Disciplining ‘Problem Parents’ in the Youth Court: Between Regulation and Resistance

This paper explores the ways in which parents, who have been the recipients of Parenting Orders, perform identity work through their accounts of their experiences in court. Discourse analysis is used to identify five key ʹstrategies of resistanceʹ through which parents manage their parental identity and argues that such discursive practices highlight the fragility of such parentsʹ claims to a positive parental identity in light of hegemonic gendered and classed conceptions of ʹresponsible parentingʹ. The paper concludes by reflecting on what such practices might mean for parents who find themselves at once both regulated and resistant.