ABSTRACT
This chapter examines what parents were actually like: whether they really loved a child or not; the degree of competence with which they cared for it; the responsibility which they themselves might bear for a child's condition – none of these things were at issue, at least on the surface, and none of them affected the idealized image which parents were granted. The sketch of the procedures used in the charity format can also tell us much about the bureaucratic mode. For what was raised in one form had to be avoided in the other. Although the doctor treated the mother in a special way, what was equally striking was his consistent attempt to define her as competent. The rule that every mother was a good mother meant the systematic exclusion of all those things that were explicitly raised when character-work was done. Grandmothers might represent a child on occasion, and in many ways they received similar treatment to fathers.
