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The Urban Review

, Volume 48, Issue 3, pp 484–498 | Cite as

Blaming and Framing the Family: Urban Schools and School Officials Talk of Neglecting Parents

  • Ylva Odenbring
  • Thomas Johansson
  • Johannes Lunneblad
Article
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Abstract

This article explores Swedish secondary school’s strategies for supporting students who lack parental care. The study was designed as a case study of six Swedish urban secondary schools located in different demographic areas in southern Sweden. The study draws from individual interviews with school officials, focus group interviews with schools officials and observations from the schools’ student health team meetings. Contemporary research shows that there are several reasons why children and adolescents are neglected: parents’ mental illness, drug abuse, unemployment and living in poverty are some of the main factors explaining why children are neglected. The aim of this article is to explore school officials’ narratives about supporting students with different class backgrounds who are negatively affected by neglect and lack of parental care. The aim is also to explore schools’ collaborations with families, the social services and child and youth psychiatric care to support this group of students. Analytically the study takes its point of departure in how school officials read and position students and their families as classed subjects. Of interest is also to explore how the school professionals’ narratives connect to discourses on neglected children, social class and the schools’ responsibilities for handling these issues. The results indicate that students’ class background is central to the explanations given for social problems as well as to how different student groups are categorized. Discourses of family disorder and dysfunction are provided as the main explanations for neglect and lack of parental care among students growing up in child poverty, whereas discourses explaining middle-class students’ problems are related to young people’s loneliness and parents’ lack of time.

Keywords

Class Family Neglect Secondary school Students Urban 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This project is funded by a research grant from The Swedish Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • Ylva Odenbring
    • 1
  • Thomas Johansson
    • 1
  • Johannes Lunneblad
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Education, Communication and LearningUniversity of GothenburgGothenburgSweden

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