A key theme in Tizard and Hughes’ transcripts, and one that Walkerdine and Lucey (1989) identified as the lynch pin of the interpretive framework for development psychology and pedagogy, was attachment theory and its construct of the “sensitive mother.” Hallmarks of the “sensitive mother,” argued Walkerdine and Lucey, are her middle-class habitus and the linguistic practices of negotiation and choice she employs when interacting with her children. Such practices, they argued, not only mask the power that adults have over children, but also reflect a material context in which, unlike in many working-class homes, there are choices to be made about which straw one drinks from or whether to have another helping of food. The working-class mothers documented by Tizard and Hughes did not offer their daughters many choices; they used language more directly and made their power visible: “Close that door again and I’ll give you a smack!” (Walkerdine & Lucey, 1989, p. 24). This language was presented in the original analysis as insensitive and counter to child development “needs.”

Yet Walkerdine and Lucey wondered why the inevitable and obvious conflict between children and their mothers, evident in both the working-class and middle-class transcripts, must be “driven underground” (p. 119), and indeed why the patriarchal relationships that often characterize mother-child relationships in the confines of the home were equally invisible, as were the fathers in this study. The illusion of harmony and peace in the family, an illusion thought essential to the creation of harmony and peace in society, was presented as a middle-class achievement because the language practices of the middle-class mothers tended to obfuscate or deflect conflict rather than dealing with it head on. This contributed, Walkerdine and Lucey argued, to the normalization of the middle-class family and its association with sensitivity, harmony, and developmentally and pedagogically appropriate parenting practices.

Walkerdine and Lucey linked these interpretations to the larger political context for the privileging of middle-class parenting styles. They argued that creating an illusion of freedom, choice, and control in children is vital to the workings of a liberal democracy. As future citizens, children need to live this illusion if governance is to be successful. Working-class mothers are thus “a threat to this modern, bourgeois order” (p. 41), and need to be regulated through parent education, advice, monitoring and intervention.