Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: In France, the concept of ‘parentality’ has become a key notion in the field of social work since the mid-1990s. This idea serves mostly as a basis for professional evaluations of parents’ ability. However, it does not only prescribe behaviors and implement norms; it has also transformed the way people consider their own family attachments, and adjust individually to new ethical definitions of selves. Based on two complementary ethnographic field studies – one looking at the administrative management of adoption and the other at medical care provision for maternal mental health – this article shows how discourses and practices about parentality serve a policy of self-reform. This article therefore questions how politics of control and regulation that are deployed in the privacy of the family sphere act on an ethical level by inviting subjects to reform themselves for their own good and for the good of others.
Source: Ethnography
Authors: Sébastien Roux, Anne-Sophie Vozari
Language: English
Topic: Child Welfare and Adoption
Subfield: Safety Research
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Agence Nationale de la Recherche
OpenAlex ID: W2575355188