Children's confidences, parents’ confessions: Child welfare dialogues as technologies of control

Abstract

Abstract: The article presents findings from a detailed examination of dialogical sequences recorded in written documents from Norwegian child welfare services. Using a frame drawn from Foucault's theory of technologies of control, it describes how conversations between the social workers and parents function as disciplining tools. By emphasizing children's rights under Norwegian law and scientific based knowledge about children, the social workers regulate the parents’ life towards what is culturally considered as proper parenting in Norway. In doing so, they assign the children and the parents different subject positions in the dialogues. I will argue that the children become subjects through what is perceived as the sharing of confidences, while the parents become subjects through confessions and admissions.