ABSTRACT
In western countries parents are subject to a constant stream of advice on how to bring up their children. Governments, an array of professionals, media ‘experts’, and journalists, are eager to turn parents into anxious subjects, unsure of their capabilities, and there is a large parenting literature, much of it with a psychological focus. Parenting has become ‘pyschologised’ with advice on child rearing and education, expressed in a language of psychology, and parents are expected to learn how to develop parenting skills following the disciplines of psychology, including neuropsychology, which will now tell parents about their child’s developing brain (Ramaekers and Suissa 2012). In offi cial publications parents are usually lumped together as a homogeneous mass. In reality, in England in 2015, of the 13.8 million households living with dependent children, ‘parents’ included married, cohabiting, single, divorced, carers, white, Black, migrant, minority, straight, gay, older, younger, working class, middle class, upper class. Depending on all these attributes, parents will have different experiences in different parts of the education system and receive different treatment from central and local government, schools, professionals and the media. On encountering the childcare and education system they will receive different treatment according to whether their child is regarded early on as able, less able, disruptive or disabled.
