Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T12:15:57.301Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Substance misuse and parenting: making drugs and gender in the family court

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2019

Simon Flacks Open the ORCID record for Simon Flacks [Opens in a new window]
Simon Flacks*
Affiliation:
University of Westminster, London
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Children tend to be represented as the quintessential victims of the ‘drug problem’, with drug-using parents, particularly mothers, characterised as vectors of the risks posed. Although evidence of drug use is not per se an impediment to retaining care of, or contact with, children (per Lady Hale in Re B [2013] UKSC 33, at para. 143), it does pose one of the greatest challenges to social and political norms about ‘good parenting’, and often has a powerful impact on decisions about care within UK family courts. While there is a considerable body of scholarship assessing criminal justice responses to drug use, there has been little research into how the family serves as an important site for the constitution of drug harms and the making of ‘drugs’ and ‘addiction’. This paper is informed by qualitative analysis of approximately 150 case reports in which drug use has been cited as relevant in the determination of guardianship/parenting. The purpose will not be to contest the difficult decisions that judges had to make in these cases but, using perspectives rooted in Science and Technology Studies and feminist drug scholarship, to remain attendant to the ontological multiplicity of objects that emerge from attempts to stabilise drug harms in legal narratives.

Keywords

family lawScience and Technology Studiesdrugsaddictiongenderparenting
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 424 - 441
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrahamson, M (2006) Young women's and men's different worlds of alcohol, fear and violence in focus group discussions with 18-year-olds in Stockholm. Contemporary Drug Problems 33, 3–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adamson, J and Templeton, L (2012) Silent Voices: Supporting Children and Young People Affected by Parental Alcohol Misuse. London: Children's Commissioner's Office.Google Scholar
Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (2003) Hidden Harm: Responding to the Needs of Children and Problem Drug Users. London: Crown Copyright. Available at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/120620/hidden-harm-full.pdf (accessed 25 March 2019).Google Scholar
Alexander, M (2012) The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colourblindness. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
Bancroft, A and Wilson, S (2007) The ‘risk gradient’ in policy on children of drug and alcohol users: framing young people as risky. Health, Risk and Society 9, 311–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bancroft, A et al. (2004) Parental Drug and Alcohol Misuse: Resilience and Transition among Young People. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.Google Scholar
Barad, K (2003) Posthumanist performativity: toward and understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs 28, 801–831.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnard, M and Barlow, J (2003) Discovering parental drug dependence: silence and Disclosure. Children and Society 17, 45–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnard, M and McKeganey, N (2004) The impact of parental problem drug use on children: what is the problem and what can be done to help? Addiction 99, 552–559.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrow, A and Round, Z (2014) The pitfalls of hair testing. Family Law Week. Available at http://www.familylaw.co.uk/news_and_comment/the-pitfalls-of-hair-testing#.WYA3PemQzIV (accessed 19 February 2019).Google Scholar
Benoit, C et al. (2014) Providers’ constructions of pregnant and early parenting women who use substances. Social Health and Illness 36, 252–263.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bernhardsson, J and Bogren, A (2012) Drink sluts, brats and immigrants as other: an analysis of Swedish media discourse on gender, alcohol and rape. Feminist Media Studies 12, 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berns, S (2000) Folktales of legality: family law in the procedural republic. Law and Critique 11, 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, S (1999) Mothers and Illicit Drugs: Transcending the Myths. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, S (2004) From Witches to Crack Moms: Women, Drug Law, and Policy. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.Google Scholar
Boyd, S and Carter, C (2011) Using children: marijuana grow-ops, media, and policy. Critical Studies in Media Communication 29, 238–257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cain, R (2011) The court of motherhood: affect, alienation and redefinitions of responsible parenting. In Bridgeman, J, Keating, H and Lind, C (eds), Regulating Family Responsibilities. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Campbell, N and Ettorre, E (2011) Gendering Addiction: The Politics of Drug Treatment in a Neurochemical World. London: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Children and Young People Now (2009) Should the children of drug addicts be taken into care? Children and Young People Now, 27 August. Available at https://www.cypnow.co.uk/cyp/other/1053376/should-the-children-of-drug-addicts-be-taken-into-care (accessed 22 March 2019).Google Scholar
Comiskey, C, Milnes, J and Daly, M (2017) Parents who use drugs: the well-being of parent and child dyads among people receiving harm reduction interventions for opiate use. Journal of Substance Use 22, 206–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Courtwright, DT (2001) Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Couvrette, A, Brochu, S and Plourde, C (2016) The ‘deviant good mother’: motherhood experiences of substance-using and lawbreaking women. Journal of Drug Issues 46, 292–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Department of Education (DoE) (2016) Children Looked After in England (Including Adoption) Year Ending 31 March 2016. London: Department for Education.Google Scholar
Derrida, J (1993) The rhetoric of drugs: an interview. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 5, 1–25.Google Scholar
Diduck, A (1993) Legislating ideologies of motherhood. Social & Legal Studies 2, 461.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duff, C (2012) Accounting for context: exploring the role of objects and spaces in the consumption of alcohol and other drugs. Social and Cultural Geography 13, 145–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dwyer, R and Fraser, S (2017) Engendering drug problems: materialising gender in the DUDIT and other screening and diagnostic ‘apparatuses’. International Journal of Drug Policy 44, 135–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ettorre, E (2007) Revisioning Women and Drug Use: Gender, Power and the Body. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ettorre, E et al. (2008) Neither Villain nor Victim: Empowerment and Agency among Women Substance Abusers. Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press New.Google Scholar
Finch, E and Munro, V (2007) The demon drink and the demonized women: socio-sexual stereo-types and responsibility attribution in rape trials involving intoxicants. Social & Legal Studies 16, 591–614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraser, S (2017) The future of ‘addiction’: critique and composition. International Journal of Drug Policy 44, 130–134.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Flacks, S (2018) Drug law reform, performativity and the politics of childhood. International Journal of Drug Policy 51, 56–66.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Foucault, M (1978) The History of Sexuality. (OKS Print). New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Foucault, M (1986) The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self, trans. Harmondsworth, Hurley R.: Penguin.Google Scholar
Fraser, S and Valentine, K (2008) Substance and Substitution: Methadone Subjects in Liberal Societies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraser, S, Moore, D and Keane, H (2014) Habits: Remaking Addiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillies, V (2005) Raising the ‘meritocracy’ parenting and the individualization of social class. Sociology 39, 835–853.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillies, V (2007) Marginalised Mothers: Exploring Working Class Experiences of Parenting. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gillies, V (2014) Troubling families: parenting and the politics of early intervention. In Wagg, S and Pilcher, J (eds), Thatcher's Grandchildren Politics and Childhood in the Twenty-first Century. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Goffman, E (1963) Stigma. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Hannah-Moffat, K (2007) Gendering dynamic risk: assessing and managing the material identities of women prisoners. In Hannah Moffat, K and O'Malley, P (eds), Gendered Risks. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harding, M and Newnham, A (2015) How Do County Courts Share the Care of Children between Parents? London: Nuffield Foundation.Google Scholar
Hart, AC and Moore, D (2014) Alcohol and alcohol effects: constituting causality in alcohol epidemiology. Contemporary Drug Problems 41, 393–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harwin, J et al. (2016) After FDAC: Outcomes 5 Years Later. Bailrigg, Lancaster: Lancaster University.Google Scholar
Holland, S et al. (2013) Parenting and substance misuse: understanding accounts and realities in child protection contexts. The British Journal of Social Work 44, 1491–1507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holt, A (2008) Room for resistance? Parenting orders, disciplinary power and the production of ‘the bad parent’. In Squires, P (ed.), ASBO Nation: The Criminalisation of Nuisance. Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 203–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, J and Macleod, A (2008) Outcomes of Applications to Court for Contact Orders after Parental Separation or Divorce. London: Ministry of Justice.Google Scholar
Jasanoff, S (1995) Science at the Bar: Law, Science, and Technology in America. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Keane, H (2002) What's Wrong with Addiction? Carlton South: Melbourne University Press.Google Scholar
Kline, M (1993) Complicating the ideology of motherhood: child welfare law and first nation women. Queen's Law Journal 18, 306–342.Google Scholar
Krieken, R van (2005) The ‘best interests of the child’ and parental separation: on the ‘civilizing of parents’. Modern Law Review 68, 25–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroll, B (2004) Living with an elephant: growing up with parental substance misuse. Child and Family Social Work 9, 129–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lang, S (2015) Report of the Independent Reviewer of the Motherisk Hair Analysis Review. Available at http://www.m-hair.ca/ (accessed 19 February 2019).Google Scholar
Law, J (2004) After Method: Mess in Social Science Research, International Library of Sociology. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Law, J (2011) Collateral realities. In Dominguez Rubio, F and Baert, P (eds), The Politics of Knowledge. London: Routledge, pp. 156–178.Google Scholar
Lister, R (2003) Investing in the citizen-workers of the future: transformations in citizenship and the state under New Labour. Social Policy and Administration 37, 427–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mol, A (2002) The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mol, A and Law, J (2002) Complexities: an introduction. In Law, J and Mol, A (eds), Complexities: Social Studies of Knowledge Practices. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 1–22.Google Scholar
Moore, K and Measham, F (2013) Exploring emerging perspectives on gender and drug use. In Mistral, W (ed.), Emerging Perspectives on Substance Misuse. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Google Scholar
Moore, D and Valverde, M (2000) Maidens at risk: ‘date rape drugs’ and the formation of hybrid risk knowledges. Economy and Society 29, 514–531.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Health Service (NHS) (2012) Parents with Drug Problems: How Treatment Helps Families. London: National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse.Google Scholar
Peacey, V and Hunt, J (2008) Problematic Contact after Separation and Divorce? A National Survey of Parents. One Parent Families, London: Gingerbread.Google Scholar
Race, K (2011) Drug effects, performativity and the law. International Journal of Drug Policy 22, 410–412.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reece, H (1996) The paramountcy principle: consensus or construct? Current Legal Problems 49, 267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rhodes, T, Bernays, S and Houmoller, K (2010) Parents who use drugs: accounting for damage and its limitation. Social Science & Medicine 71, 1489–1497.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roberts, D (1991) Punishing drug addicts who have babies: women of colour, equality and the right of privacy. Harvard Law Review 104, 1419–1482.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seear, K (2015) Making addiction, making gender: a feminist performativity analysis of Kakavas v Crown Melbourne Limited. The Australian Feminist Law Journal 41, 65–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seear, K and Fraser, S (2014) Beyond criminal law: the multiple constitution of addiction in Australian legislation. Addiction Research & Theory 22, 438–450.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seear, KL (2017) The emerging role of lawyers as addiction ‘quasi-experts’. International Journal of Drug Policy 44, 183–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shiner, M (2009) Drug Use and Social Change: The Distortion of History. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smart, C (1991) The legal and moral ordering of child custody. Journal of Law and Society 18, 485–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevens, A (2011) Drugs, Crime and Public Health: The Political Economy of Drug Policy. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tunnard, J (2002) Parental drug misuse: a review of impact and intervention studies. Research In Practice. Available at https://lx.iriss.org.uk/sites/default/files/resources/parental%20drug%20misuse.pdf (accessed 25 March 2019).Google Scholar
Valentine, K and Fraser, S (2008) Trauma, damage, and pleasure: rethinking problematic drug use. International Journal of Drug Policy 19, 410–416.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Waldby, C (1986) Mothering and Addiction: Women with Children in Methadone Programs, Monograph Series No. 4. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service.Google Scholar
Weinberg, D (2002) On the embodiment of addiction. Body & Society 8, 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zayed, Y and Harker, R (2015) Children in Care in England: Statistics, London: House of Commons Library.Google Scholar