Reading parents: Parody and paradox in Go the Fuck to Sleep

Abstract

Aimed at frustrated parents whose young children refuse to go to bed, Go the Fuck to Sleep was a bestseller before it hit the shelves in 2011. Much of the book's humour lies in its juxtaposition of profanity-laden poetry with illustrations of children and nature that would not be out of place in a typical children's picture book – the books that parents read repeatedly to satisfy their restless children. Although the writer is a father speaking from his experience, creating this in-joke nurtures an imagined community of any caregivers who suffer the same fate night after night. A combination of APPRAISAL analyses, both verbal (cf. Martin and White 2005) and visual (cf. Painter et al. 2013), provides evidence for the ways in which the book shows how the child takes the power role in the bedtime routine of middle-class households. Visual choices follow the typical format of children's bedtime stories, with the child increasingly at the centre of the images. Verbal evaluations show that, at first, parents deny their children the items or activities that they want but later concede to their demands. As the narrator becomes more frustrated and desperate, the evaluations move from the idea of a secure sleep for the child, to questioning the child's honesty, to denouncing his parenting skills. This paradoxical role-reversal in the book allows parents some relief from the guilt that they might be bad parents because of their nightly loss of authority over the child. However, it also foregrounds the ideological issues at stake at bedtime.