Katharina Pontius, M.A.

Katharina Pontius studied “Social Work and Childhood Education (B.A.)” at htw saar and “Research and Development in Social Pedagogy/Social Work (M.A.)” at the University of Tübingen. After graduating, she worked as a lecturer and study coordinator at the Faculty of Social Sciences at htw saar from 2019 to 2022. In her dissertation project, she focuses on family transitions caused by changing care needs of older family members.

Dissertation project

When family is discussed in public or professional contexts, the focus is usually on parents with young children (Jurczyk/Thiessen 2020). Later phases of family life receive far less attention (Bauer/Gröning 2007). Yet, as early as the 1990s, the idea of ‘multi-local multigenerational family (multilokale Mehrgenerationenfamilie)’ (Bertram 2001) stressed that family relationships extend beyond specific life stages or shared households.

Current care statistics show that intergenerational caregiving practices intensify in many families, particularly in later life. In Germany, 85% of those officially recognized as needing care currently live in private households (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2024). 93% of people who provide informal care are family members (Kantar 2019). However, this does not mean that caregiving is always provided by family members.

Regardless of whether, and to what extent, care work is taken on within families, changing care needs in later life evoke normative expectations that call on family members to position themselves. The practices and often implicit processes of negotiation associated with this are conceptualized in the present dissertation project as ‘transitions’.

In order to address the question of how care processes are embedded in family contexts, the empirical approach of this dissertation project draws on family interviews, family genograms, and network maps. In the family interviews, both family history and everyday care practices become the subject of joint negotiation among those present, while the genogram captures the structural shape of the family across four to six generations. Network maps, in turn, include non-familial actors in the care process.

Data collection and analysis thus rest on different methodological approaches. The analysis of interviews using the documentary method (Bohnsack 2021) is situated in a praxeological and sociological-knowledge perspective, while the genogram work (Hildenbrand 2018) is oriented toward phenomenological and structural-theoretical premises. It is precisely this triangulation of perspectives that makes it possible to see the different facets of what ‘family’ means in specific cases. Taking into account different temporalities further enable the reconstruction of caring family practices in later life, with their ambivalences between continuity and change.”

Presentations

Pontius, Katharina (2024): Familie in der zweiten Lebenshälfte. Familiale Orientierungen im Kontext von Care und häuslicher Pflege. Presentation at the conference of Network for Educational Family Research „Theorien der Familie. Theorien zur Familie“. June 07. – 08., Osnabrück.

Pontius, Katharina (2023): Family transitions and Care. Presentation at the Working Group of Interdisciplinary Aging Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. December 11, Frankfurt am Main.

Pontius, Katharina (2023): Yes, we care? Family transitions into care for older people – Poster presentation at the International Conference “Doing Transitions. Relational perspectives on the life course”. May 10. – 12., Frankfurt am Main.

Teaching

Pontius, Katharina (2020 – 2023): Introduction to the fields of social work and childhood education. Exercise, Bachelor Social Work and Childhood Education, htw saar, winter semester.

Pontius, Katharina (2020 – 2023): Introduction to Social Work and Childhood Education. Proseminar, Bachelor Social Work and Childhood Education, htw saar, winter semester.

Pontius, Katharina (2020 – 2023): Socialization and education across the life course. Proseminar, Bachelor Social Work and Childhood Education, htw saar, winter semester.

Pontius, Katharina (2020 – 2022): Working fields of social work and childhood education. Social work with older people. Seminar, Bachelor Social Work and Childhood Education, htw saar, summer semester.

Pontius, Katharina (2020 – 2022): Diagnostic approaches and case analysis. Proseminar, Bachelor Social Work and Childhood Education, htw saar, summer semester.

Pontius, Katharina (2020 – 2022): Theories and concepts of social work and childhood education. Proseminar, Bachelor Social Work and Childhood Education, htw saar, summer semester.

Pontius, Katharina (2021): Care work and social inequalities. Seminar, Bachelor Social Work and Childhood Education, htw saar, winter semester.

Pontius, Katharina (2020): Care as social practice. Optional seminar, Bachelor of Social Work and Childhood Education, htw saar, summer semester.