“Accidental parenting” and “responsible citizenship”

This chapter explores the use of Critical Health Psychology in understanding health advice that is given to new parents on managing infant sleep. When considering discourses around parenting and parenting practices, there are a variety of frames of citizenship that can be applied – responsible, moral, and health. This chapter will discuss the idea of citizenship alongside the neoliberal concepts of “informed decision making,” “informed choice,” and “risk management” which permeate much of contemporary health promotion. Working from a broadly critical health psychological perspective and informed by both Parenting Culture Studies and a social psychology of citizenship, this chapter takes as its focus health advice given through three popular infant sleep parenting guides. Using a critical discursive psychological analysis this chapter sets out to examine the ways in which advice around baby sleeping is constructed and how “good” parenting practices are positioned. This chapter finishes with a discussion of how discourses around baby sleeping practices work alongside contemporary parenting ideologies of maintaining a “good” parenting identity and being a “good,” “responsible,” and “moral” citizen.