Child‐Risk Discourses in a Disadvantaged Neighbourhood: Place‐Based Classifications, Moral Regulation and the Organization of Everyday Parenting

The professional practice category of ‘children at risk’ serves as a central framework within contemporary child welfare systems, guiding the identification of children, the assessment of their circumstances and decisions regarding intervention and support. This study examines how child‐risk discourses associated with this category operate beyond formal assessment and intervention in everyday family life. Drawing on interviews with 30 parents living in a disadvantaged neighbourhood in Israel, reflexive thematic analysis identified three themes: (1) place‐based classifications of children, families and parenting; (2) negotiating moral evaluations of parenting; and (3) making parental responsibility visible. The findings indicate that place‐based meanings became extended to children, families and parenting, producing place‐based classifications that became linked to concerns about child risk and parental adequacy and, in turn, formed the basis for moral evaluations of parenting that defined the boundaries of legitimate parenting. Anticipating these classifications and moral evaluations became an organizing principle of everyday parenting, leading parents to make parental responsibility visible through everyday parenting practices. The study demonstrates that, in the context of a territorially stigmatized disadvantaged neighbourhood, child‐risk discourses operate as a form of moral regulation of parenting, extending beyond direct institutional encounters through parents' anticipation of such classifications and moral evaluations.