Stratified reproduction and definitions of child neglect: State practices and parents' responses
Item
-
Title
-
Stratified reproduction and definitions of child neglect: State practices and parents' responses
-
Identifier
-
d_2009_2013:06a5ddbeb9ea:10363
-
identifier
-
10533
-
Creator
-
Lee, Tina,
-
Contributor
-
Leith Mullings
-
Date
-
2010
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Cultural anthropology | Individual & family studies | Public policy | child welfare | gender | neglect | race | stratified reproduction | United States
-
Abstract
-
This dissertation focuses on the day-to-day decision-making practices and definitions of child neglect used in the child welfare system and on parents' experiences with child welfare cases and their attempts to regain custody of children placed in foster care. It is guided by an overarching concern with how and to what extent state practices build on and recreate inequalities of race, class, and gender. It also seeks to add to our understanding of state efforts to shape the lives and behaviors of poor women of color in the contemporary United States and of state change under neoliberalism. My purpose is to examine how child welfare decisions are made, to understand on what basis they are made, and to see how these decisions are related to and reproduce larger inequalities.;I understand reproduction as "political" (in the sense of being inextricably bound up with power and inequalities of power; see Ginsburg & Rapp 1991) and employ the term "stratified reproduction" to discuss the conditions under which some categories of women are valued and supported in bearing and raising children while others are not (Ginsburg & Rapp 1995). Everyday practices in child welfare empower or disempower women (and men) to carry out their caretaking work through the legal processes that grant custody of children to some and not to others based on notions of what the proper care of children entails and what kinds of individuals proper parents should be. Child welfare is thus a key arena for drawing lines between "fit" and "unfit" parenting and these often fall along lines of race, class, and gender. Consequently, I see the child welfare system as integral to the production and reproduction of stratified reproduction. Drawing on observations in family court and at support groups for parents, interviews with child welfare decision-makers, and interviews with and a survey of parents with children in foster care, I argue that the child welfare system both builds on and directly reproduces relations of stratified reproduction as well as race, class, and gender inequality.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
2009_2013.csv
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
Anthropology
