Les suppléments Parents des magazines jeunesse : un outil de « domestication » des mères ?

In: Recherches et prévisions: dynamiques familiales et politiques de l'habitat, Band 93, Heft 1, S. 29-40

Abstract

The «Parents » supplements in educational magazines for children aged 0 to 7 are a broadly invisible and unknown subject. The ersatz manual for «bringing up children » derived from child education norms (and hence parental roles) projects the idea of requisite parental work to succeed in bringing up children to which a children's magazine is supposed to contribute. The gender differentiations – which strive to capture which is explicitly stated or mentioned in passing in differences between the sexes about children and about parents – highlight another aspect in supplements : the vector of a gender-differentiated model. The model of two heterosexual parents who are not interchangeable, but are ranked is imposed with all the more force given the psychology approach buoyed by editorials and simplified parental pairings in such opuscules. Mothers are the primary recipients of such supplements and messages and therefore receive the prescriptions of educational and domestic obligations as well as the requirement to be available at all times for the sake of the child's success.