Parenting the Crisis draws on original empirical and discursive research around parental pedagogy, and engages with key debates from across the disciplines of sociology, social policy, social psychology, media and cultural studies. It offers an important and timely critique of parenting culture, and an exposure of the ways in which 'parenting' so often as a concept conceals gendered and classed assumptions about parental care and competence. In doing so, Parenting the Crisis maps out the psychosocial potency of parental figures of ‘failure/success’ in contemporary debates around social mobility and self-improvement. It tracks the ways that crisis-talk around parenting is used to police and discipline families who are considered to be morally suspect, failing and abnormal.
