Parenting the Crisis

The Cultural Politics of Parent-Blame

Jensen, Tracey, Tracey Jensen

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781447325055
• eBook ISBN: 9781447325086
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Marriage & Family Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Bad parenting is so often blamed for Britain's 'broken society', manifesting in sites as diverse as the government reaction to the riots of 2011, popular 'entertainment' like Supernanny and the discussion boards of Mumsnet.

This book examines how these pathologising ideas of failing, chaotic and dysfunctional families are manufactured across media, policy and public debate and how they create a powerful consensus that Britain is in the grip of a 'parent crisis'.

It tracks how crisis talk around parenting has been used to police and discipline families who are considered to be morally deficient and socially irresponsible. Most damagingly, it has been used to justify increasingly punitive state policies towards families in the name of making 'bad parents' more responsible.

Is the real crisis in our perceptions rather than reality? This is essential reading for anyone engaged in policy and popular debate around parenting.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the author
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• One: Introduction
• Two: Mothercraft to Mumsnet
• Three: The cultural industry of parent-blame
• Four: Parenting – with feeling
• Five: Parenting in austere times: warmth and wealth
• Six: Weaponising parent-blame in post-welfare Britain (with Imogen Tyler)
• Seven: Epilogue: ‘Mummy Maybot’: a new age of authoritarian neoliberalism
• References