Promoting self-care in a community-based mother growth workshop: A Foucauldian discourse analysis

Abstract Based on a qualitative case analysis conducted in Shenzhen in 2020, this study explored how self-care and childcare as two parenting discourses influence the discursive practices of the parent education practitioner to design and implement a mother growth workshop. Through a social constructionist lens and Foucauldian discourse analysis, both dominant and alternative parent education discourses were identified. These discourses framed the available subject positions for the parent education practitioner, which further influenced her strategies for promoting self-care of mothers during practice. Moreover, this study theorised self-care as an example of the integration of disciplinary and constitutive powers which led to the production of normalised subjectivities for parent education practitioners and participants. Findings of this study offered theoretical and practical implications for future research and social work practice in humanistic- and social constructionist-oriented parent education.