preventive policies are in line with the right to respect family life. To some degree, the Norwegian policies are instrumentalising parents, while the Romanian policies, to some degree, do not sufficiently protect the dignity of children. In conclusion, the chapter proposes that mandatory in-home measures and targeted prevention could be coupled with a universal social right to parenting support to better protect the right to respect for family life.
