This paper will critically examine the assumptions structuring policy discourses of support and inclusion, and will link them to wider political and theoretical debates. Reflecting an increasing professionalization of childrearing practices, recent policy documents have emphasized the need for all parents to have access to support, advice and guidance. Implicit in this approach is the notion that 'socially excluded' parents in particular are isolated from the information and assistance that enables effective parenting. Meanwhile, the concepts of poverty and inequality are becoming increasingly detached from government definitions of social exclusion. Policies addressing the 'condition' of exclusion commonly emphasize a perceived disconnection from mainstream values and aspirations, as opposed to marginalization from material resources. In the case of family policy, interventions framed within the discourse of 'parenting support' stress the importance of helping parents to do the best they can for their children. However, tacit moral judgements direct the nature and type of support that is promoted, with a particular emphasis placed on advising and 'including' marginalized parents. In this paper, policy definitions of support will be analysed and their implications in terms of gender and class will be drawn out. It will be argued that despite a rhetoric of empowerment and investment, the current emphasis on support represents a top-down projection of values and standards on to families, thereby 'supporting' conformity rather than promoting access to parenting resources.

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Ideas that the quality of parental nurturing and attachment in the first years of a child's life is formative, hard-wiring their brains for success or failure, are reflected in policy reports from across the political spectrum and in targeted services delivering early intervention. In this article we draw on our research into 'Brain science and early intervention', using reviews of key policy literature and interviews with influential advocates of early intervention and with early years practitioners, to critically assess the ramifications and implications of these claims. Rather than the 'hopeful ethos' proffered by advocates of the progressive nature of brain science and early intervention, we show that brain claims are justifying gendered, raced and social inequalities, positioning poor mothers as architects of their children's deprivation.

This paper argues for a critical reclaiming of family and highlights the risks associated with decentring such a powerful and pervasive concept. Influential critiques of family as an organising category are considered in the context of a contemporary trend towards reorienting it within broader studies foregrounding personal and intimate realms of human connectedness. It is suggested that while concepts of personal lives and intimacy have much to offer they can not capture the full range and nature of relations raised through the lens of family. In particular the political consequences of subsuming family within wider approaches are set out through reference to a new public politics of family in which emphasis is placed less on structure and function, and more on knowledge and competence. Through an exploration of the key changes characterising this shift a case is made for retaining family (alongside intimacy and personal life) as a flexible, enduring and necessary sociological framework.

Family lives are an area where people's moral identities are crucially at stake. Yet the significance of dependent children to the work needed to sustain morally adequate adult identities is largely overlooked. Furthermore, the particular situation of divorce or separation and repartnering where children are involved is fundamentally relevant to current sociological debates about the changing nature of marriage and family life. Notions of the pursuit of self-development and couple intimacy clash and create tensions with notions of duty or responsibility to children's needs. Drawing on a study of parents and step-parents, we consider how interviewees' moral understandings were fundamentally shaped by social constructions of the Child and the Adult. Importantly, the presence of dependent children led to an overall key moral imperative concerning the requirement for responsible adults to put the needs of children first. There were, however, strong gender dimensions in the ways in which this moral imperative was played out, and in some tensions with an alternative, but secondary, moral ethic of care of self. We discuss the significance of the Child/Adult construction in relation to theories about the nature of contemporary family obligations and of contemporary morality more generally.

In the United Kingdom, current family policy seeks to prioritize fathering as a social issue. The author critically examines the assumptions and expectations that underpin this approach, comparing and contrasting it with data from qualitative interviews with fathers. It highlights the class-specific nature of fathers' everyday values and experiences, pointing to the way policy-sanctioned models of fatherhood are grounded in middle-class perspectives. The author also argues that the policy discourse of the “involved father” promotes a particular role for fathers as educational facilitators, overlooking the more mundane aspects of care most often associated with motherhood.

This paper critically explores the classed assumptions underpinning contemporary family policy, situating them within the context of broader political and theoretical debates about parenting responsibility. Analysis of policy documents over the past few years suggests that the family is being prioritized as a mechanism for tackling wider social ills such as crime and poverty. Families are portrayed as the ‘building blocks for safe and sustainable communities’, with good parents fostering and transmitting crucial values to their children which protect and reproduce the common good. Although the current government has pledged to support all parents, policy initiatives point to a class‐specific focus on disadvantaged or 'socially excluded’ families. Poor parents are viewed as reproducing a cycle of deprivation and anti‐social behaviour and are therefore targeted for behaviour modification. Drawing on research from a qualitative study of parenting resources, this paper will challenge the notion that social inclusion can be promoted at the level of the family, and will argue instead that parenting practices and values are grounded in social and economic realities.

Recent years have seen Governments prioritise family as a mechanism for tackling social ills. More particularly, in the UK, bad parenting has been identified as a prominent causal factor in poverty and social disorder, with contemporary policy solutions focusing on regulating and controlling childrearing practices. Analysis of political rhetoric and policy initiatives reveals a class specific focus on disadvantaged or 'socially excluded' families as failing their children and society as a whole. Poor parents are viewed as reproducing a cycle of deprivation and anti-social behaviour and are therefore targeted to receive state intervention. This paper presents a critical analysis of the new politics of parenting to challenge the notion that equity can be promoted at the level of the family. Drawing on qualitative research with marginalised mothers and fathers, it shows how parenting practices and values are grounded in social and economic realities and highlights the extent to which prevailing childrearing prescriptions are detached from the lives and values of those they are directed at.1080 Class and the Politics of Parenting