Governing the Divorcee: Gender and Sexuality in State-Mandated Parenting Classes (original) (raw)

The idea that divorce is a negative and traumatic event is part of U.S. cultural consciousness and in the Reagan-Bush era (1981-1992), heightened anxiety about both the demise of marriage and the rise of divorce created state policy mandating court-approved parenting classes for divorcing couples – a requirement for the final dissolution of marriage. The ubiquity and legitimacy of these parenting courses demonstrates that the unruliness of divorce is met with new technologies of governing. We position these state-mandated parenting courses as a form of “governmentality” – a mode of governance encompassing but not limited to the state – designed to produce apologetic citizens whose social, sexual, emotional, and intimate behavior becomes regulated (Foucault 1977). These parenting seminars deploy specific forms of knowledge in order to legitimate the normativity of hetero-marriage; perpetuate the notion that children of divorcing parents are at risk; and promote liberal concepts of self-improvement and empowerment. We analyze the discursive conditions through which parenting courses for divorcing couples came to be legally required, and socially desirable. We show how the policy and the courses advance idealizations of individualism, equality, and child welfare, while also expressing anxiety about the fate of the heterosexual nuclear family. We argue that these policies and courses attempt to regulate parental conduct, thought, and emotion, prescribing and proscribing attitudes and behaviors in order to shape divorcing couples into redeemable, responsible parents.