Still getting the blame

This book is a captivating exploration of the relationship between policy-driven discourses on bad parenting and their use as a justification for punitive state policies that disproportionately affect the lives of women and those from disadvantaged social backgrounds. It opens with a reference to the shooting of Mark Duggan by specialist firearms officers in Tottenham, London on 4 August 2011. Mark Duggan's death and the subsequent failure by the Metropolitan Police to communicate with his family sparked a public reaction which led to outbreaks of street violence and riots across London and other British cities over a period of three days. Jensen acknowledges the work of criminologists and cultural theorists who have explored the English riots of 2011 in terms of their broader historical and social contexts, including the increasing penal activities led by the state that had contributed to a public sense of grievance and resentment against the invasive surveillance and harassment that were being experienced within certain areas of urban populations in the UK. But her focus on this topic is to look at how the political class's response to the riots, instead of considering the issue of police brutality, became centred around, and directed at, the figure of the bad parent. Jensen shows how, in political and media discourse, the family- or certain types of families-became the scapegoat for the civil unrest.

The book continues to unpick how this idea of the failing, pathological family, nurtured through bad parenting, has been manufactured, re-iterated and reproduced across policy and the media. Jensen draws on wider empirical research that exposes how constructs of bad or absent parenting, articulated both in public political speeches and in the popular press, led to a concept of a 'crisis in parenting' (p4). Basing her theoretical framework on the legacy provided by Stuart Hall and others from the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies, Jensen exposes how the related machinery of politics and popular culture have led to a 'cultural industry of parent blame' based on gendered and classed constructions of parental identities and practices. The book demonstrates how this culture of parent blame has become a tool to justify the withdrawal of welfare benefits and other support for those most in need. Jensen identifies the particular gendered consequences of this rhetoric: women have been the main target for parental condemnation, and constitute the majority of victims of welfare reduction.

The book starts with a consideration of the popular digital media platform Mumsnet as a site that demonstrates the historical significance of 'mothercraft'-how motherhood can be conceived of as a craft, a learned practice of childcare. Jensen shows the historical shift and development over what counts as 'good' parenting, from nineteenth-century scientific constructions of motherhood to the self-reflexive, individualised and competitive construct of neoliberal motherhood that underpins parenting culture today. By charting the evolution of mothering practice, Jensen is able to demonstrate how chats conducted on the Mumsnet discussion boards exemplify both postfeminist sensibilities and neoliberal feminism.¹ Citing Richenda Gambles's work on the platform, Jensen is able to articulate how the very scaffolding of the discussion boards generates a 'structure of feeling' that exposes a symbolic circulation of classed identities based on concepts of good motherhood.² She argues that, through this maternal public, wider concerns around issues such as maternal inequality, racism or maternity discrimination are diminished, are displaced by the self-reflexive, individualised concerns of neoliberal parenting practice.

The following chapters break down the cultural construction of parent-blame as operationalised through a wider media focus on what is considered the right kind of parenting practice. Chapter three looks at the popular television programme Supernanny, a Channel 4 reality television programme first aired in the UK in 2004. The programme, fronted by nanny Jo Frost, followed a structured format: Frost would observe a parenting crisis within an individual family and then provide a set of rules and suggestions to ensure that good parenting practice would be learned and implemented. Applying Helen Wood's 'text in action' method, Jensen explores...