Since the early 1990s, an explicit parenting support policy made its way onto the French political agenda. This policy responds to a growing political demand to avoid the failure of the parental educational mission and “new social risks” for children. To educate parents to their own role, to improve their “competence”, to control their practices, correspond to the construction of parenting as a public problem and the defense of a “parental determinism”, mobilizing many different knowledge and empirical results. In our presentation, we argue that the slow policy process that led to current French parenting support policy is the outcome of an ideological, professional and scientific battle. We shall also stress the reactivation of old and deep-rooted oppositions and controversies between left- and right- wing parties as well as between republican and Catholic milieux, concerning family, private life issues and the challenge of secularization. This current battle brings into conflict fundamental alternatives pitting universalism against targeting, parental empowering against parental control, offering support to parents via services versus re-educating them through advice and behavioral training, and local and community actions versus national regulatory actions. This battle of ideas around the parenting issue is taking place behind the scenes, mixing old and new ideas, reactivating norms and stereotypes that are deeply rooted in our social history concerning the private and public spheres respectively as well as the respective roles of mothers, fathers and public institutions. To present the field of positions and arguments, we look at official and experts’ reports in the last decade, but also controversies concerning new parenting programs of intervention.
