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Parent Education Beyond Learning: An Ethnographic Exploration of a Multi‐family Program for Families in Post‐divorce Conflict
Author(s) -
Bertelsen Bård
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of family therapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.297
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8438
pISSN - 0814-723X
DOI - 10.1002/anzf.1460
Subject(s) - ethnography , existentialism , subjectification , psychology , set (abstract data type) , welfare , sociology , pedagogy , participant observation , articulation (sociology) , social psychology , social science , epistemology , political science , linguistics , philosophy , politics , anthropology , computer science , law , programming language
The paper builds on ethnographic, qualitative research that explores the ‘No Kids in the Middle’ program for high‐conflict divorce families, as practiced in the Agder region of South Norway. Parent education programs targeting parents in divorce are generally found to be ‘effective’ in the sense that parents learn about the pitfalls of conflict and become socialised into less negative patterns of co‐parenting. However, a narrow understanding of the potential of such programs as vehicles for the transfer of knowledge fails to attend to the relational sides of both education and therapy, and the existential sides of parenthood. Drawing on Gert Biesta’s articulation of education as a process working along three dimensions of purpose, the paper approaches the ‘No Kids in the Middle’ program as an educational practice. It aims to explore whether the educational ambitions of the ‘No Kids in the Middle’ program should be understood primarily in the general terms of qualification (i.e., parents acquiring knowledge and skills) and socialisation (i.e., parents gaining a specific orientation toward a set of norms and values), or if there were practices or elements that seemed directed at subjectification or bringing the ‘I’ of each parent into play. Analysing field notes from participant observation in a ‘No Kids in the Middle’ multi‐family group and interviews with parents, therapists, judges, and child welfare caseworkers, the paper concludes that programs like ‘No Kids in the Middle’ provide a broad spectrum of educational opportunities. While some of these might be intended to instruct along pre‐defined normative paths toward understanding and behaviour, such practices can also be seen as addressing parents in a different, more existential, way. In the particular local practice studied, the dimension of subjectification was perhaps most clearly in play in the informal settings surrounding the program itself.