“You just feel like you’ve failed them”: A Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis on mothers’ voiced accounts of the ‘duty to protect’ children from fatness

Research has highlighted damaging contradictions in the responsibilisation of mothers over children’s health, at once held responsible for tackling ‘childhood obesity’ while being cautious not to encourage children to become obsessive with their bodies. While research has highlighted discourses of mother blame and elucidated mothers' experiences, less is known about how mothers negotiate discourse in their voiced accounts. Utilising Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis, this study analysed interviews with 12 mothers in England to explore their experiences of a nationally mandated BMI screening programme in schools and explore how discourses shape their voices and stories. In negotiating complex and contradictory discourses of motherhood and fatness, participants expressed a 'duty to protect' their children from both fatphobia and fatness. While tackling the 'obesity epidemic' was framed as a shared moral duty of all parents, mothers felt that the duty to protect children from the harm of fatphobia is a private and personal struggle that they need to endure alone. Negotiating these responsibilities left mothers feeling guilt at their personal ‘failure’ to protect their children from one or both harms. This analysis calls attention to how dominant discourses impact mothers and serve to personally responsibilise them for the harm caused by state-sanctioned fatphobia.