Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-11T15:00:47.500Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Constructions of Parents in Adverse Childhood Experiences Discourse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2019

Jan Macvarish  and
Ellie Lee
Jan Macvarish
Affiliation:
Centre for Parenting Culture Studies, University of Kent, Canterbury E-mail: J.Macvarish@kent.ac.uk
Ellie Lee
Affiliation:
Centre for Parenting Culture Studies, University of Kent, Canterbury E-mail: E.J.Lee@Kent.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In December 2017, the House of Commons Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee put out a call for submissions to an Inquiry that would consider the evidence-base for early intervention policies, with a particular focus on ‘Adverse Childhood Experiences’ or ACEs. This article analyses those submissions and the transcripts of the Inquiry’s oral sessions in the belief that they constitute a useful window through which to explore the types of claims being made in ACEs discourse. Our aim is to assess whether the ACEs phenomenon represents a continuity with what has been termed the ‘first three years movement’ (Thornton, 2011a, 2011b) – social policy and philanthropic activism which focuses on the earliest years of life in the name of preventing social problems ‘down the line’. In particular, we consider constructions of parents as determinate of these social problems through their influence on their children and the ways in which these are gendered in new ways.

Keywords

ACEsparentingdeterminismneuroparentingfirst three years movement
Type
Themed Section: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) – Implications and Challenges
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 467 - 477
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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

Apple, R. (2006) Perfect Motherhood: Science and Childrearing in America, New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Broer, T. and Pickersgill, M. (2015) ‘Targeting brains, producing responsibilities: the use of neuroscience within British social policy’, Social Science and Medicine, 132, 54–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bruer, J. (1999) The Myth of the First Three Years: A New Understanding of Early Brain Development and Lifelong Learning, New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Edwards, R., Gillies, V. and Horsley, N. (2015) ‘Brain science and early years policy: hopeful ethos or ‘cruel optimism’?’, Critical Social Policy, 35, 2, 167–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faircloth, C. (2013) Militant Lactivism? Infant Feeding and Maternal Accountability in the UK and France, Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Furedi, F. (2001) Paranoid Parenting: Abandon your Anxieties and be a Good Parent, London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Hays, S. (1996) The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hendrick, H. (1997) Children, Childhood and English Society 1880-1990, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (2018) ‘Evidence-based early years intervention inquiry’, Eleventh Report of the Session 2017-19, HC206, 14 November.Google Scholar
Kagan, J. (1998) Three Seductive Ideas, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kanieski, M. A. (2010) ‘Securing attachment: the shifting medicalization of attachment and attachment disorders’, Health, Risk and Society, 12, 4, 335–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, E., Lowe, P. and Macvarish, J. (2014) The Uses and Abuses of Biology: Neuroscience, Parenting and Family Policy in Britain. A ‘Key Findings’ Report, University of Kent, https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/parentingculturestudies/files/2014/03/UAB-Key-Findings-Report.pdf.Google Scholar
Macvarish, J. (2016) Neuroparenting: The Expert Invasion of Family Life, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macvarish, J., Lee, E. and Lowe, P. (2015) ‘Neuroscience and family policy: what becomes of the parent?’, Critical Social Policy, 35, 2, 248–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, C. (2015) ‘Parenting support in France: policy in an ideological battlefield’, Social Policy and Society, 14, 4, 609–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thornton, D. J. (2011a) ‘Neuroscience, affect and the entrepreneurialization of motherhood’, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 8, 4, 399–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thornton, D. J. (2011b) Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Popular Media, New Brunswick: Rutgers.Google Scholar
Welshman, J. (2008) ‘The cycle of deprivation: myths and misconceptions’, Children and Society, 22, 75–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, S. and Wastell, D. (2015) ‘The rise and rise of prevention science in UK family welfare: surveillance gets under the skin’, Families, Relationships and Societies, 6, 3, 427–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar