‘The Good Parent’ and ‘The Other Parent’: Medicalization, othering and social exclusion in Israeli professional discourse regarding learning disorders and difficulties

Abstract

This lecture seeks to uncover the various textual techniques through which binary representations of ‘parenthood’ are constructed in the framework of clinical professional discourse of Israeli learning-disorders experts. Historically this discourse has constructed two contrasting parenthood representations: ‘parenthood of learning-disordered children’ on the one hand, and ‘parenthood of cultural deprived children’ on the other hand.

The lecture posits the following main questions: Which textual representations of ‘parenthood’ were constructed in the framework of the aforementioned discourses? Which affinities can be identified between the textual representations and the contextual characteristics of social class, culture, ethnicity and educational capital? And which affinities can be identified between these representations and the explicit or implicit normative messages of ‘blame’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘agency’ embedded in the texts? Discourse analysis was implemented in order to uncover the mutual and contradictory construction processes. The analysis also reveals the stereotypical imputation of ‘normative’ parents with a well-off, well-educated and western origin population, as well as the stereotypical imputation of ‘problematic’ parents with a low class, little educated and eastern origin population. The lecture concludes by situating the texts in the social and historical context of their formulation: The processes of psychocultural othering which operated on low class, little educated and eastern origin parents are interpreted on the historical background of the class and ethnic hierarchical structure of the Israeli society. The conclusion also raises a conjecture regarding a rising new medicalizing ‘othering’ potential, a potential, which was already implicitly embedded in the analyzed historical texts.

Disclosure of interest

The author has not supplied his/her declaration of competing interest.