Introduction

In 2008, I suggested that the concept ‘moral panic’ was, in many respects, past its ‘sell-by’ date; the idea of amoral panic was offered as an alternative (Waiton, 2008). My analysis was based on the following observations:

In this chapter, I will take this argument further by examining the transformation that has been taking place in ‘The Family’, an institution once central to moral panic theorising, associated with moral values and understood and defended as something that was ‘at the heart of society’ (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994, p 8). I pose the question: to what extent is the ‘future of the nuclear family’ the basis for panics today (Cohen, 2011, p xxii)? In particular, I look at the way the idea of the ‘autonomous family’ has all but disappeared from government and policy discussions of the family, and conclude by suggesting that we need to understand the rise and rise of ‘early intervention’ policies and initiatives as an illustration of the amoral panic that has developed around the family in the 21st century.

The rise and rise of ‘early intervention’

The opening sentence of the UK government's document Next Steps for EarlyLearning and Child Care, published in 2009, reads: ‘Everyone agrees that the first few months and years are the most important in a child's life.’ The document goes on to explain that it is a child's mother and father that bring up a child – not governments & ; but then adds: ‘but parents need support’ (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2009, p 3). This is just one of a plethora of documents that have been produced in recent years exploring the issue of intervention, early intervention and ‘support’ for families.

This mass of documents is further supported by various reports looking specifically at the issue of early intervention, one of the most noticeable being Early Intervention: Good Parents, Great Kids, Better Citizens (2008), written jointly by the Labour MP Graham Allen and the Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith.