Tracking governance: advice to mothers about managing the behaviour of their children in a leading Canadian women’s magazine during two disease regimes

Abstract

This paper explores how advice to mothers about raising healthy children differs in two distinct disease regimes as portrayed in articles in the preeminent Canadian women's magazine Chatelaine about 50 years apart, 1928-1944 and 1990-2012. The paper compares intensive mothering, medicalization and the perception of risk. It suggests that both intensive mothering and medicalization are continuous from time period to time period (although the content of both mothering and medicalization differ in the two periods). Medicalization focused on the physical well-being and emphasized the importance of the routinized behaviours designed for conformity in the early period. In the latter period, there is a greater focus on individuality of children and their emotional well-being. This is linked to the rise of the discourses of the psy professions. With respect to risk, however, the paper documents an important change in the expansion of the degree to which life is considered risky. The substantive, theoretical and practical consequences of the findings are discussed.

Risk and the Black American child: representations of children’s mental health issues in three popular African American magazines

“…In mainstream (aimed primarily at White women) magazine, children's mental health issues are framed in terms of medicalisation, individualism and intensive mothering (Clarke, 2014). In the mainstream magazines, the focus is on directing the individual reader (mother) to be aware of risks to her child and to be diligent in her attention to her child's behavioural and emotional expression in order that the child grow up to be normal, good and successful.…”

A Study of the Portrayal of Bullying in Magazines for Parents: It is Everywhere and it is Growing

“…Latent analysis looks for the implicit, underlying meaning (Neuman, 2010). (Clarke, 2013(Clarke, , 2014. I have combined the answers to the first two questions in the ensuing analysis as they were mostly intertwined in the data.…”

“…Bullying also imbricates some aspects of two other contemporary theories that in different ways pathologise the individual: medicalisation or the growth in medical definitions of reality (especially as related to mental illness in the perpetrator and/or the victim) and criminalisation. The medicalisation, particularly psychiatrisation (Le Francois, ), of childhood is well documented (see, for example Clarke, , ). The rate of criminalisation of some children's behaviours (especially externalising, violent or aggressive behaviours) is also growing (Stout and Holleran, ).…”

“…and what can be done about it? (Clarke, , ). I have combined the answers to the first two questions in the ensuing analysis as they were mostly intertwined in the data.…”

“Don't worry”: Figurations of the child in a Swedish parenting advice column.

“…This message, as mentioned above (but see Hardyment, 2007 andStearns, 2003 for details), has been partly underpinned by an increasingly prominent framing of the child as a fragile being whose development is continuously at risk of being disturbed or impaired. Juanne Clarke and colleagues have conducted several historical studies of magazines (Clarke, 2011(Clarke, , 2014Clarke et al, 2014) and have similarly found a strong emphasis on the need for parents to consult with medical and psychological experts and on the responsibility that parents, particularly the mother, have for managing childhood risks. This is not unique to the North American context, however.…”