Troubling Families: Parenting and the Politics of Early Intervention

Abstract

The election of the Thatcher government in 1979 is broadly acknowledged as marking a pivotal moment in social and economic history. As most theorists acknowledge, this rise to power was instrumental in ushering in and cementing a neoliberal regime that over the course of 30 years transformed global politics and society. Thatcher’s infamous proclamation, ‘there is no such thing as society … only the individual and his family’, heralded a new age in which economic liberalism came to infuse, shape and contain all aspects of life, including our most intimate spheres of existence. ‘Neoliberalism’ as a term has been put to promiscuous and often reductive use (Clarke 2008; Hall 2011) but few can question the radical assault on social values it is intended to describe. Principles of individual freedom, independence and personal responsibility, stressed alongside a valorisation of the market as the optimal site for maximising human well-being, have become ingrained in everyday common sense (Harvey 2007; Couldry 2011).