Section: Seminars and Events
Social Policy Seminar Series -
Drawing broadly but not exclusively on a governmentatity approach this paper offers a preliminary and critical account of certain aspects of what is termed 'the parenting industry', which has expanded hugely over the last decade or so. Contrary to the claim, often associated with Beck (1998), among others, that parent-child relations are being democratised, this paper suggests that new barriers to democratic parenting are being erected through the promotion of a populist behaviourism, deployed by a myriad of professional agencies (mainly female and often feminist inspired with reference to 'motherhood'): e.g., health visitors, local authority parenting counsellors, early childhood educators, and Supenanny/media/online 'experts'. Much of this 'parentcraft' instruction, which focuses on ways of inculcating child obedience, has uncomfortable and dangerous similarities with long established non-human animal training techniques, particularly popular programmes for dog training. The suggestion here is that as the presentational context for so many of the training regimes is the smooth functioning of 'the family', this is indicative of a broader 'rationality' of neo/advanced liberalism, which sees professionals (representing 'technologies' of government) seeking to create the disciplined and, therefore, more easily governed subject suitable for the 'reinvention' of familial bonds in an uncertain world.
This page was published on 13 April 2012