Problematic Parents and the Community Parent Education: Representations of Social Class, Ethnicity, and Gender

Abstract

The author presents an analysis of the Swedish version of the Community Parent Education. The analysis was done by using Bacchi's (2009) policy analysis approach combined with an investigation of how social categories intersect in the material. The material consisted of the course leader manual and a DVD with 22 film sequences illustrating poor parenting. The author shows that in relation to the history of child-care, popular education, and enlightenment in Sweden, the ideals on parenting presented in the Community Parent Education portray working class parents and immigrant parents as being problematic. The educational material also tends to reinforce traditional complementary gender stereotypes.

Keywords:

• the Community Parent Education
• COPE
• social class
• ethnicity
• gender
• intersectional analysis
• “what's the problem represented to be-approach”
• Bacchi policy analysis
• genealogical analysis
• parenting ideals

Notes

¹The need to explore how parent support which has often been developed in other countries works within the Swedish context is an important issue highlighted in the National Strategy for Parent Support (Socialdepartementet, 2009) and the government investigation on parent support (Föräldrastödsutredningen, 2008).

²In a student essay based on interviews with Swedish COPE course leaders, it is evident that the leaders sometimes interpret the manual differently, due to personal beliefs and earlier experiences (Kant & Magnusson, 2008). Consequently, course leaders do not always do exactly what the manual prescribes.

³Foucault's genealogical approach seeks to understand the present by tracing the history of a certain discourse and the process that came to shape it. In order to question taken for granted assumptions about the present, Bacchi (2009, p. 10) states that “(…) we seek to trace the ‘history’ of a current problem representation, we need to follow the twists and turns rather than assume, as often happens in conventional historical accounts, that current practices and institutions, and the ways ‘problems’ are understood, are the inevitable product of ‘natural’ evolution over time.”

⁴More rational behavior and thinking and increased self-control are part of what Elias (1991) describes as the civilization of the western world. These changes were due to tensions between the royal court, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, as well as strains within these groups, relating to the advancement of a monetary economy in the 12th and 13th centuries.

⁵As one example: in 2009 mothers used 77.7% of the days that were compensated by parental benefit, while fathers used 22.3% (Sveriges Officiella Statistik, 2010).

⁶Alva and Gunnar Myrdal wrote the book “Crisis in the Population Question” in 1934 where they argued for greater societal responsibility for child rearing by educating pedagogues and building corporate nurseries (see for example Myrdal, 2002).