Schooling, Welfare and Parental Responsibility

In the 1990s, issues of child protection, child abuse and delinquency had generated public and academic concerns over the ability of adults to underwrite the physical, moral and social welfare of children. At the same time, recent educational reform had provoked debate around the shifting balance of power between those most involved in child development – parents and teachers. Originally published in 1996, Schooling, Welfare and Parental Responsibility brings these two agenda together within a coherent theoretical framework and offers an empirical analysis grounded in perspectives of both parents and teachers. The book draws on recent British, European and North American research and provides the reader with an up-to-date account of the current state of affairs between parents and teachers at the time. Within a context of recent educational and social policy reform and drawing on interview material from parents and teachers, the author examines the common understandings of the concept of parental responsibility. Debates on sex education, the ‘interventionist’ welfare state, and the state of parental anxiety are explored through the accounts provided. Schooling, Welfare and Parental Responsibility is an eminently readable synthesis of theory, policy and empirical data and today can be read by students, teachers and welfare practitioners in its historical context.