Investigate the rhetoric of safety around children and parenting, particularly mothers. Safety is “rhetorical” where it is used (by the media, politicians, policy makers, and the rest of us) to shape public perception and action. Ordinary ideas about parents’ obligation to protect their children from harm, for example, can include protection from strangers who might harm a child’s body, but it can also include protection from poverty, from exposure to realities (like homelessness) that might cause a child mental disturbance, from disappointment (like not getting into the child’s college of choice). And then there are other, more problematic ideas about the safety of children that include protecting children from the very things society teaches them to trust: protection from the parents themselves, protection from other children, protection from the law. What does it mean when safety, such a seemingly basic concept, creates vulnerability, and even harm?
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