Governing families with young children through discipline

Abstract

The Western Australian Community Child Health Service (CCHS) has problematised aspects of parental conduct and sought to transform parent/child interaction in order to produce a specific kind of person: responsible, self-disciplined, caring. As a consequence, management strategies that harness parents' and children's self- regulating capacities rather than corporal punishment are promoted as the more appropriate means to discipline young children. However, the prevailing child health position, informed by medical and psychological expertise and grounded empirically, is contested from within and outside its ranks. Prominence is given to accounts of disciplining practices produced by interviewing several parents, Pentecostal believers and nurses. The analysis presented brings to the fore contradictions, inconsistencies and oppositions that emerge when the CCHS, a governmental practice, is operationalised.