Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-jwnkl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-10T22:59:29.405Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Parenting Skills’: Views of Community Health and Social Service Providers about the Needs of their ‘Clients’*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2009

Jeanette Edwards
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The concept of ‘parenting skills’ features large in professional, political and popular discourse on the role and responsibility of parents. This article explores what constitutes skills of parenting from the perspective of community health and social service providers, working with families deemed to be ‘in need’. It shows how the concept is drawn on to describe both the needs of women with whom they work and their own role in fulfilling some of those needs. It argues that ‘parenting skills’ are not only gendered, insofar as it is women as mothers who are more likely to be perceived as needing them, but that a lack of them might also be associated with marital status, age and place of residence. In looking at ‘parenting skills’ from the perspective of service providers in the context of their working lives, it is clear however that service providers, predominantly women, formulate a role for themselves in the face of poverty and poor housing which they feel powerless to change.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , April 1995 , pp. 237 - 259
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aries, P. (1979 [1962]), Centuries of Childhood. Penguin. Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Barnes, C. (1990), Cabbage Syndrome: The social construction of dependency, Farmer, Basingstoke.Google Scholar
Barret, M. and McIntosh, M. (1982), The Anti-social Family, Verso, London.Google Scholar
Becker, S. and McPherson, S. (1988), Public Issues: Private pain. Insight, London.Google Scholar
Blackburn, C. (1991), Poverty and Health Working with families, Open University Press, Buckingham.Google Scholar
Bowlby, J. (1947), Forty-four Juvenile Thieves: their characters and home-life. Bailliere, London.Google Scholar
Cohen, A. (1986), Belonging, Manchester University Press, Manchester.Google Scholar
Cohen, S. (1972), Folk Devils and Moral Panics, McGibbon & Kee, London.Google Scholar
Edwards, J. (1994), Idioms of informality and bureaucracy in a local housing aid office, in Wright, S. (ed.) The Anthropology of Organisations, Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Edwards, J. and Popay, J. (1994), ‘Contradictions of support and self help’, in Health and Social Care in the Community, vol. 2. Blackwell, London.Google Scholar
Ehrenreich, B. and English, D. (1979), For Her Own Good. Pluto, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golding, P. and Middleton, S. (1982), Images of Welfare: Press and public attitudes to poverty, Martin Robertson. Oxford.Google Scholar
Graham, H. (1984), Women. Health and the Family, Wheatsheaf. Brighton.Google Scholar
Hendrick, H. (1990), Images of Youth: Age, class and the male youth problem 1880–1920. Clarendon. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howe, L. (1990), Being Unemployed in Northern Ireland, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
James, A. and Hockey, J. (1993), Growing Up and Growing Old, Sage. London.Google Scholar
James, A. and Prout, A. (1990), Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood, Falmer, Basingstoke.Google Scholar
Johnson, Z., Howell, F. and Molloy, B. (1993), ‘Community mother's programme: randomised controlled trial of non-professional intervention in parenting’, British Medical Journal, 306. 1449–52.Google ScholarPubMed
Lewis, J. (1986), ‘Anxieties about the family and the relationships between parents, children and the state in twentieth century England’, In Richards, M. and Light, P. (eds.) Children of Social Worlds: Development in a Social Context, Polity, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Martin, E. (1989), The Woman in the Body, Open University Press, Milton Keynes.Google Scholar
Mayall, B. (1991), ‘Ideologies of child care: mothers and health visitors’, in Wyke, S. and Hewlson, J. (eds.), Child Health Care Matters, Open University Press, Milton Keynes.Google Scholar
Morgan, D. (1975), Social Theory and the Family, Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Morgan, D. (1985), The Family: Politics and social theory, Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Morris, J. (ed.) (1992), Alone Together: Voices of single mothers. The Women's Press LondonGoogle Scholar
New, C. and David, M. (1985), For the Children's Sake, Penguin, Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Oakley, A. (1987), ‘From walking wombs to test-tube babies’, in Stanworth, M. (ed.) Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood and medicine, Polity, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Oakley, A. (1992), Social Support and Motherhood, Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Oakley, A. (1993), ‘The limits of the professional imagination’, in Beattie, A., Gott, M., Jones, L. and Sidwell, M. (eds.) Health and Wellbeing. Open University Press. Milton Keynes.Google Scholar
Peacock, J. (1986), The Anthropological Lens: Harsh light, soft focus, Cambridge University Press Cambridge.Google Scholar
Phoenix, A. (1991), Young Mothers? Polity, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Popay, J. (1977), ‘Fiddlers on the hoof: moral panics and social security scroungers; a comparative perspective’, unpublished MA dissertation, Essex University.Google Scholar
Popay, J. and Dhooge, Y. (1985), Unemployment and Health: What role for health and social services?, Final report to the Health Education Council, London.Google Scholar
Robertson, A. F. (1991), Beyond the Family: The social organisation of human reproduction, Polity, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Rogers, R. S. (1993), ‘The social construction of child-rearing’ in Beattie, A., Gott, M., Jones, L. and Sidell, M. (eds.) Health and Wellbeing, Open University Press, Milton Keynes.Google Scholar
Steedman, C. (1990), Childhood Culture and Class, Virago, London.Google Scholar
Strathern, M. (1981), Kinship at the Core, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Strathern, M. (1992), After Nature: English kinship in the late 20th century, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Titterton, M. (1992), ‘Managing threats to welfare: Research for a new paradigm of welfare’, Journal of Social Policy. 21:1, 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar