Introduction

Since their inception in the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, Parenting Orders have provided New Labour with another tool with which to fight its battle against crime and anti-social behaviour. However, a number of issues and concerns surrounding the use of Parenting Orders have been raised. These have included: their effectiveness (including the quality of this evidence base) (see Holdaway et al, 2001; Ghate and Ramella, 2002), their likely negative psychosocial effects on parents, including issues of stigmatisation and blame (see Bowers, 2002) and concerns about the way that they act to provide for welfare needs through the courts (see Haydon, 2004). Acknowledging these issues, however, this chapter aims to provide a critique of the practice of Parenting Orders through the lens of Foucault's notion of ‘disciplinary power’ (1977). Such an approach will provide an analytical framework to understand why, despite the neutral term ‘parent’, Parenting Orders tend to be issued to mothers, lone parents and those living in the most deprived areas. This chapter will discuss how the mobilisation of the ‘psy-complex’ in the 20th century (Ingleby, 1985; Rose, 1985) has enabled parents to be classified on the basis of white, especially middleclass, ‘norms’ of parenting and how such processes of classification have informed the practices of a number of agencies, including youth justice agencies and parenting practitioners.

However, rather than capitulating to the common binary arguments of whether the use of Parenting Orders is good or bad, this chapter concludes by suggesting that, like parents themselves, Parenting Orders cannot be judged within such a simplistic dichotomous paradigm. Instead, it is argued that, while Parenting Orders may certainly position some parents in ways that may produce negative outcomes, there may also be opportunities for new subjectivities to emerge in the discursive spaces opened up by Parenting Orders. Similarly, possibilities for resistance and subversion should be recognised in the negotiations between agencies and parents, and care should be taken to avoid seeing parents only as passive objects in any analysis of youth justice policy and practice.

Parenting Orders: policy and legislation

Within the remit of youth justice, Parenting Orders can be issued to parents in cases where their child has received a Child Safety Order, an Anti-Social Behaviour Order, a Sex Offender Order, or has been convicted of an offence.