Unintentional Injury, Supervision, and Discourses on Childproofing Devices

ABSTRACT

Unintentional injury prevention research focuses on parental supervision as critical to reducing toddler injury. We examine how the promotion of childproofing—as a mode of supervision—sells mothers “peace of mind” while also increasing “intensive mothering” and the “privatization of risk.” Drawing on the childproofing literature and meaning centered interviews with mothers of toddlers and childproofing business owners, we argue that the connection made by these groups between childproofing and “good parenting” ultimately obscures how this form of harm reduction economically and socially individualizes responsibility for child care.

KEYWORDS:

• United States
• child supervision
• intensive parenting
• parenting culture
• risk
• unintentional injury

Acknowledgments

Data were collected with UCR, IRB approval #HS 06-065.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Cultural Models of Supervision: An Interdisciplinary Study [Grant number R01 HD050637-01A2]

Notes on contributors

Amy Dao

Amy Dao is an assistant professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona in the Department of Geography and Anthropology. Her research explores biopolitics and the construction of risk using the case study of health insurance as both an instrument of finance and a cultural entity.

Juliet McMullin

Juliet McMullin, PhD, is a professor at the University of California, Riverside, in the Department of Anthropology. Focusing on cancer inequalities, meanings of health, injury, and graphic medicine, her research examines the distribution, embodiment, and practice of medical knowledge as it is created and constrained within a political economy of health.