The paper examines forms of mother-blame experienced by Swedish mothers’ to children with problematic school absence. The analysis is based on interviews with 15 mothers to children who had been absent from school during longer periods. All of the children had either an autism- or an ADHD-diagnosis.
As medical models for understanding children’s health and development have replaced earlier psychological perspectives some scholars have put forward that we can see a transition from mother-blame to brain-blame. Other researchers argue that the development rather is a question of new types of mother-blame, being incited by the dominant culture of intensive parenting and neo-liberal politics. In line with the later, I found that Swedish mothers to children with problematic school absence were left with a ponderous individual responsibility for their children’s schooling situation and that they conducted particularly intensive forms of parenting. As the mothers fought to ameliorate their children’s situation they were confronted with both direct and proximate blame from the educational and medical system as well as the juridical system. The mothers’ economic, cultural and social assets shaped their ways of managing blame although not in a straightforward way. The results are interesting in an international perspective as mother-blame has been found to be comparatively low in Sweden due to the Swedish welfare state strategy and commitment to gender equality.