- Project Summary: In no more than 200 words, provide a brief description of your project, including the key questions your project attempts to answer and a brief discussion of how you intend to answer those questions.
Due March 1
Judy Olivares
SOC 3010
Professor Lopez
1 March 2019
Project Proposal: Neoliberal ideas around Parenting
After a few weeks learning about neoliberal ideology, I would like to focus my final project on how neoliberalism affects families in Child Protective Services (CPS). Parenting values in the context of neoliberalism appears differently than in minority families. For example, in indigenous Mexican families “well-meaning parents take their children to work in the fields or leave under-age children to care for their younger siblings” (Hester 2015, 324). However, this type of parenting would be going against the neoliberal values embedded in CPS. For instance, these indigenous Mexican parents would be “subsequently punished for breaking child labor laws or for neglect and child abuse” (Hester 2015, 324). As we can see the laws in place to protect children were constructed through a neoliberal lens, which enables CPS to evaluate whether parents are rising their children properly. By bringing in examples from working with CPS last summer to show how Mexican families involved with CPS had to perform proper parenting in order to be considered “good parents.” Most of the examples show the interactions between caregivers and CPS workers through the type of questions they would ask (i.e., how they discipline, and supervising the children when parents are at work).
Lopez’s Comments:
Judy, I like this approach to examining CPS. To demonstrate how CPS promotes ‘good parenting’, you might want to turn to pamphlets or training show what this looks like and how they try to promote certain practices for raising kids. If I were you, I was try to connect with folks at CPS and try to get a hold of their materials.
I’m not sure if you noticed it, but you also have a postcolonial approach embedded in what you wrote in your summary. Hester, for instance, talks about indigenous parenting practices, which differ greatly from those probably expected by CPS.
As for literature, I would draw a broad approach by looking generally at neoliberal parenting. Perhaps, you can also think for looking at the literature on ‘helicopter parenting.’ For instance, I know that Margaret Nelson has done work on parenting strategies in a surveillance society, which connects well with situating in a neoliberal context.