Parallel worlds? Parental rationalities of governing children in the context of the diversifying Czech pre-school system

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on different rationalities of governing children in the context of different ECEC facilities, how the rationalities potentially influence the ways children are cared for and educated, and how this is related to the reproduction of social inequalities. Inspired by Foucault’s work on government, it focuses on the ways parents understand how their children should be formed by their ECEC facilities. Different parental rationalities of the government of their children in relation to different ECEC settings are found to potentially accelerate social inequalities. Based on the presented findings, the article calls for widening the discussion on high-quality care.

KEYWORDS:

• Governing children
• technologies of domination
• technologies of the self
• high-quality ECEC
• diversification of ECEC

Acknowledgements

Though the text has only one author, we perceive it as part of our collective project work, including Jana Dvořáčková, Lucie Jarkovská and Katarína Slezáková, therefore, in the article the plural is used.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Under the term ‘public’ we subsume preschool facilities founded by the state, a region, municipality or a confederation of municipalities, funded by this founding entity and central state grants.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation under grant GA16-18940S.