Raising the ‘Meritocracy’

Abstract

Theories of ‘individualization’ and ‘risk’ have shifted attention away from the material and structural roots of inequality and sanctioned a psychologized view of class distinctions in terms of personal qualities. This article will demonstrate how the association of disadvantage with a particular form of subjectivity is operationalized and institutionalized through a contemporary focus on childrearing practices. Discourses of ‘social exclusion’ construct working-class families as lacking in personal skills and moral responsibility, destined to transfer disadvantage to their children in a ‘cycle of deprivation’.This view underpins the current UK policy focus on parenting, characterized by state efforts to regulate and control the way children are brought up. Drawing on qualitative research with parents across a wide range of social backgrounds, this article will show how such an approach fails to recognize the socially and materially grounded nature of childrearing.