Research Framework: The research focuses on six sessions dedicated to the relationship with the school, held within a parents’ discussion group. Led by two social workers, this group consists primarily of mothers from working-class families with a migrant background. A researcher whose work focuses on the relationship between schools and parents was invited to facilitate these sessions. Objectives: The aim of this article is to highlight the dynamics that shaped this cycle, particularly the conflict over parenting norms that the participants faced and the way in which the facilitators and the researcher supported the group.Methodology: Inductive in nature, this approach is based on participant observation and enabled a thematic and diachronic analysis. Results: The results highlight differences in how schools and social workers conceptualize parenting support, particularly the lack of agreement on relevant standards. This tension weighs heavily on the most vulnerable mothers, whose intense anger toward the institution is difficult to express. Amid this clash of norms, the facilitators and researcher sought to maintain their respective approaches to parenting support and to develop a support system that allowed for the expression of negative emotions within a supportive group setting. Conclusion: The mothers’ pleasure of participating, what they have learned during these sessions, and their assertion of the legitimacy of their voices and contributions appear to be modest outcomes of these meetings, yet they are significant for these women, who are thereby reconnecting with a sense of respectability.Contribution: This article contributes to our understanding of the issues surrounding parenting support, particularly as they relate to the role of parents of schoolchildren.
Research Framework: This article explores the impact of Swiss civil law on parents by analyzing the normative evolution of parenthood in light of the social transformations of the 20th century.Objectives: The study examines how certain rights granted to children are redefining the exercise of parental authority and the identity of parents. Through concrete examples, it highlights the tension between parental rights and children’s rights, particularly the child’s right to know their origins, the right to change gender, and autonomy in matters of care.Methodology: Using a legal approach, this article analyzes both the substantive and procedural rights of children and parents across various areas.Results: On the one hand, the rigidity of certain legal rules is out of step with contemporary family realities. On the other hand, the emergence of children’s rights is leading to a reshaping of parental rights, which parents must take into account. The scattering of norms across various legal texts hinders parents’ participation in proceedings and complicates the defense of their interests, whereas State intervention without their cooperation risks proving ineffective.Conclusions: Changes in the reciprocal rights of children and parents naturally affect the parents themselves, the expectations placed on them, their perception of their role, and consequently their identity. There is a need for greater clarity and accessibility regarding the law. Support for parenting would boost parents’ confidence and enhance the effectiveness of state interventions, where deemed necessary, while respecting the applicable legal principles.Contribution:This study advocates for a balanced application of the legal framework that respects the rights of both children and parents, and sheds light on the inherent tension in the Parent-Child-State relationship under Swiss private law.
Research Framework: This article explores the relationships between domestic workers and employers from a perspective rarely considered in academic literature: male domination and, more specifically, domestic and gender-based violence.Objectives: The study aims to shed light on the patriarchal dimension of domestic work and the relationships between domestic workers and employers by shifting the focus beyond women alone to reposition men as key actors in these relationships.Methodology: The empirical data is based on an eight years ethnographic study conducted in La Paz and Lima, including semi-structured interviews and participant observation. Methodological innovations inspired by the Theatre of the Oppressed were also incorporated.Results: Gender-based violence plays a defining role in the life trajectories of domestic workers, with violence perpetrated by members of their own families and by their employers reinforcing one another. While racial and class inequalities are fundamental to relationship between domestic workers and employers, some similarities nevertheless emerge between domestic workers and employers with regard to gender-based violence. In some cases, they are even exposed to the same perpetrator—the employer.Conclusions: Focusing on male domination reveals that, within a context of class and racial domination, it is paradoxically these commonalities that can enable us to grasp, in all their complexity, what the literature typically refers to as “rivalries” and “jealousies” between domestic workers and employers.Contribution: While the various forms of gender-based violence experienced by domestic workers are analyzed—when they are analyzed at all—in isolation from one another, and employers’ exposure to these same forms of violence is rarely considered, this article takes a cross-cutting perspective that highlights their common denominator: they are perpetrated by men within the family. This observation calls for a more analytical articulation between paid domestic work and unpaid domestic work, while taking into account the findings of feminist research on the family institution.
Research framework: The Loire and the Rhône (19th and 20th century) in France.Objectives: From a feminist and materialist perspective, this article studies the gendered distribution of profits derived from the exploitation of paid domestic labour in France, between the mid-19th century and mid-20th centuries. It examines the forms of resistance that domestic workers (both men and women) employed to limit the exploitation they faced, which came at the expense of their agency. Methodology: This study is based on an analysis of private archives belonging to the bourgeoisie of the Loire and the Rhône departments, of administrative papers (primarily national censuses and official agricultural surveys), and of judicial archives, which, to a certain extent, provide insight into the voices of domestic workers.Results: The analysis shows that within families that employ domestic workers, the heads of household – whether they are farmers, merchants, industrialists, or members of a liberal professions – and their sons benefit the most from live-in domestic service. It also shows how domestic workers, both men and women, attempt to reduce these employers’ benefits and how their strategies for asserting their individuality are gendered.Conclusions: Domesticity is not simply a class relationship pitting all-powerful “mistresses” of the house against submissive “servant”, as demonstrated by historiography that has focused extensively on the social relationships between women of different classes living together in the same household. The analysis presented here clearly illustrates how a relationship of economic, social, gender-based, and sometimes racial domination takes shape, contributing to the construction of the family and the households as a place where goods and services are produced, from which the men in the family derive the majority of the benefits.
Research framework: In the West, infant sleep is strictly regulated by public health authorities, particularly in light of the risk of sudden infant death syndrome. Yet many families practise co-sleeping; several of them conceal their sleeping habits due to uncertainty about the support they will receive. The fear of judgment deprives them of information on how to practise co-sleeping safely.Objectives: To explore the positive experiences and challenges faced by parents who practise co-sleeping with their infants.Methodology: The perspectives of 40 parents of young children were gathered through semi-structured interviews focusing on nurturing care; the content of these interviews was analyzed and revealed multiple interconnections with nighttime parenting. These participants were based in the Capitale-Nationale region (Quebec, Canada).Results: Parents who share a sleeping space with a baby (co-sleeping) often experience significant guilt, and perinatal care workers face ethical challenges when supporting families regarding sleep.Conclusions: Parents of young children find themselves at the centre of several political, social and cultural issues. Of all women, (expectant) mothers are subject to the greatest social scrutiny; they must be responsible, not only for themselves, but also for the child, a future productive citizen.Contribution: This study helps deepen our understanding of contemporary nighttime parenting in Quebec. It highlights the importance of valuing the knowledge and perspectives of the parents directly involved, and of daring to “change our perspective” to recognize that some Western biomedical norms can be reevaluated.
