Parenting Support in France: Policy in an Ideological Battlefield

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 1990s, a set of measures and interventions has been progressively implemented in France under the heading of ‘parenting support’ (soutien à la parentalité). This article describes this policy process in order to understand the drivers, instruments and actors at work, and also to highlight the controversies and ideological roots of the policy and its framing. It is argued that parenting support policy is the result of a complex process engaging a potent combination of old and new ideas, objectives and instruments which involve political and ideological contestation. The current turn to parenting in France is mainly a recalibration of previous experiences that were themselves also the site of important contradictions and controversies.