Purity and Order: The Perspective of Child Protection Services

Abstract

The article is devoted to the concepts of “cleanliness”, “dirt”, and related contexts of the professional practices in child protection services in St Petersburg, Russia. For child protection service employees, “cleanliness” is expanded to the characteristics of the “correct” functioning of the family as a whole. Although ideas about the connection between childhood and cleanliness are part of the process of medicalization and standardization of child care, the inspection of apartments by child protection services allows us to identify a range of ideas that underlie the notion of “good parenting”: the ability of adults to perceive, assimilate, and adjust their lives in accordance with the recommendations of employees about cleanliness; evidence of their desire not to be separated from children; overcoming difficulties manifested primarily through disorder and dirt; their ability to sustain regularity, providing a sense of being morally upstanding adults in the eyes of child protection services. The article is based on fieldwork conducted over a period of three years (2019–2022).