Parental engagement with British child-rearing normative practices and policies has been a source of conflict between Black African parents and professionals involved in child-safeguarding in Britain. These professionals include teachers, police, healthcare practitioners such as health visitors, nurses and doctors, and most importantly, social workers, because Children Act 1989, section 47 legally tasks social workers to investigate child-safeguarding concerns. Child-rearing norms and practices across all four UK countries are largely similar, although substantive legislative differences necessitate the application of only child welfare laws/policies of England and Wales in this study. This article focuses on Nigerian parents’ experiences of British child welfare system, tensions ensuing from those interactions and how parents mitigate them. Insights are drawn from 25 in-depth semi-structured interviews and two focus group discussions with Nigerian parents living in Greater London. Honneth’s recognition theory and Fraser’s participatory parity undergird the conceptual framework. The findings reveal an interplay of the structural forces of race, power and cultural differentials on participants’ thinking processes and actions. Thus, suggesting that social workers perpetuate the British public’s misrecognition of Nigerian parents through uncritical social work practices, which are implicated in further disempowerment of Black African parents, to the detriment of the families’ well-being.

中文翻译：

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为人父母的恐惧：英国尼日利亚父母的儿童福利微观策略

父母对英国育儿规范做法和政策的参与一直是黑人非洲父母与英国从事儿童保护工作的专业人员之间发生冲突的根源。这些专业人员包括教师，警察，医疗保健从业人员（如医疗访问者），护士和医生，最重要的是社会工作者，因为1989年《儿童法》第47条在法律上责成社会工作者调查保护儿童的问题。尽管在立法上存在实质性差异，仅在本研究中仅适用英格兰和威尔士的儿童福利法律/政策，但英国四个国家/地区的抚养子女的准则和做法在很大程度上相似。本文重点介绍尼日利亚父母对英国儿童福利制度的经历，由此产生的紧张关系以及父母如何减轻这种压力。洞察来自25次深入的半结构化访谈，以及与居住在大伦敦的尼日利亚父母进行的两次焦点小组讨论。霍内斯的承认理论和弗雷泽的参与式平等是概念框架的基础。这些发现揭示了种族结构力量之间的相互作用，参与者思考过程和行动的力量和文化差异。因此，这表明社会工作者通过不加批判的社会工作做法，使英国公众对尼日利亚父母的误认永久存在，这与进一步剥夺黑人非洲父母的权能有关，从而损害了家庭的幸福。