Emotion work, affect and intergenerational ties: understanding children’s engagement with therapeutic culture

Therapeutic culture has penetrated several spheres of social life, offering concepts, categories and metaphors to make sense of selfhood and the social world. This article contributes to sociological discussions of therapeutic culture by exploring children’s diverse therapeutic engagements through an investigation of support groups for children of parents with mental illness. Empirically, the article draws on novel video recordings of support group sessions and interviews with the participating children collected in Denmark. Inspired by theories on emotion work (Hochschild, 1979) and affective inequalities (Juvonen & Kolehmainen, 2018; Kinnunen & Kolehmainen, 2019), the analysis shows how therapeutic practices on the one hand foster new affective communities and acknowledge children as competent social actors, which can potentially contribute new resources and pave the way for intergenerational change. On the other hand, these practices (re)establish intergenerational differences and risk (re)enforcing asymmetries, thereby solidifying already existing norms and patterns.