Suchergebnisse

Summary

Drawing on analyses of how, during the 20th century, explicit processes of social distinction morphed into languages of niceness and, further, into various categories of pathology (Löfgren, 1991; Conrad, 2007; Horwitz, 2002; Brinkmann, 2014), I explore some of the contemporary consequences of this transformation in a Danish context. Focusing on everyday experiences of parents of children with so-called special needs, I highlight their concerns and hopes, analysing what happens when they encounter those who work in welfare state institutions. Inspired by anthropology of policy (Wright, 2017), I view these parents' actions, efforts, and negotiations as a form of micro-policymaking, with an analytical emphasis on what Mattingly (2013) describes as everyday ethical work. Interactions with welfare state professionals such as early childhood educators and schoolteachers are part and parcel of parenting, especially in a Nordic context. In this ethical work, the parents face different gaps they need to handle.

In Denmark, a process of defamilising has taken place since the expansion of the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector in the 1960s, in the sense that children now spend a large part of their childhood outside the family. Nevertheless, parents are still seen as key figures in children's upbringing and as having primary responsibility for the quality of childhood, implying a simultaneous process of refamilising. Based on ethnographic fieldwork we show that parents are not only held responsible for their children's lives at home, but also for ensuring that ECEC staff have the best possible opportunity to support children's development at ECEC institutions. We analyse how ECEC staff offer guidance on how to be a responsible parent who cooperates in the right ways, and on how to cultivate children's development at home. Parents willingly accept such advice because of a strong risk awareness embedded in diagnostic forms, positioning ECEC staff as parenting experts.