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Disciplining ‘Problem Parents’ in the Youth Court: Between Regulation and Resistance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2009

Amanda Holt
Amanda Holt*
Affiliation:
University of Portsmouth E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which parents, who have been the recipients of Parenting Orders, perform identity work through their accounts of their experiences in court. Discourse analysis is used to identify five key ‘strategies of resistance’ through which parents manage their parental identity and argues that such discursive practices highlight the fragility of such parents' claims to a positive parental identity in light of hegemonic gendered and classed conceptions of ‘responsible parenting’. The paper concludes by reflecting on what such practices might mean for parents who find themselves at once both regulated and resistant.

Type
Themed section on Disciplining Difference
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 89 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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