The politics of government ‘support’ in Aotearoa/New Zealand: Reinforcing and reproducing the poor citizenship of young Māori parents

Abstract

Despite the poor outcomes of early childbearing increasingly found to be equivocal, there remains a persistent pathologising of teen parenting, which structures government response. By applying a Foucauldian analysis to the recently introduced Young Parent Payment, this article examines the political rationalities that shape government responses and welfare assistance for young parents in Aotearoa/New Zealand. A biopolitical concern for the good economic citizen and right parent is found to inform the social investment approach, and exclude those who do not conform. Discourses about being Māori, young, a parent and needing financial assistance frame young Māori parents as at risk of long-term welfare-dependency and a threat to their own children. Welfare assistance is demonstrated to be a disciplinary practice to punish young Māori mother beneficiaries for deviating from the preferred normative life-course trajectory.