Manufacturing 'bad mothers': a critical perspective on child neglect

Manufacturing Bad Mothers: A Critical Perspective on Child NeglectKaren J. Swift Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995; 218 pp.Reviewed by Wendy J. Atkin Department of History Carleton University Ottawa, OntarioIn this important new study of place of child neglect in Canadian social work, Karen Swift shows how state must manufacture a bad mother before it can defend a neglected child. Swift opens three windows on this subject: a feminist historical framework on social welfare system, a deconstructive analysis of knowledge and power base of social work profession, and an experiential view of field. At heart of this book is basic contradiction that a system constructed historically to save children, as was original goal of so - called child - savers of late nineteenth century middle - class social reform movement in urban Canada, has failed. Swift asks why, when the supposed beneficiaries of child welfare resources and efforts are children, frequently children do not benefit and in fact often suffer in spite of or directly as a result of child welfare interventions into their (p. 12).Feminist historians such as Sally Alexander have demonstrated how motherhood presents contradictions for women. At historical junctures when feminist movement ebbed, child protection impulses of social reformers and state have increased regulation of mothers. In social work, category of child neglect appears not to be gendered, but Swift points out that virtually all people actually accused of neglecting their children, both historically and at present, are mothers (p. 101). professional social worker is also gendered and moral approbation of nineteenth century friendly visitors has been replaced with scientific apparatus of child development and psychological theories born by young, white, middle - class female case workers.Swift, attempting to answer her basic, painful question of why her chosen profession, built around premise that neglected children deserve remedy, has proven so incapable of helping them, bravely steps outside social work paradigm. By uniting positivist stream of research on child neglect and social deconstructive techniques of post - modernist scholar, Swift shows that child neglect cannot be understood if seen only in light of observable phenomenon (p. 16). It is a large undertaking, perhaps best distilled in illustration from Michel Foucault's analogy of a military camp, which could also be read as a description of modern child welfare bureaucracy: 'The camp was a way to render visible those who are inside it ... to transform individuals ... to act on those it shelters, to provide a hold on their conduct, to carry effects of power right to them, to make it possible to alter them' (p. 26).Through labelling and knowing people, their reality can be changed. Swift invokes infamous Home Alone case (named for Hollywood movie) that hit media in 1992 after a middle - class couple left their children home alone while vacationing in Mexico. In fact, Swift argues, poor children live in families where abandonment is a normal living strategy: The experience of being left alone is not necessarily less frightening to poor children, but simply less interesting to public. Abandonment of poor children is not news (p. 7). When judicial and child welfare bureaucracies took over case, couple received an extensive list of charges, they ultimately relinquished their children, and it came out that parents had deviant psychological profiles. neglect was thus known as a pathological incident and faded from public view. …