Introduction

This chapter starts with the premise that the state's targeting of poor families for intervention is nothing new and indeed has a very long history. However, it does contend that in recent years there has been intensification in the policing of working-class families. This has happened due to the reification of particular knowledge, worked into selective evidenceinformed programmes and practices adopted in different country contexts, which are negatively interventionist. This policing epitomises features of a ‘centaur state’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 43) with its ‘worried frown’ (Flint, 2019: 263) directed at poor families and, more particularly, poor parents. It is argued in this chapter that the intensive policing of poor families firmly locates the problems of poverty and inequality in poor families and serves to obscure states’ responsibilities to address social inequalities and to really improve the material conditions of poor people's lives. The chapter draws on conceptual insights provided by the criminalisation of social policy in Chapter 2, parenting culture studies (Faircloth and Lee, 2010; Lee et al, 2014; Jensen, 2018) and critical social policy and social work (Featherstone, 2006; Featherstone et al, 2014b). It puts under the microscope ‘state– family– capital relations’ in a period characterised by rising social and economic inequalities, neoliberalisation and ethno-nationalism (Rosen and Faircloth, 2020: 14).

In 1979 Jacques Donzelot developed his thesis on the policing of the ‘modern’ family in the service of twentieth-century capitalism. He argued that since the late nineteenth century there was a shift in the government of families to a government through families, which impacted all families, albeit differently depending on their class positioning. He claimed that while the state, aided by the social professions, makes significant incursions into family life in general, poor families were in ‘a vice of tutelary power’ (Donzelot, 1979: 97). As noted by Donzelot (1979), the ‘helping’ professions, comprising psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors, nurses and social workers were ideally positioned to regulate families in states’ interests, comprising as they did the ‘psy’ complex. Donzelot (1979) was writing about France but the implication of Donzelot's thesis had relevance for other country contexts.